'Stand' against injustice and oppression

  Serien som jag kallar studenttidskrifter avslutas med det professionella, Stand Magazine. Tidskriften har haft olika redaktionella säten och finansiärer genom åren. Sedan 1999 har de ett nära samarbete med University of Leeds.

University of Leeds

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  History:

"Stand first appeared in 1952 when Jon Silkin used his £5 redundancy money, received after trying to organise some of his fellow manual workers, to found a magazine which would 'Stand' against injustice and oppression, and 'Stand' for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.

  In its 50 plus years, Stand has published early work by many writers who have gone on to become established figures. The magazine has also played a major role in bringing the work of Russian and East European writers in translation to an English-speaking audience.

  The search for inventive or radical or experimental work goes on, as Stand appears quarterly, featuring the best in new writing, poetry, fiction and criticism." 
Källa: standmagazine.org

***

  Jag har studerat vårnumret av Stand Magazine. Det hade tema; "Chinese Journeys: a special issue on new Chinese writing".

  Första poesibidraget är skrivet av Wang Xiaoni, författarinnan som deltog för Kina i bloggens PMC förra året.
  Hon föddes 1955, i Changchun, Jilinprovinsen. Wang Xiaoni skickades till landsbygden under kulturrevolutionen och började skriva poesi 1974. Hon var en del av den löst sammanhållna Menglong (Obscure), en grupp poeter med bland annat Bei Dao, Yang Lian och Gu Cheng. Hon har arbetat i en filmstudio i Changchun och undervisar nu på Hainan-universitetet i södra Kina. Källa: The Guardian

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Seeing the Ocean from a Night Flight, by Wang Xiaoni
(Published in Stand magazine, Issue 213, March-May 2017. Translated by Eleanor Goodman.)

Everything becomes small 
only the ocean makes the night’s leather clothes 
open up the further out it spreads. 

Flying north 
to the right is Tianjin 
to the left is Beijing 
two clusters of moths flinging themselves at fire. 

Then the East China Sea suddenly moves 
the wind brings silver bits that couldn’t be more shattered 
and many thick wrinkles whip up 

I see the face of the ocean 
I see the aged seashore 
trembling and hugging the world too tightly. 

I have seen death before 
but never before seen the dead come back to life.

***

  I samma utgåva publiceras två genmälen från Helen Mort till Wang Xiaoni. Jag gillade båda hennes bidrag, och här följer texten som bildar par med ovanstående dikt .
  Även Helen Mort har omnämnts tidigare i bloggen. Hon var en av de tjugo utvalda till nomineringen "Next Generation of 20 hotly-tipped poets" utnämnda av Poetry Book Societys jury, 2014. En utlysning som organisationen utfärdat med tio års intervall sedan 1994 (första året innehöll listan namn som Simon Armitage och Carol Ann Duffy).
  Jag tycker att Helen Mort är en mycket lovande poet.

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Transpennine, by Helen Mort (f. 1985)
(Published in Stand magazine, Issue 213, March-May 2017.)

(in response to Wang Xiaoni)
‘…only the ocean makes the night’s leather clothes open up’ 
- Wang Xiaoni 

Back in the town where I grew up, 
daybreak undresses the dark canal. 

Its banks have papery skin. Its bones 
are reeds, a trolley with the wheels removed. 

A heron makes a mystery of the scrap yard, 
soundless, blue then gone. 

On the bridge at dawn, a man walks 
with a plastic bag of clothes held at his chest. 

We’ll meet, sooner or later. One of us 
will reach the other side.

***

  Jag avslutar med ett diktbidrag av Qin Xiaoyu. Han är poet, kritiker och litteraturteoretiker. Han föddes 1974 i Hohhot i Inre Mongoliet i norra Kina. När han studerade på college för att bli ingenjör startade han den litterära tidningen New Century och han publicerade själv sin första poesisamling, Degrees of Emptiness. Hans kritiska arbete Poetry After '70, publicerad 2006 av Dunhuang Art and Literature Press, beskrevs som att ha "öppnat nya dörrar för genren poetisk kritik". Källa: Paper Republic - Chinese literature in translation

Statue at the Wang Zhaojun Tomb

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Music of the Mountains, by Qin Xiaoyu
(Published in Stand magazine, Issue 213, March-May 2017. Translated by Jia Liu.)

