Author: mascara

We were thrilled and honoured to have participated in an exciting, free public event at the World Literature and Global South Conference (23-25 August, 2019) co-hosted by Peking University and the School of Languages at the University of Sydney, convened by Professor Yixu Lu.

The Global South Salon is a creative submersion into the colloquium themes from diaspora writers and translators who live and work in Sydney, and whose ancestries trace to the Global South. They have lived in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Africa, Mexico and Australia. They share resistant imaginaries.

The writers were introduced by Dr Toby Fitch with a brief introduction by award-winning poet Dimitra Harvey.
Featuring six award winning writers: Mario Licon Cabrera, Anuapama Pilbrow, Lachlan Brown, Debbie Lim, Michelle Cahill, Christopher Cyrill.

This stellar conference featured authors from Argentina, China, Egypt, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Myanmar, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, with keynotes by Alexis Wright and Gauri Viswanathan. Alexis Wright is an Indigenous Australian writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and the 2018 Stella Prize for her “collective memoir” of Leigh Bruce “Tracker” Tilmouth. Gauri Viswanathan is the author of Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (Columbia, 1989; 25th anniversary edition, 2014) and Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton, 1998) which won several awards.

The conference also featured a launch of a documentary screening of Gangalidda political leader Clarence Walden, a witness to the cruel racism experienced by Aboriginal people during the 1950s and 60s on the remote Doomadgee Mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The documentary addresses the enormity of the political struggles with governments and mining companies in the modern era. Here is a link to the ABC’s audio recording of Nothing But the Truth,
(Credits: Interviewer: Alexis Wright. Sound Engineer: Russell Stapleton / Ben Denham. Producer: Ben Etherington)

The creative component of the conference is curated by acclaimed author and academic, Nicholas Jose.

Dmetri Kakmi reviews Sergius Seeks Bacchus by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, transl. Tiffany Tsao

Written by mascara on September 8, 2019. Posted in Reviews/Essays.

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Alexander Alexandrovich Blok translated by Paul Magee

Written by mascara on September 8, 2019. Posted in Translations.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was born in 1880 and died in 1921. He is celebrated as the foremost of the Russian symbolists. His first book was entitled Verses about the Beautiful Lady.

Ночь,улиа,
фонарь, аптека

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи ещё хоть четверть века —
Всё будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрёшь — начнёшь опять сначала
И повторится всё, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

Night, a street-lamp and a chemist’s

Night, a street-lamp and a chemist’s.
This lustreless, meaningless globe.
Have twenty more years, or some more.
No one’s ever known an exit.

You’ll die. Start it all over again:
everything repeats the past.
Night, an ice-cold ripple
in the canal, a street-lamp and a chemist’s.

Paul Magee is author of Stone Postcard (2014), Cube Root of Book (2006) and the prose ethnography From Here to Tierra del Fuego (2000). Paul majored in Russian and Classical languages, and has published translations of Vergil, Catullus, Horace and Ovid. He is currently working on a third book of poems, The Collection of Space. Paul is Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra.

Marina Tsvetaeva translated by Paul Magee

Written by mascara on September 8, 2019. Posted in Translations.

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was born in 1892. She left Russia in 1922, returned in 1939, and was to die two years later. She is celebrated as one of the greatest Russian poets of the Twentieth Century. Her first book was entitled Evening Album.

Сад

За этот ад,
За этот бред,
Пошли мне сад
На старость лет.

На старость лет,
На старость бед:
Рабочих — лет,
Горбатых — лет...

На старость лет
Собачьих — клад:
Горячих лет —
Прохладный сад...

Для беглеца
Мне сад пошли:
Без ни-лица,
Без ни-души!

Сад: ни шажка!
Сад: ни глазка!
Сад: ни смешка!
Сад: ни свистка!

Без ни-ушка
Мне сад пошли:
Без ни-душка!
Без ни-души!

Скажи: довольно мýки — нá
Сад — одинокий, как сама.
(Но около и Сам не стань!)
— Сад, одинокий, как ты Сам.

Такой мне сад на старость лет...
— Тот сад? А может быть — тот свет? —
На старость лет моих пошли —
На отпущение души.

Jardin

To cope with this underworld
you’ve sent me, and madness,
make it a garden
for the years that age.

For the years that age,
for the griefs I’ve to live through,
the years of work coming
and the groanings in my back.

For the years that age.
Bone for that dog.
For the hell-burnt years.
A garden in the breeze

for their refugee.
Bless me with a garden
and nobody there,
a soulless place.

Garden no one steps in.
Garden no one looks in.
A laughterless garden,
a no whistling there garden

Earless,
bless me with a garden.
Nothing has a scent there,
not a soul.

Speak: you’ve tortured enough.
A garden on its own.
But don’t come near me here or there.
Yes, he says, it’s as alone as me.

That’s your garden for me and the years
I age. That. Or your paradise?
Bless me in the years that age.
Deliver me from here.

Paul Magee is author of Stone Postcard (2014), Cube Root of Book (2006) and the prose ethnography From Here to Tierra del Fuego (2000). Paul majored in Russian and Classical languages, and has published translations of Vergil, Catullus, Horace and Ovid. He is currently working on a third book of poems, ‘The Collection of Space’. Paul is Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra.