System Crashing Fidelity Upholder

In his thoughtful personal-reminiscence-cum-review for Underground Book Club, Michael Bryson praises Zachariah Wells's new essay collection Career Limiting Moves all the while clarifying certain misconceptions about its author: 

I have heard him called an asshole. I've heard him called right wing. I've heard him called a misogynist. In the book he notes he's been claimed and rejected by both the populists and the elites. In truth, he has always been what his letter to TDR in 2002 perhaps should have made clear: a jury of one. An iconoclast. One who rejects systems. One who seeks a genuine, unpredictable deep connection with the wildness that is existence and also, therefore, literature [...] He praises poems that press against the outer boundaries. He praises poems that pressure language until it reveals its limit. Then he asks it to go further.

For an example of Zach at his thought-provoking, counter-intuitive, and polemical best, we recommend checking out this week's #BITSblog post, in which he grapples with Goran Simić's From Sarajevo With Sorrow and the importance of journalistic fidelity when translating the poetry of witness. 

Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman shortlisted for the CAA Poetry Award

We are proud to announce that Goran Simic's Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman was shortlisted for the CAA Poetry Award. The prize recognizes excellence in Poetry for collections “honouring writing that achieves excellence without sacrificing popular appeal.” The finalist will be announced on July 28th 2012.
Congratulations to Goran and all the shortlisted poets and authors!

Visit the Canadian Authors Association website to see the full shorlist.

This Week on the Biblioasis Translation Blog

We've relaunched the Biblioasis Translation Blog in a new magazine format that we intend to update on an (almost) weekly basis.  This week's content includes:

Douglas Glover's Pedro, the Uncanny: A Note on Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo ( a web exclusive, from Attack of the Copula Spiders)
Mike Barnes, A Real Spaceship From Across
Love Poems: An Interview with Colin Carberry
A selection from Jaime Sabines Love Poems


The new issue of the Biblioasis translation series magazine can be found here.

Forthcoming issues of the translation blog magazine will include an essay by Andrea Labinger on translating Liliana Heker's The End of the Story, alongside the first chapter of this latest Biblioasis Translation Series title; an essay by Goran Simic, from CNQ's translation issue, On Exile; Zach Wells's Spanish translations; an excerpt from Catherine Mavrikakis's Flowers of Spit (Book Thug), alongside an interview with the author; alongside contributions from Steven Heighton, Hugh Halzelton, David Helwig, Colin Carberry and many others.  

Canada Hits the Poetic Jackpot: Or, the Globe & Mail Reviews Simic's Snowman

In today's Globe & Mail George Murray reviews Goran Simic's latest collection, and first originally in English: Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman. From the review:

The poems seesaw between the intimately personal and the universally political, tipping sometimes line to line, between melancholy love poems and profoundly painful reminiscences of the strife-torn country from which the poet came.

For instance, in the extraordinary poem An Ordinary Man, Simić writes in one stanza:

I’ve met many people and they all resembled me.
Some hid in the breathing bodies that were already corpses,
others hid in corpses in which
an attentive ear can catch a breath.

and then in the next:

Sometimes from the window I notice breadcrumbs
in the hair of women I once loved.
But they are now someone else’s women
and that is someone else’s bread.

It is the oscillation between the universals of love and intimacy in the second excerpt that allows us in the “warless” West access to the same spirit of the poet that endured the hardships of the first. For a poet working for the first time in a second language, it is amazing how adept Simić is. In fact, in the acknowledgments, he describes the English text of Sunrise as language “learned by listening and reading.” If this is the case, then it seems we English-language poets could stand to eavesdrop and read a bit more.

For the whole review please go here.

Toronto Star Reviews Simic's Snowman

In a joint review of Goran Simic's Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman and Priscilla Uppal's Winter Sport, Barbara Carey has this to say of Simic's book:

Though often surreal, Simics imagery is also striking and emotionally resonant. Take this achingly expressive metaphor of loss and longing: “Hundreds of empty gloves become butterfly nets / chasing postage stamps / flown from the envelopes of those who read stars.”

Speaking as a “sleepwalker” who can’t shake memories of a nightmarish past, Simic goes on to write: “There is nothing here for those who live / where passersby wish each other / sweet dreams and good night.” Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman doesn’t offer a vision of the world as an innocuous place where people can sleep untroubled. These poems are disturbing, yes, but also hauntingly evocative.

You can read the whole review here.

