De diktsamlingar som nomineras till priset är samtliga översatta till polska och vid prisceremonin medverkar både poet och översättare. Det tycker jag ger ett sympatiskt intryck och tyngd åt utmärkelsen.
Förra årets nominerade poeter var: Sergej Stratanovskij, Ryssland - Anikó Polgár, Ungern - Daniel Jonas, Portugal - Yahya Hassan, Danmark - Lidija Dimkovska, Makedonien - Ana Blandiana, Rumänien och Vanni Bianconi, Italien.
Jag har valt dikter av Stratanovskij, Dimkovska och den slutliga vinnaren Ana Blandiana.
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| European Poet of Freedom Literary Award |
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Stratanovskij, som föddes i Leningrad 1944, är en av Rysslands mest beundrade poeter, och detta är den första samlingen av hans verser som presenterats på engelska.
Jag har valt en kort dikt som visar hans uttryckssätt och som snuddar (om än i satirens form) vid existentialismen som präglar hans författarskap.
(From Muddy river : selected poems, by Sergey Stratanovsky. Translated by J. Kates. Manchester : Carcanet Press Limited, 2016.)
Death is no doorstep into mysteries.
It is a cake rising in the oven.
It is as commonplace as the cottage cheese,
a daily, hourly companion.
There are nights when sleep comes hard
death creeps in like a little mouse
and needles us with a shard of ice.
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Lidija Dimkovska har förekommit en gång förut i bloggen. Jag har läst båda diktsamlingarna av henne som finns på engelska hos Nobelbiblioteket. Men hennes dikter är ganska långa och rätt svårtydda. Jag har istället valt en annan dikt som jag hittade på nätet.
Rubbish, by Lidija Dimkovska (f. 1971)
(Published in Exquisite Corpse)
You collect stickers and shells with your children,
and stamps and postcards,
arrange them devotedly in drawers and boxes,
smiling as your wife calls out
“you’re only creating rubbish,”
not knowing that suddenly a day will come
or rather the night of
that day
when you will be staggering blindly in your underwear
down the wet iron fire-escape.
Tottering away from your home,
with hands as empty as a new-dug grave
and fists black from beating the flames,
you dive beyond the diameter of God’s will,
looking behind you, and they are not there, a distant cry and a profound silence.
Naked and small under the hose that brings you back to life,
while you shove it away,
to die is all you want, to expire under the blanket behind the hedge.
They are dead.
You drag yourself to the rubbish bin where you threw the last rubbish yesterday.
With numb fingers you rummage the stench, there, the green plastic bag of orange peel,
the silver paper from the chocolate you bought coming home from work,
the end of the last salami and the crushed cartons
the children drank their juice from before they went to bed:
all that is left of all of you, of your life where now you’re alone.
You smell them, kiss them, and restore each peel to wholeness,
you gather the chocolate crumbs in the silver paper, the end of the salami
makes you dizzy with its familiar homeliness,
your children’s last saliva is on the drinking-straws.
This green plastic bag of rubbish is all that is yours now.
You need to start again from the beginning, they tell you,
while you would know only how to start from the middle, how to change the old,
make it better, nicer, more loved.
But when the dead are no longer alive
nobody knows how to start from either the end or the beginning.
You know, you know very well, how life is turned into scraps of rubbish,
but not how these scraps of rubbish can be turned into life.
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Följande går att läsa på festivalens officiella webbplats om utmärkelsen:
"The European Poet of Freedom Literary Award is a special honour – it has been designed to promote European poetry, the medium of great importance, yet often marginalised in our world. In each edition of the contest seven European authors are nominated. And it is translators who name the finalists and simultaneously proffer their own translations of the authors’ works. The victor then is chosen by a jury comprising translators, poets, writers, critics and representatives of other arts. Alongside the awarded poet, granted 100 000 zlotych, his translator is also honoured, which is of great significance since we tend to forget about those without whom we would be locked within the restricting borders of our mother tongues."
Förra året gick alltså priset till den rumänska författarinnan Ana Blandiana för boken Patria mea A4 (engelsk titel: My native land A4). Den boken finns ännu inte på något svenskt bibliotek så jag har valt en dikt ur en äldre urvalsantologi.
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| Ana Blandiana |
Ana Blandiana (f. 1942), är en pseudonym för den rumänska poeten, författaren och medborgarrättskämpen Otilia Valeria Coman. Ana Blandiana blev med tiden en berömd dissident och förkämpe för mänskliga rättigheter och hon hade redan innan revolutionen 1989 modet att i intervjuer givna åt radiostationen Radio Free Europe och i utländsk tryckt media offentligt kritisera diktatorn Nicolae Ceaușescu. Blandiana är en aktiv offentlig personlighet i Rumänien. Hon engagerade sig i aktioner för demokrati som medlem i Medborgaralliansen. Källa: Wikipedia
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Ballad, by Ana Blandiana
(From The hour of sand : selected poems, 1969-1989 / Ana Blandiana ; translated by Peter Jay & Anca Cristofovici. London : Anvil Press Poetry, 1990.)
I have no other Ana,
Build myself into the wall,
Yet who can tell me this is enough
When the wall does not tumble
By itself,
But pushed by the whim
Of a sleepwalking bulldozer
Advancing through the nightmare in a heap.
And again I build
As if I built a wave,
The second day again,
The third day again,
The fourth day again,
An eternally liquid monastery
Fated to crumble at the shore;
Again I build, oh, lime
And brick
And, without stain,
A being
As reinforcement
To the infamous dream:
I have no other Ana
And myself even
Less and less often
Do I have.
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