In the east of the village, a yard of yellow mud where a lamppost has collapsed forms my first impression of the Universe. 
The small returning wagon, from which the whip is wielded, 
is no longer the one in the Year of Harvest. 
From the tannoy flows a loud tune of Twin Streams, its sweet whisper turned into shrill singing. 
To my heart’s joy, such is the music that shakes the ground and pierces the sky, 
The poem that is the village north of the Yin Mountains. 
A few window panels, their latticework a fleeting beauty, 
are left behind in the cold storage room where I must have lingered. 
I brush my fingers across their cracks and holes, the most beautiful in the world, 
As if by touch to feel the starlight that has stained the window paper. 
The crow’s nest behind the house is a drop of ill-shaped tear 
burning in the distant eyes not so far away. 
As I approach the end of the poem, my grief for the dead hangs like red chillies, conspicuous, above the door.

M as in making out in the magazine

  Seriens näst sista studenttidskrift blir Matchbox magazine. Den har sitt säte vid University of California.
  Nästa vecka avslutas rubriken med Stand magazine, från University of Leeds.

  Matchbox magazine har funnits sedan 2005 och hör hemma i University of California, Santa Cruz. Deras deklaration lyder:
"Our Mission: To serve as a platform for underrepresented voices for the artists that make up the undergraduate body within the entire UC system. We aim to publish quality art, prose, poetry, music, and spoken word that reflects the diversity of students and art alike. As the only UC-wide literary magazine, we aspire to serve as a unifying factor between the nine UC campuses and offer wide exposure for student artists."

  Dessvärre håller inte bidragen i Matchbox magazine särskilt hög kvalitet. Jag har misstagit mig i min förberedande research. Det här är verkligen en ren studenttidskrift, och ingenting annat.

  Jag har valt ut två dikter i kärlekens tecken.

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Owens Peak, Wilderness wildflowers, 2017

August poetry, by Sasha Landau
(From Matchbox magazine, Issue 2016.)

Find me lying in bed at seven in the evening. The sun will be painted like lip liner on the crest of the mountains. Tell me this is because summer is for lovers, so nature makes it ripe for kissing. Then kiss me, if you want to. I'll roll over and you can crawl on in, the water is fine.

While the ocean is busy playing peekaboo with the moon you can tell me you'll never swim in the Atlantic. I won't question it. Well I will, but I'll get over it. Tell me that you hate all those imaginary lines anyway; nobody can control the ocean. I'll agree, but I'll agree with anything that gets my hand in your hair fast enough.

The spider web dream of your mouth on mine is lukewarm and not very likely, but I'll spend hours spinning it. When we're both done pretending not to notice we're holding hands, maybe we can figure it out. If you offer me a seat closer to the fire, wait for me to answer. I'm not upset, I'm just thinking of more ways to convince you I'm cold.

***

Big rain, by Molly Jones
(From Matchbox magazine, Issue 2016.)

one sound -
big drops
splashing against the basement
one by one
heavy berries
falling to the bottom of my heart burying there a sweetness

The Journal and encounters with "shark"

  Ny studenttidskrift i måndagsinlägget. Den här gången har jag kikat i magasinet med den något anonyma titeln, "The Journal". Den ges ut av Ohio University.

***

  De presenterar ingen deklaration på sin hemsida utan uppger i stort sett bara följande:

"The Journal is a magazine of literature published four times yearly and supported by the Department of English, private contributions, advertisements, and sales. The magazine is endorsed by The Ohio State University."

Poesiredaktörer är: Jessica Lieberman och Ally Talbot. De tycks vara studenter på universitetet och inte undervisande personal.

Trots en blygsam presentation och en orutinerad redaktion innehåller magasinet intressanta uppkomlingar inom poet-skrået. I vårnumret för 2017 hittade jag ...

**

  "Xandria Phillips is the author of Reasons For Smoking, which won the 2016 The Seattle Review chapbook contest judged by Claudia Rankine. She hails from rural Ohio where she was raised on corn, and inherited her grandmother’s fear of open water. Xandria received her BA from Oberlin College, and her MFA from Virginia Tech. Xandria is Winter Tangerine's associate poetry editor, and the curator of Love Letters to Spooks, a literary space for Black people." Citat från The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.

  Det finns något lockande i hennes bidrag som jag inte kan sätta fingret på. Hon kan nog ha en intressant karriär framför sig.

*

Beached Shark as a Blues Poem, by Xandria Phillips
(Published in The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.)