One Question Interview: Goran Simic

Goran simic is the subject of Alex Boyd's latest one question interview. Alex asks him:

The acknowledgements for your latest book of poems say you wrote it in English to gauge how comfortable you were in the language and how much you sound like yourself. What are your thoughts on that?

To read Goran's response, please go here.

Sunrise Launch Reminder

For those of you in Edmonton this Saturday, Goran Simic will be launching his new collection Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman at Audrey's at 2 pm. Help spread the word to all who can attend. Here, below, is a recording of Alan Rickman reading Goran's Sarajevo Spring.

Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman

A first review of Goran Simic's new collection Sunrise in the eyes of the Snowman was published in this morning's Telegraph Journal. The book launches in Edmonton at Audrey's Books a week from today, March 6th, at 2 pm.

From the review:

Simic writes from in-between languages, lands, self and others and stages of a life. It's a position perhaps made clearest in the opening lines of An Ordinary Man - "I am an ordinary man with ears of ordinary silk / and I speak only with a voice I've heard somewhere, / a voice like an echo."

Some poems employ rhyming quatrains. But Simic, wisely, uses this structure sparingly so that the form doesn't overwhelm the ideas. For example, the back-to-back pairing of No Time to Waste and When I Reached the Border, which both use the ABAB variation, work particularly well for two poems about a race for, and a crossing of, finishing lines. In the former, he's a "false stallion" tiring of life's everyday horse race. In the latter, he's "a mere bricklayer," shattered and heartbroken. He arrives at that boundary "already dead." The last line reads: "I have already died once. And now I'll never grow old."

The whole review can be read here. The book can be purchased from any quality independent (our preference), online or through our website here.

Lessons from Sarajevo

In Saturday's Globe, Goran Simic, who's new collection of poetry Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman we will be releasing in late October, muses on the plight of the Tamil refugees.

Back in my hometown to wash the family gravestone and meet friends, mostly writers, who never left Sarajevo, I heard a joke from the time of the siege, when the famous tunnel under the airport runway was the only way to escape the embattled city.

In the middle of the tunnel, two brothers heading in opposite directions bump into one another. They immediately begin shouting the same words: “Where the hell are you going? There is nothing there.”

I still feel the weight of that question mark.

As I watch the news about the Tamil refugee claimants touching shore in Vancouver, I think of the Siege of Sarajevo, which lasted longer than the Siege of Leningrad. Though every survivor has the right to tell his own stories, I published some on behalf of the 10,000 who were killed – by the daily barrages of sniper bullets, by grenades, by hunger. Even I was killed once – when the newspaper published my name on the list of victims of the 1992 bombing of the city.

For the rest of the article, please go here.

Goran Simic ...

umm ... a while a go.

US Review of Goran Simic's Yesterday's People

Also on Three Percent, a review of Goran Simic's important collection of short fiction, Yesterday's People. Here's a taste:

In Yesterday’s People, Goran Simić looks at war, and its aftermath, from the ground level. His characters are everyday people who rarely seek to understand, and have no power to influence, the larger forces that have trapped them, either in the war-torn present or long after the war has ended and they have moved halfway around the globe; they’re too busy trying to make sense of their own shattered lives.

The whole review can be found here:

www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=1222

we can expect a new collection of Simic poetry in the next 12 months.

Relit Awards

Two Biblioasis titles have made the Relit Longlist: Leon Rooke's Hitting the Charts: Selected Stories, in the story category, and David Helwig's Saltsea in the Novel. Disappointed not to see Patricia Young, Mike Barnes, and David Hickey there, as there's no doubt that each is better than many that have made the cut, but t' is the way of these things.

Speaking of those three, we'll be doing a new book by all of them in the next year or so: Patricia Youngs' first poetry collection in nearly a decade, a brilliant and very moving memoir on art, memory and madness called The Lily Pond by Mike Barnes, and David Hickey's wonderful first children's book.

Last year, both of our titles by Goran Simic made the Relit longlist, and his From Sarajevo, With Sorrow made the shortlist for poetry (losing out to Leon Rooke's first poetry collection, Hot Poppies.) For those of you who have not read From Sarajevo, With Sorrow, you should order yourself a copy. It's powerful stuff.

And while I'm speaking of '08 (& beyond), we have another Simic collection in the works, a selection of his best pre-war poems, which will be made available (with a few exceptions) for the first time in english. In Canada (& elsewhere in the english speaking world), Goran is known solely as a poet of war and immigration. But he had a varied and successful career as a writer and poet before the war, and we are hoping to broaden the understanding, appreciation and audience of Simic with this new book.

