Scenes from Unfilmed Cinema: Director's Cut

 

Publishing online means that you can change things, so I'm now posting a link to an updated version of the pamphlet of poems that I've written in Sofia over the last year or so ... It is not substantially different to the earlier version published in August, but there are minor revisions to most of the poems it contains ... You should be able to download the updated 'director's cut' version by clicking here.

You can also read four other new poems not included in this pamphlet in The High Windows online magazine via this link.

Scenes from Unfilmed Cinema: new poems from Sofia 2021

 

As in previous summers, here's a little pamphlet of poems, mostly written in Sofia over the last year or so. It's entirely free to download and do share it if you'd like. You should be able to read it by clicking on this link here.

If you cast about on older posts on this blog, you should also be able to read three previous summer pamphlets from Sofia.

Bristolian/Bathonian readers might also like to know that the cover photograph features a Stothert and Pitt dockside crane made in Bath, England, that now resides unused on the harbourside in Thessaloniki.

Online activities

Here are links to various online events I've taken part in this year - posted here, perhaps, because it's easy to start thinking that you haven't done anything at all during the pandemic. Most of the links lead to online poetry readings, but there are also videos from live events, conferences and so on. 

10 July: Poets and Writers International Studio, online reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DsXS-cQvjo

9 July: Back to Back/Face to Face, Sofia Literature and Translation House reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDlr9rS36NM

27 June: Poets without Borders, online reading: https://www.facebook.com/DonNKrieger/videos/10220450504639863/

13 June: Poets without Borders, online reading: https://www.facebook.com/DonNKrieger/videos/10220367299639790

6 June: Poets without Borders, online reading: https://www.facebook.com/DonNKrieger/videos/10220327372601639

2 June: Saloanele literare “Familia” #4, online reading: https://www.facebook.com/revistadecultura.familia/videos/1281932195543437

23 Apr: All the World is Translation: conference in honour of Alexander Shurbanov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fINz552y9o

17 Apr: Poets with Borders reading for Coracle Europe Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NpzyEiK5ZU

26 Mar: Translating Geo Milev with Angel Igov and Bozhil Hristov for Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, online seminar: https://youtu.be/ifVLejgLd7g

(Photo of me and Kristin thanks to Sofia Literature and Translation House.)

 

From The Brexiad

The high streets filled with franchise brands                                                

all stocked with food (though most of it in cans).

Expensive imports rotted on the shelf -

beyond the reach of even those with wealth.

In place of pasta, chilli, foreign fare,

the diet turned tasteless, bland and spare,                                                                  

and though it made our food taste quite delicious

using garlic now was deemed to be suspicious.

Fried bread, pickled herrings, tripe and ham,

sprouts, nettle tea, cabbage soup and spam -

and for a very special birthday feast                                                                          

toast with Marmite made with brewer’s yeast.

Ah! How did England come to such an hour

when there is no more sweet, but only sour?

Italian, Chinese, Indian, Jamaican, Thai -

all luxury cuisines from times gone by -                                                                   

their cookbooks added to the growing pyre

of publications heaved into the fire,

alongside poems, novels and non-fiction

that utilised too smart and clever diction,

not to mention any writing in translation

(unsuitable stuff for a sovereign nation).

The poles of taste were well and truly shifted

and art and music too were strictly sifted:

no rock, no roll, no jazz, no hip-hop, rap,

and no abstraction, no “expressionist crap”.

Folk dancers took charge of the Royal Ballet,

a bagpipe troupe replaced the Manchester Hallé

and theatres staging Ibsen, Beckett, Chekhov

in no uncertain terms were told to feck off.

Even homegrown hits like ‘Cats’ and ‘Evita’

were banned for using non-traditional metre

and stories written by Yanks or from abroad,

where - obviously - of taste they’d never heard.

What joy it was to be alive when culture,                                                                  

thrown aside, was left for hungry vultures!

And not the kind who jewellery they’d rattle

or stand in foyers, glass in hand, and prattle

of stars they’d met or sundry vacuous things

while nervous actors waited in the wings -

but those who aim to strip art to the bone

and leave it standing on the brink, alone.

