[cover design: Ellen Portch / Cover image: Emma Smith]
This is the first Pania Press booklaunch since we put out the Orange Roughy anthology back in 2008.
So, once again, you are all most cordially invited to join us in the spacious back garden of:
No. 6 Hastings Rd,
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City
Auckland
from 2 to 4 pm
on Sunday, 25th November
(refreshments and home baking provided)
The books being launched are:
Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. Poems by Jack Ross & Drawings by Emma Smith. Introduction by Jack Ross. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2012)
[RRP: $30 / special launch price: $25]
&
brief 46: the survival issue. Ed. Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: The Writers Group, 2012)
[RRP: $17 / special launch price: $15]
also
An exhibition of Emma Smith’s “Celanie” series will be on display, and framed drawings will be available for purchase
[special launch price: $250 each]
Once again Michele Leggott has kindly consented to come along and launch them for us.
You can find out more details about the book of Celan poems and drawings here, and more about brief magazine here.
So, just as a little sampler, here's one of my translations (from Celan's "Matière de Bretagne" [13/8/57]), accompanied by one of Emma Smith's beautiful, haunting images from the book:
Matter of Britain
Gorselight, yellow, slopes
against the skyThorn
disinfects your woundsRing
out, it’s eveningNothing
crosses the sea to pray
The bloodred sheet sets sail for you
Arid, dried-out, bed
behind youScar-
invadedStar-
embossedmilky inlets
in the vaseDate
stones underneath, furred blue
tufts of forgetfulness
your memory
(Do you know me
hands? I went
by the forked route you showed
me, my mouth spat pebbles, I walked
through snowdrifts, shadow – do you know me?)
Hands, the thorn-
burnt wound rings out
Hands, nothing, the sea
Hands, in the gorse-light
the bloody sheet
sets sail for you
You
you teach
you teach your hands
you teach your hands, you teach
you teach your hands
to sleep
[first published in brief 41 (2010)]