Shaman Drum & Reading The World

A little over a week ago, I went with Kitty Lewis to Ann Arbor for the day to scout out US bookstores as a way to investigate how we could learn, as small Canadian literary presses, about the US market. We arranged to meet for lunch with Karl Pohrt, the owner of Shaman Drum Books.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Windsor, I used to go to Ann Arbor frequently. It is the home of the University of Michigan, and is among the prettiest towns in Michigan. It's also one of the best book towns in the United States. Within 3 or 4 blocks, there used to be about two dozen bookstores, including the original, flagship Borders (which makes Chapters and Indigo appear as piss-poor as they actually are), Shaman Drum, several other special interest bookshops, and at least 6 wonderful antiquarian stores (of which Jay Platt's West Side Bookshop (with its fabulous gallery of original Curtis photographs) and Dawn Treader's remain the best). We would spend a day in Ann Arbor, hit the indie record shops (where I first chanced upon Tom Waits), and the used bookstores. We'd stop for a pastrami sandwich and a few pints at the neighbourhood deli. Somehow, we completely missed Shaman Drum. Perhaps it was because it was a new bookstore; perhaps, given the name, we assumed it would be of largely native significance. Yet it was truly the gem of the bunch.

Before Lunch, Karl gave us the tour of the place. He's been a bookseller for nearly 30 years now, and is still very passionate about it. He specializes in scholarly books, with a large selection of general history, literature, philosophy, art and other titles. His poetry section must have, conservatively, 3500 titles. Canadian writers in a variety of editions -- American, Canadian, British -- are well represented on his shelves. He stocks hundreds of books in translation, many of which you never see on regular store bookshelves. I found a the centennial edition of the Collected Beckett -- 4 volumes, Grove Press -- and a fairly obscure McCarthy novel, Sunset Limited. I came close to walking out with much more.

Karl knows a bit about publishing: in the 70's and 80's he ran Bear Claw press, publishing two early books by Howard Norman, among others. Over lunch he talked about the US independent bookselling market, and what we as Canadian publishers would need to do to get their attention. The independent market, much like in Canada, has been decimated by big box stores: Karl estimated that there would be 50 key stores in the entire country we might count on as accounts, and perhaps 200 we might be able to deal with in any fashion at all.

These numbers are fairly dismal, certainly. I mean, we're talking about a country of over 230 million people. So, what Karl is saying, is that he figures there's about one excellent independent bookseller for every million people in the U.S. (or, at least, one for every million who might be interested in dealing with us as foreign publishers). But the situation is not so very different here: there are some publishers I know who figure there are only 40 to 50 key independent accounts seriously interested in Canadian literary titles, in Canada! My own admittedly quite limited experience does seem to bear this out.

But not all was doom and gloom at lunch, either. He was eloquent on the continuing importance of the bookseller to a community, and was himself a very good example that even a single committed and passionate bookseller can make a difference. In response to the Iraq War, Karl got together with a group of booksellers and started a project they came to call Reading the World (www.readingtheworld.org). It was Karl's hope that by making translated literatures more widely available to Americans, they would come to have a better understanding of other peoples and cultures, and that, over time, this improved understanding might come to have some positive impact on American foreign policy. Though it is too early to tell what impact this program might have on policy, it is certainly already a success: in its 3rd year, 200 bookstores take part in the program, handselling selected translated titles.

I found this particularly exciting. Biblioasis is devoted to translation: our 2nd and 3rd trade books were translations from the Serbo-Croatian of Goran Simic; we have a translation of Ryszard Kapuscinski's coming this fall; the first publication in english by the Angolan lusophone writer Ondjaki (Good Morning Comrades!, in a translation by Stephen Henighan -- more on this anon) and another title by Goran Simic coming in the Spring of 08. Karl seemed genuinely interested in these titles, and our future translation programme, and I hope to get at least one of them in the Reading the World lineup for next year.

The Reading the World line-up is an interesting one, running from the familiar (Cesare Pavese) to the completely unknown (or at least to me), and from countries from all over the world. It occurs to me that it would be nice if we could interest Canadian booksellers in a similar program. We would not even have to stray too far from home: there are many Canadian writers writing in languages other than English or French, well regarded in their homelands, yet unknown here. Ha Jin told John Metcalf a year or so ago at the Humber School that some of the most celebrated Chinese writers live now in Canada, though they cannot get the funding to get their work translated into English or French. Alas, a fate common to many of the exiled writers who now call Canada home, though that is a subject for another post.