IN SUSPENSION AFTER YAN KOUTON - TAKEN FROM THE ANTHOLOGY RIMBAUD ET MOI

Some wonderful work to be discovered in the anthology above, an idea of Gerard Bereny's and which was recently published by Editions du Pont de l'Europe earlier this year. I was very happy to have had a poem of mine, which originally appeared in The Dark Pool - now sadly out of print, published in it.

Fun fact.  I am the only living native English speaking author to have been published in the book,  the only other English speaker to have been so honoured is David Wojnarowicz, and he's dead!

I'm obviously not going to publish my poem in English here, if you want to read it just buy the anthology! 

However, here's a translation into English of a poem in French, which does appear in the anthology, by my old friend Yan Kouton just to give you a little taste of the kind of writing that is published in the book. I'm attaching the link to the publishers website.

Yan is a wonderful poet, here is my translation - his original in French also can be found in the anthology... 

                                                                                       In Suspension

After Yan Kouton

 

 

 Memory gives way too

Into dreams

That false mémoire

Until it swoons

 

Into the memory of origin

Which is only rarely

Captured in verse

To the point of

Exhaustion

From which the city is built

 

And which you think

You have seen in its universal form

Yet only plunge

Into its spleen

 

Which you pursue

Like a wheel

Upon an eternal

 Road

 

Such is the way it is

When we look

Straight ahead

 

 

Fixedly

Such writing

With its intimidating

Stealth

 

After all

This is all that’s left

When everything

Perishes

 

Like a tormented desire

Or a violent will

 

But which runs in the veins

Through the blood

 

Flowing forever outward

Into the streets

And their tributaries

Through the force

Of such a unique

Soul

 

 

Only to park then in the

Temporary halting site

                                                                         Of the world.

  https://editionsdupontdeleurope.eproshopping.fr/1199832-rimbaud-et-moi-59-artistes-et-auteurs-a-travers-le-monde.html?fbclid=IwAR325v_N1NQGTSzzh1R4mOEeJryIbUEm7adOM8Z-wZ53mXH2RepoL1Yk3Gg
 

BIODIVERSE

                                                                                   

                                                                                  

Biodiverse

 

The reflexive deference to the prestige of

Strictly reprehensible signs which privilege

Rapidity and novelty in technological

Innovation are part of the inherent design,

Completely obscuring openly secret platforms

Amid branches of pure autumnal exercise,

Richly audible and therapeutic, hidden there

Among the coloured leaf where warbling

Is more prized then mere chatter. Somewhere

Here singing among the swaying limbs of the

Mythical nymphs, slender and harmonious,

Tilt fragile like the gentle caresses of the heavens,

All part of this earth bounteous with invisible

Bullions accumulated upon the unseen air.

EVE

 

                                                                             

Eve

 

 

Eve signaled by the apple which she holds

Of course in her left hand held behind her back,

Smiling up at the heavens like one of the justifiably Damned,

 Crowned with Laurel bearing a quill in her right hand,

 

And wearing only a pair of high-heel shoes.

Her stage then a book with a great R printed behind her.

Rombaldi, Éditeur, 184, Boulevard Saint-German, Paris.

The title of the book Les Fleurs Du Mal.

 

The year of issue 1935 printed on the spine.

So, Eve witnesses the fall of the Third Reich.

You picked it up in an antiquarian bookseller in

 

Saint Louis in Versailles, 60 years later.

Une nuit que j’étais prés d’une affreuse Juive,

I think of you now whenever I read this line.