Tom Phillips

 

Conversations on poetry, translation, identity and travel

 It's been my great pleasure over the last week to take part in online broadcasts with both Pankhuri Sinha and Sujata Pal - two writers living in India who have very generously invited me to join them in conversations about poetry, translation, identity, travel and much else besides. Both conversations - which really consist of me talking a lot in answer to their questions! - are available to watch online. You'll find the one with Pankhuri, from Saturday 28 November, here and the one with Sujata, from Monday 30 November, here. The pandemic has closed down our lives in so many ways and yet both the initiatives that Pankhuri and Sujata have set up - these regular broadcasts with individual poets and also international online poetry 'gatherings' - are building new connections and opening opportunities despite everything.

Up in the air with Frank

Why is it, Frank O’Hara, I’m thinking of you
in 1950s New York at 35,000 feet over Europe
and my watch says it’s 9.05, but we’re no longer in England?
Piled clouds look benign. Another jet hangs still
against the paling sky. Out of centrespreads,
pictures of the baths in Budapest spill.
 
No news on the poets in Ghana, needless to say.
 
I’ve not been long away, but the man beside me
sounds like a regular from the corner shop
that closed down when we were packing that day.
Or the bouncer of the bar we went to at Christmas
when smokers got round a foyer window ledge
so they could get round the smoking ban.
 
Outside this window there’s only weather,
and that isn’t ours right now.
 
If we were over the sea, furling ships’ wakes
streaking white across blue would be something.
It can’t be different for others …
 
Although I can also hear you saying:
‘Art shows on long flights might be an idea.
Or not lifejackets but poetry collections
to be reached for under your seat.’
 
Heading east, not west, the towers of Manhattan
aren’t going to emerge, bristling, from the Hudson,
as they did four decades ago when my father swore
 
he was never mugged because of the raincoat he wore.
Not that being anyone has changed in that sense
while still learning to live in durations unmeasured.
 
At this altitude, my ears refuse to adapt to the pressure.
 
But what’s not such a far cry from seatbelt signs
is my father ignoring their insistent warnings
to show me the Badlands unfurling below.
 
Because such things did occur – as did
him saying he wanted to come back as a seagull
so it’s likely he’s come back twice now –
 
once as a seagull and then as
whatever a seagull aspires to be.
 
Tom Phillips

Seven years on

Everything you need for a poem

Crossing Sofia Field,

we’re wondering aloud who’s left

travelling mementoes –

flip-flops, empty olive cans –

underneath the seat

of this slow and screeching train.

 

A girl who went barefoot, perhaps,

down the carriage steps,

fingers greasy with oil,

complaining, like my own daughter,

about her “bloody shoes”;

or one like your friend who brought

beer and coats to the train

for cold and thirsty hikers.

 

We’ve slowed to a crawl in time

for kaleidoscope light effects

beyond your violet mountain.

You’re going there, Vitosha,

on the day I’m due to leave,

but for now you’re pointing out

sunset, derelict stations

traces of pathways, sky flares,

willow growing up through a bus stop:

“It’s everything you need –

everything you need for a poem.”

 

You’re right, it seems.

Evening villages, cans, old shoes –

they constitute the scenery

for what I’m hoping will do more:

betokening gratitude, perhaps,

for whatever else is forming

in this shrieking transit and I can’t tell.

 

Tom Phillips

Всичко, нужно за едно стихотворение

Пресичайки софийското поле,

чудим се на глас кой ли

е оставил сувенирчета от своето пътуване –

джапанки, празни консерви от маслини –

под седалката

на този стар и скърцащ влак.

Няко босо момиче е слязло, може би,

по стълбичките от вагона,

с изцапани от мръсотията пръсти,

оплакваща се, като дъщеря ми,

от „тъпите ми обувки“;

или някой като приятелката ти, която носеше

във влака бира и дрехи

за зъзнещи и жадни стопаджии.

И влакът бавно запълзя навреме,

за да видим като на калейдоскоп светлини

над виолетовата ви планина.

Натам си се запътила, към Витоша,

в деня, когато трябва да си тръгна,

но сега сочиш към

залеза, запуснати гари,

следи от пътеки, небето проблясва,

една върба прораства на автобусна спирка:

„Това е всичко, от което имаш нужда –

всичко нужно за едно стихотворение.“

Права си, изглежда.

Селцата привечер, стари обувки –

правят пейзажа

на нещо, надявам се, по-голямо:

може би са знак за благодарност

за нещо, което се заражда

на това странно транзитно пътуване и не зная какво е.

Превод от английски език:  Юлияна Тодорова