I'll be reading tonight at the Nomad Cafe in Oakland...
It's on Shattuck and 65th St., walking distance from Ashby BART. 7:00-9:00.
Serene will read a few poems, then I'll read my poems and translations, and then a break and an open mike.
like to try a couple of my translations of Nestor Perlongher. They're strange poems, and they don't make a huge amount of linear sense, and they work by talking around the subject in baroque fractal image/wordplay digressions. So that the images will all be of starfish and rays of light and greasy film running through a projector and rayon shirts and feather boas, and every word has three meanings and interconnections to other words, but somewhere in the middle you are hit by a blinding realization that the poem is all about the metaphysics of cocksucking. They were VERY hard to translate and I would dig testing them out in front of people. I'll read some of the short ones in Spanish, but most in English. I'd also like to read a sampling of my translations from the anthology I'm working on - Latin American women poets from 1880-1930.
If that sounds good, then I hope you show up!
4 comments:
Hi Liz:
How was the reading???
Hugs, Gabby
Hi Gabby! It was fun. I got there late, and missed the poems that Serene read, and was sorry to have been so rude... Not a lot of people came - only a few of my friends and Serene's friends, and a couple of strangers, but these friends were people whose opinion I value highly, and it was great to read for them!
I read "Hago como Spártaco" by María Luisa Milanes, "A una rosa" by Emilia Bernal, "(grades)" by Nestor Perlongher, and I'm not sure what other translations.
Then from my own poems, I read "Mother Frankenstein", "Apollonia of Rhodes", "Mitochondrial Lilith", and the second half of a Homeric Hymn to Hermaphrodite.
The cafe is very noisy, so every few lines were punctuated by the shrieking of the espresso machine and steaming of milk. I'm pretty sure I was still loud enough. I used to practice reciting loudly on the beach, but it's a long drive to get there. Now I practice in my car, with music blasting and the windows rolled up!
Oh, two more notes: someone else got up and read from a xerox zine called "Slutfucker". That was amusing!
And I read a long poem, "The Dead Girlfriend of Novalis", which I read once before at an art gallery, and I'm not sure if it makes sense to anyone, or if I was clear enough. I've been experimenting with long poems for a while, and there's not a lot of opportunity to read them aloud. Also, no one seems to want to publish them in magazines!
ey Liz, I would like to read your 'Mother Frankenstein", please!!!!
We have the same porblem every time we read in bar: the coffee noise!
abrazos, Gabby
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