Posts featuring Katica Kulavkova

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in literary updates from China, Denmark, Sweden, and North Macedonia!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the globe for updates on the world’s literary scenes. From Shanghai’s lively summer book fair and three exciting new titles from the Chinese; to literacy- and readership-boosting campaigns in Sweden and Denmark; the longlist for the best North Macedonian translation prize; and this year’s Struga Poetry Evening Festival, read on to learn more.

Hongyu Jasmine Zhu, Editor-at-Large, Reporting for China

From August 13–19, the Shanghai Book Fair welcomed over 382,000 readers with citywide events celebrating libraries and independent bookstores. Though I wasn’t in the country, WeChat livestreams—now second nature to Chinese publishers—allowed me to tune in and discover three books I’m eager to pick up.

First, Dong Li’s Chinese translation of Victoria Chang’s poetry collection 记逝录, Obit, was launched by China Normal University Press. “My Father’s Frontal Lobe—died unpeacefully of a stroke…” reads the opening line; Chang said that it foregrounds both disintegration and the possibilities of body and language. A stroke strips the body of movement and speech, pulmonary fibrosis hardens the lung until no air enters, language strains against enormous sorrow; yet Chang writes toward that very inadequacy, seeking new articulations. Li reflected that translation is a liminal language (折中的语言). While writing strives toward the far shore, translation stands midstream, crafting a new language attuned to currents not entirely one’s own.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

A growing boycott movement in the Philippines, Macedonia's most prestigious poetry award, and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival!

This week, our editors bring you the latest on a prestigious poetry award in North Macedonia; a Filipino comics movement leading the boycott of the Frankfurt Book Fair; and Hong Kong’s ever-exciting and evolving international intersections in letters.

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

Throughout the years, the main event in the Macedonian literary scene has been the Struga Poetry Evenings’ awarding of the prestigious Golden Wreath, which has gone to lauded writers such as W. H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, and Ted Hughes. This year, the prize is given to the Slovak poet Ivan Štrpka; the decision to crown him as this year’s laureate was unanimous, for his “rich, authentic and significant poetic corpus created over six decades.”

Štrpka, born in 1944, has maintained an engaged approach to art from the beginning of his career, committing himself to both moral and aesthetic values and continually incorporating contemporaneous cultural themes. In the 1960s, together with the poets Ivan Laučík and Peter Repka, he founded the poetry group Osamelí bežci (Lonely Runners), and together they composed a manifesto celebrating “freedom of thought . . . individual responsibility and the rejection of communist dictatorship and censorship”—which  was subsequently banned. (For those interested in finding out more, a documentary titled Lonely Runners: Moving On!, directed by Martin Repka, was released in 2019 and focuses on the friendship of the three members.)

Štrpka’s priorities are embodied in his writing, which illuminates—in the words of poet and member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts Katica Kulavkova—“everyday life . . . fragments [of] interpersonal relationships, the relationships between man and woman . . . individual and society . . . the physical and the emotional.” Kulavkova also notes that the “intimate, meditative, communicative . . . dimension” of Štrpka’s work is in many ways achieved via his poetic style, which she describes as “unpretentious [and] subtle” and “filled with detail.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

Literary news from North Macedonia and the United States!

In this week of literary news, we hear from our editors-at-large reporting from North Macedonia and the United States! From the recent poetry collection of a prominant North Macedonian poet to a dazzling few days of multilingual poetry and revelry, read on to learn more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

In the last days of April, a new poetry collection by the prominent poet Katica Kulavkova, Na Vrv Na Jazikot (On the Tip of the Tongue), was published by Ars Lamina Press. The collection leans into an interrogation of the concepts of home and identity in the current day, a question that, in the Macedonian cultural context, is fraught with challenges and debates.

Katica Kulavkova (born December 21, 1951), whose work was featured in the Winter 2020 issue of Asymptote, is a poet, writer, and academic. She is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a professor of theory and methodology of literature, hermeneutics, and creative writing. Her writing is deeply rooted in the interplay of the personal and collective; Kulavkova’s lyrical voice is informed by the negotiations between various aspects of being, as Macedonian, woman, mother, academic, artist, activist . . .

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