Now available:
COLIN SIMMS: The American Poems
isbn 0-907562-93-0, 9.25ins x 7.5ins, paperback, 208pp, £10.95 / $18
Colin Simms – poet, naturalist, and lifelong independent observer – was
born in 1939, and lives as an author and freelance naturalist in the
North of England, with journeys throughout the northern hemisphere,
wherever his objectives live – his homes have been where the martens,
otters, birds of prey and other enthusiasms are. He is not an orthodox
conservationist, but insists on the privacy, ‘isness’, for wildlife
which modern trends deny. He also demonstrates the poet-naturalist’s
concern for precise observation, apposite language and cadence. North
American wildlife, and the Native American tribes and their history,
have been a life-long fascination of his; this volume brings together
all of his long poems, and a large number of shorter poems, on these
themes.
“[Rushmore Inhabitation] is only part of a series, and will make its
mark no matter the fashions of this age; the poems that Colin Simms
wrote and read during his long committed visits in troubled times for
the Native Americans, and the discoveries he delighted in through the
mountains, Badlands and Great Plains will stand witness to the Spirit
he represents, no matter his modesty. No other Britisher has done
anything like this; and The People are, and will be, glad. His
connections, and his compositions are real and not the forced or
sentimental or inaccurate unoriginal journalism of some ‘visitors’. He
has helped open our eyes and ears to modern poetry and he fits into the
exciting movement others of Indian descent are also part of . . .”
—Benét Tvedten
CESAR VALLEJO: Trilce
(edited & translated by Michael Smith & Valentino Gianuzzi)
isbn 0-907562-72-8, 8.5 x 5.5 ins, paperback, 256pp, £12.95 / $21
Trilce is one of the great monuments of twentieth century poetry, as
important in Hispanic letters as The Waste Land or The Cantos in the
Anglophone world, and all the more astonishing for having been composed
in remote Peru. Full of neologisms and symbols, the book is one that
needs to be re-translated often. This bilingual edition presents a
Spanish text based upon the very latest scholarship, and includes
explanatory notes for the English-speaking reader. Apart from the
canonical text of Trilce, an appendix brings together the earlier
versions of ten poems and an uncollected poem connected to the main
text, which are useful as background. To offer a full account of
Vallejo’s achievement, Shearsman Books publishes his Complete Later
Poems 1923-1938 simultaneously with this edition of Trilce.
The translations are by the Irish poet, and award-winning translator,
Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi.
César Vallejo was born in 1892 in the small town of Santiago de Chuco
in northern Peru. He was able to attend Trujillo University and the
University of San Marcos in Lima, although his parents were poor. In
1920 he was arrested while in his home town and accused of being
involved in some political disturbances. Although he appears to have
been innocent, he was imprisoned for several months and many of the
poems in ‘Trilce’, his second book (1922), refer to this period, which
was to have a decisive impact upon both his life and his poetry. In
1923 Vallejo went to Paris and in 1928 and 1929 he made two short trips
to the USSR, which were to have a profound effect upon him. In the
1930s he became a militant communist, and was expelled from France,
whereupon he moved to Spain. In 1933 he returned to Paris but again
left for Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, first to visit
Republican territory and later to attend the International Writers’
Congress. He died in 1938. His poetry written after Trilce only
appeared in book form after his death.
Vallejo is regarded as the most important poet of Peru, one of the
great figures of Latin American literature, and a titan of the pre-war
avant-garde.
The volume presents all Vallejo's texts in both Spanish and English.
CESAR VALLEJO: Complete Later Poems 1923-1938
(edited & translated by Michael Smith & Valentino Gianuzzi)
isbn 0-907562-73-6, 8.5 x 5.5 ins, paperback, 420pp, £16.95 / $28
César Vallejo is one the greatest poets of the twentieth century, his
monument being the book-length sequence Trilce (a translation of which
is published simultaneously with this volume). After Trilce Vallejo
wrote stories, essays, a novel, and several plays, but did not collect
any of his subsequent poems for book publication. Since his death,
these poems have usually been referred to as the Poemas humanos after
the title of one of the posthumous volumes.
This book collects all of the post-Trilce work that has been
identified by the latest scholarship, including the poem sequence on
the Spanish Civil War. This translation is also the first one to
consider the newly discovered manuscript drafts of Vallejo’s last
poems, and thus the Spanish text has benefitted from a number of
corrections. The poems are presented chronologically — as far as the
chronology can be ascertained — and the book offers the most complete
version yet of this magnificent body of work.
The volume presents all Vallejo's texts in both Spanish and English.
These books may be ordered in the UK from any bookstore, online or
bricks-and-mortar, or from the press direct. In North America, the
books may be had from bookstores also. In the event of difficulty,
please note that the distributors in the US are Ingrams and Baker &
Taylor.
My apologies if you receive this message more than once.
___________________________________
Tony Frazer
Shearsman Books Ltd
58 Velwell Road
Exeter EX4 4LD
England
Tel / Fax: (+44) (0) 1392-434511
http://www.shearsman.com/
___________________________________
