christian hawkey did a reading in malmö last night, along with uljana wolf - an amazing german poet i'd not heard of before - & katarina frostensson. i missed hawkey's reading, but after it was all finished i approached him to tell him about eileen tabios' forthcoming book nota bene eiswein the first part of which is a series of poems each inspired by a poem in hawkey's book of funnels. he found it "fantastic". so we got to talking a bit & it turns out he owns a copy of some hay which he'd found in some bookstore in new york. ye reader(s) of this blog of course know who published that one

very early monday morning i fly out for two weeks somewhere (unspecified) on lanzarote. there may be some travel blogging during that time

it is with great delight i announce that i now have a page at poet's corner. in 2003-04 when i started going online to research contemporary u.s & canadian poets google often led me to the corner. since then it has almost outgrown its name & would now more fittingly be called poet's room. & a rather large room at that. the person responsible for invitations, selections & all the other editorial magic is the apparently tireless anny ballardini, one of the most generous poets, editors & bloggers in the online community. thank you so much, anny

meanwhile, in malmö, 24 union activists were convicted in the local court. their crime? normal union activity. yet another political sentence

"corrupt, corrupt from the bottom to the top
& you tell me it's the law"

from dirty davey as performed by levellers

while the he/art pants, an antholgy on the recent u.s election, is now growing on anny ballardini's poet's corner. there may still be time to submit

yesterday i received a copy of daniel f bradley's t=i=d=y language, a wonderful book both as a physical object &, as it seems on a quick glance of a few pages, the poem(s). will read it properly for the first time tonight at work, then i'll post a brief review here. then i'll read it six more times a few days apart & post whatever new thoughts pop up. sort of a seven part engagement. just to see what happens

reading these poems by eileen tabios makes me happy that christian hawkey is coming to malmö to read next week on one of my days off

chris mccabe & helen mort at poetry international

all i want to say for now is check out pfs post

a book i proof-read the english translations for has just been published. i haven't seen the finished thing yet, but i hope i will fairly soon. per wästberg is regarded as one of the major figures of swedish literature, not just poetry. the following is from the ars interpres site

Ars Interpres announces the publication of Ortsbestämning (Determination of Place), which includes 18 poems from Tillbaka i tid (Back in Time), selected poems spanning 1950-2004 by the Swedish poet Per Wästberg. The book is a trilingual edition with the original Swedish poems, an English translation by Hildred Crill and a Russian translation by Regina Derieva and Alexei Prokopiev. It is now available from the publisher, Ars Interpres Publications

Per Wästberg was born in Stockholm in 1933. He received his Bachelor of Arts(comparative literature) from Harvard University in 1955 and PhD from Uppsala University in 1962; with a thesis on the African novel, 1945-60. He has been a critic and columnist at Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s main daily, since 1953. From 1976-82, he was Chief Editor of the same paper. He is Vice President of International PEN, and was President of Swedish PEN, 1967-78. He founded the Swedish Amnesty in 1963. He has been a member of the European Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1980 and became member of The Swedish Academy, chair no. 12, in 1997. He has been a member of the Nobel Committee for Literature since 1998. His encounter with oppression and racism in Africa and the Third World is documented in Forbidden Territory (Förbjudet område), 1960, followed by On the Black List (På svarta listan), reportage, journal and political analysis on Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa. The books were printed in altogether one million copies in nine languages. It led to the author being prohibited from entering Rhodesia until its independence in 1980 and from South Africa until Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990. Per Wästberg has published fifty books, novels, poetry and non-fiction.


Hildred Crill’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Kalliope, The Literary Review and other journals. In 2004 she completed the MFA program in poetry at New England College. She currently lives in Stockholm.

Alexei Prokopiev is a poet and translator of German, English and Swedish poetry. He translated most of the poems included in the recent bilingual edition of Tomas Tranströmer Selected. Alexei Prokopiev teaches a translation seminar at The Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow.

Regina Derieva (1949) has published 20 books of poetry, essays, and prose. Her work has been or is being translated into many languages, including English, Swedish, Arabic, French, and Italian. Derieva’s work has appeared in Poetry, Quadrant, MPT, Poetry East, Salt, The Liberal, Notre Dame Review as well as in many Russian magazines. Regina currently lives in Sweden. Her recent publications can be found at: www.derieva.com

so barack obama won the presidential election. my first reaction is relief. that reaction is just about global. not many of us outside of u.s. territory dared imagine what would happen to us if mccain had been elected. obama has a lot to do about the country that elected him, mostly connected to the widespread deep poverty & everything that comes with that. but also about the health care & education systems. & dare i hope environ-mental issues? globally the task is more daunting. to make people feel that the u.s. administration is not the most powerful, & active, terrorist organization in the world. because that's what lots of people think, & the administration of the past eight years has done nothing to disprove them. to do that would benefit most everybody, including being the single most effective means of diminishing terrorism, & the fear of it, globally & in the u.s., thus making the world a slightly safer place. barack obama has his work cut out for him. we shall have to wait & see what he can do

more locally, in sweden, the christian right-wing party (thankfully small & shrinking) keeps refusing to accept a gender-neutral marriage law. now the other parties in government finally lost their patience & will make a deal about it with the opposition. hopefully it can be in effect from may 1 next year