(Apologies for crossposting)
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Announcing Masthead 9.
Firstly, I am proud to host Twenty One Iraqi Poets, the Masthead Feature for
this issue. At very short notice, Guest Editor Margaret Obank of Banipal
magazine has gathered a stunning array of Iraqi poets in translation. At a
time when Iraq mainly exists in the popular Western imagination as a war
zone of inscrutable violence, it seems apt to showcase some of the
complexity, sophistication and humanity of contemporary Iraqi culture.
I am always surprised by how each issue evolves its own conversation. This
seems to occur despite me, rather than with deliberate intent. This issue's
abiding themes seem to be eroticism and translation, the pleasures of
exchange between languages and bodies. And here the manifold and
contradictory pleasures of writing and sex emerge as profoundly political.
"Pleasure cannot, and does not, mitigate anger," says Sophie Mayer in her
essay on the eroticism of Native American poetry. "The lived experience of
genocide, racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia find their voices too
- ... pleasure becomes a protest against the dominant forces that would
ignore or destroy it."
For your pleasure, then, this issue has translations from Chinese, Spanish,
Persian and German as well as the broad selection from Arabic. We have an
extract from Yang Lian's forthcoming book length poem, Concentric Circles,
soon to be released by Bloodaxe, as well as essays on the poem by Yang Lian
and his translator, Brian Holton. Michael Smith has translations of two of
the most important South American poets of the 20th century - a
hypnotically powerful long poem by Vicente Huidobro and selections from a
forthcoming translation of César Vallejo's Trilce, co-translated with
Valentino Gianuzzi, due out soon with Shearsman Books. James Graham and
Barbara Sauermann offer us a fresh perspective on Bertolt Brecht, with some
new translations of his erotic poetry. And check out Richard Jeffrey
Newman's superb translations of the 13th century Sufi poet Saadi, also just
released by Global Scholarly Publications.
Prose includes two fascinating essays on sexuality. As well as Sophie
Mayer's essay, Richard Jeffrey Newman looks at desire, fear, Jewishness,
identity, racism, misogyny, masculinity - well, practically everything - in
the extract from his book My Son's Penis. Fiction includes a selection from
Valerie Kirwan's new novel, Taking a Fool to Paradise, and a punchy short
story by Jesse Glass, and theatre is represented by Vespers, a new play of
Beckettian lyricism, and a bracing lecture on the life and work of the
playwright, by Daniel Keene.
And, as always, there's a rich feast of contemporary poetry from around the
world. Masthead 9 also features poetry from Michael Ayres, Alan Halsey, Jeff
Harrison, Matt Hetherington, Pierre Joris, Trevor Joyce, Danijela
Kambaskovic-Sawer, Sally Ann McIntyre, Peter Minter, Geraldine Monk, Simon
Perchik, Colin Reeves and Stephen Vincent.
This issue's cover art is Reading upside-down love stories (self portrait)
by Terry Rentzepis. More of his lugubriously comic, strangely innocent work
is on show in the Gallery. Masthead 9 also features work by visual artists
Douglas Kirwan and Sadradeen.
Issue 9 is dedicated to Árni Ibsen, a great friend of Masthead whose recent
serious illness has meant that our proposed feature on Icelandic writing in
translation has been postponed for a future time. But as they say,
anticipation merely increases later pleasure.
I hope you enjoy Issue 9 as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.
Alison Croggon
Editor
March 15, 2005
http://masthead.net.au/
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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