Photoshop manipulation from Pixabay

before / I said / if touch didn’t mean ownership I’d swim with
more women / I’d bare down into the surf if pressing my belly to land
didn’t express sovereignty / I’d flop down with my jugular exposed to
love if it didn’t insist on mapping my tender points with a blade /
since I learned no one’s ever gonna love me enough to fill this hull /
I swim bare / sinuous as a cup brimming with fangs / a chalice
overfilled / an impact like knees buckling / my last words /
fuck me up / ocean / fuck me / up / you’ve got the kind of lips that
could swallow a slave ship whole / drag me to death’s waistline and
yank me back / bring me bodies / to entourage / give me a page to cursive
with blood / I’ll be your prolific body catcher till I run aground

***

  Det andra bidraget är författat av en talang som kommit längre i sitt författarskap. Följande biografiska noteringar är hämtade från hennes webbplats: 
http://www.kathleenossip.com

  "Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Do-Over, a New York Times Editors' Choice; The Cold War, which was one of Publishers Weekly's best books of 2011; The Search Engine, which was selected by Derek Walcott for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize; and Cinephrastics, a chapbook of movie poems. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Magazine Writing, the Washington Post, Paris Review, Poetry, The Believer, A Public Space, and Poetry Review (London). She teaches at The New School in New York, and she is the editor of the poetry review website SCOUT. She has received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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From the sixth floor, by Kathleen Ossip
(Published in The Journal, 41.2 Spring, 2017.)

The church spire’s a grandmother, crafted, hoping.
The chimney’s a grandfather, tense and solid.
The slate roof’s a mother, spread out and open.
The mansard a father, blind, helmeted.
The gray trees are children, their fingers velveted.
The leaves their ideas, broken and broken.

From Arthur's seat

  Igår var bloggen i Nya Zeelands "Edinburgh". Idag studerar vi senaste utgåvan av antologin "Arthur's seat" som ges ut av Creative Writing Programme vid Universitetet i Edinburgh (Skottland).

***

  Vad jag förstår är den årliga antologin (journalen) en rätt ny företeelse vid universitetet så jag har inte hittat så mycket information om den.

  Förordet i den andra upplagan (2017) är skrivet av Dr. Allyson Stack. Hon föddes och växte upp i Philadelphia och har också bott i New York City, Arizona och Edinburgh. Hon har en BA från Yale, en MFA från Arizona State University och en doktorand i litteratur från University of Edinburgh.

  Namnet "Arthur's seat" härrör sig från en välbekant kulle i Edinburgh-området.

  [Toppen på Arthur's Seat är 197 meter över havet. Terrängen runt Arthur's Seat är huvudsakligen platt, men åt sydväst är den kuperad. Havet är nära Arthur's Seat åt nordost. Närmaste större samhälle är Edinburgh, 2,3 km väster om Arthur's Seat.]

***

  Jag har valt bidrag från två författare. Inlägget avslutas med ett par haiku-dikter som tilldelades Grierson Verse Prize, 2017. Men först blir det Celia Wilding.

  Celia Wilding är en poet och komiker från Lake District och hon studerar Creative Writing vid University of Edinburgh. Hon har en BA i Creative Writing och Drama från De Montfort University, Leicester. Hon har utfört stand-up över hela Storbritannien sedan 2011.

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The Garden (I and II), by Celia Wilding
(Published in Arthur's seat. EGG BOX PUBLISHING, 2017.)

I

Wisps of brown hair
float above tangled
rhubarb leaves. She pushes
her hands through, pinching
the ripening pods
of sugar snap peas.

In the shade
(her dress sown from poppies),
she catches oak tree seeds
as they spiral towards the ground.

The chair swing sings back
and forth with the bird calls,
shifting light from the canopy
marking the cushions
like frogspawn.

Windswept bluebell bonnets
litter the patio, the slabs
turning cold
under her bare feet.

**

II

Bubbles surge
angry hot spittle

the kettle clicks

I pour
scalding water
over yellow paving

black melon pips

take flight from

water-clogged gullies

‘I couldn’t live without a garden’

you say as

winged ants climb the pebbledash

‘It’s my magic place’

my sandals tap against the stone steps

click.

***

  Griersonpriset tilldelas en inskriven elev vid University of Aberdeen eller University of Edinburgh för en komposition i någon erkänd versform men inte "frivers".

  År 2017 tilldelas Tim Craven från Stoke-on-Trent priset. Han har en MFA från Syracuse University och för närvarande är han doktorand vid universitetet i Edinburgh. Hans dikter har publicerats i olika tidskrifter över USA och Storbritannien.

  Priset får han för "Haiku for refused hearts". Här följer tre av verserna.

Golden is a modern art sculpture installed
on the outskirts of Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent in May 2015.
Artist:  Wolfgang Buttress

Haiku for refused hearts, by Tim Craven
(Published in Arthur's seat. EGG BOX PUBLISHING, 2017.)

#41
I call the cat in.
His name leans back in my mouth;
Real as a tattoo.

#44
Lipstick on a glass,
Wooly hat under the bed.
Will you just leave, please?

#49
I see her rushing,
Kicking up leaves in her wake.
I keep on rushing.

An odyssey through The Spectacle

  Ett nytt universitetsmagasin gläntar på dörren. Den här gången utgår jag ifrån The Spectacle som håller till på Washington University i St. Louis. Det är lite fascinerande att merparten av bidragsgivarna arbetar vid andra universitet än utgivaradressen. Men jag gillar deras deklaration, i synnerhet de avslutande raderna om att ge röst åt de som inte får uppmärksamhet.

  Deklarationen:
"We’re a little cracked, and we like it that way. We aim for content that reminds us that our lenses matter—they focus, distort, clarify, conceal. We seek out and publish revelatory writing, while also knowing that there are forms of revelation that come only through distortion or concealment. Aristotle, in his Poetics, isolated six aspects of dramatic art, of which “spectacle” (opsis) was the least important. We disagree.

We like scholars who write great poetry, poets who write incisive monographs, credulous skeptics, wary believers, hidebound experimentalists, radical realists, mystical engineers, analytical mystics, catholic snobs, and modish antiquarians. We have a soft spot for keen amateurs and sincere dilettantes. We actively seek to transgress the border between creative and critical work: see, for example, Dan Beachy-Quick’s essay-poems in our inaugural issue.

(..)

The Spectacle is based out of the English, Creative Writing, and Visual Art departments at Washington University in St. Louis. We are committed to publishing work from under-represented voices, including people of color, women, LGBTQ-identified artists/writers, and people who have disabilities. The Spectacle publishes issues twice a year; our blog, The Revue, features a more frequently revolving cast of comics, poems, reviews, and other pieces."
Källa: http://thespectacle.wustl.edu

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  Jag har studerat åtta poeters bidrag som nyligen har publicerats. Det är författare med en del meriter, exempelvis Lyn Hejinian och Geoffrey G. O’Brien. 

  Till slut valde jag dikter av två andra författare. Först ut Rodney Gomez. Han är medlem i Macondo Writers Workshop. Hans samling Citizens of the Mausoleum är kommande från Sundress Publications. Hans poesi har dykt upp eller är kommande i Poetry, Rattle, Blackbird, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, och Puerto del Sol.

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How to dismantle a heart, by Rodney Gomez
(Published in The Spectacle, 2017.)

My mother used to say the heart makes music, but I’ve never found the keys. Maybe it’s the way I was brought into the world: dragged across a river in the night’s quiet breathing, trampling through trash and tired runaways as if tearing a window’s curtains. We were barred from entry but repeatedly returned, each time becoming a darker part of a tunnel or a truck bed. The sky was so still the stars flickered like carbide lamps. We told time through the landmarks of the dead like cataphiles—the warren of a little girl’s murder, the wolf’s irrigation pipe. When you see enough unwinding, beating is replaced by the safety of wings. This isn’t goodness. The voiceless are never neutral. Bones sway to elegy. Ebony burrows into the earth as a refugee. I grew up, eventually, but the sun was like a cliff with a false bottom: you’d drop and come out the top again. Enough carcasses draped over the dry brush. Enough water towers empty as busted rattles.

When you’re a child, the heart has a stiff neck and demands to be played. Later, it limps. Before my knees could begin to ache, I crawled to the levee looking for a broken string. Some
wayward zil. I stretched my heart over a manhole and drummed it with broken pliers. It wouldn’t even quaver. It snapped back into a seed, dry and shriveled and impotent.

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  Min favorit bland de åtta poeter jag studerade var tveklöst Virginia Konchan. Hon är författare till Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press, 2015) och Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017). Hennes dikter har förekommit i The New Yorker, The New Republic, Best New Poets, och i andra publikationer.
  Jag valde ut två av hennes texter. Jag är svag för humoristiska inslag . . .

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Odyssey, by Virginia Konchan
(Published in The Spectacle, 2017.)

You are the last vowel
left in the known world,
and I am the placard
saying this table
has been reserved.

A pity, the rain shower never came.
A pity, it lasted so long.
I had hoped to be wafer-thin:
a mere idea, drifting down the hall.
As it stands, I am stolid,
irrefutable but without value,
like an animal. Aren’t we all.
The pastoral’s end is nigh.
Free love is the con of cons.
This is the hour
of the anonymous poet.
Sail on, high ship, sail on.

**

Earth lyric, by Virginia Konchan
(Published in The Spectacle, 2017.)

Milkweed, thistle.
A plant that grows
only when shunned.
What I want to know is
would a wild animal
force another wild animal
on a gang plank, or to strip
its defenses for show, for fun?

Look around. There’s so few rules
to hang gliding; it’s all about the feel.
There is something droll about the
human endeavor, our damage
to freshwater habitats, then
backpedaling attempts to heal.
Flowers heavy with theology.
Erstwhile prophets of doom.
I know what my problem is:
global thinking, insufficient data.
Let’s you and I be paramours.
Let’s put a woman on the moon.

A-MUSE-ments from Assumption

  Efter tre veckor med PMC återställs måndagarna till rubriken "Studenttidskrifter". Fast den titeln är en sanning med modifikation. Det var inte så lätt att hitta rena student newspapers. Min lösning på problemet blev att välja sex litterära magasin som har sitt ursprung, eller en koppling, till något college eller universitet. Dagens journal, MUSE, är den enda som verkligen kan betecknas som en studenttidskrift.

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  "Assumption College is a private, Roman Catholic, liberal arts college located on 185 acres (708,000 m²) in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Assumption has an enrollment of about 2,117 undergraduates.[3] The college confers Bachelor of Arts degrees in its undergraduate program, Master of Arts and Masters of Business Administration degrees in its graduate program, and associate's degrees through its Continuing Education program." Citat från Wikipedia

  MUSE är den officiella litterära tidningen för Assumption College. Tidningen innehåller poesi, kortprosa, essäer och konstverk som bidragits av medlemmar i Assumption-gemenskapen. Alla studerande är också välkomna att bli en del av den personal som organiserar och distribuerar tidningen. Källa: Assumption College

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  Ur "Volume IV" för 2017-2018 har jag valt två textexempel. Den första är riktigt rolig, faktiskt.

What am I? (...... 24601), by Joseph Abruzi
(From MUSE : Assumption College's Literary Magazine. Vol. IV, 2017-2018.)

I’m not complex
I don’t intricately carve subtle nuances
Like Michelangelo in Florence
I’m overt and obnoxious
An on-fire caveman screaming in your face
A flaming homo erectus.
I’m not methodical or consistent:
Just some of those habits I never picked up in
middle school
Like studying
Blowing gum bubbles
Or having high self esteem

I’ll go through a year long drought
Before jumping into a river
Forgetting that I don’t really know how to swim
But I don’t really know how to drown either
So I just kind of chill there.
Oh wait that’s hypothermia.

I sift through the word-vomit that I spew out
Looking for a lump of fool’s gold
And after the words that would have had resonance
In the hands of someone better are spent
The tide of sickening motivation passes.
I am abruptly nauseated to my core
At the sight of what is before me,
And that’s just my face reflected in the computer
screen.

***

Fruit pieces with peaches covered by a handkerchief (ca 1819)
Raphaelle Peale

Brick children and bruised peaches, by Nina Lynn Gonzalez
(From MUSE : Assumption College's Literary Magazine. Vol. IV, 2017-2018.)

There were those bruised, split peaches for sale,
All hanging in the corner,
Bathing in the neon, chipped paints
Of whatever sleeping bodega they chose for their shot up skinnies
To lean against for the night.

These spicks were swagging some pants
From a ghetto disco era
A few sizes too large for their shady figures,
Faces hidden in the caves around their heads,
Brown skins, black skins
Mostly brown skins where I was at—
Walking, mouths pissing on territory.
They want to own everything
With their profanities.

They came—the pink skins.
Raised their guns to the fifty stars,
Blood white and true,
Fireworks sang freedom to these streets.

The brick children looked outside of their tiny windows—if they had windows—the windows where those boxed up air conditioners stuck out of,
Looking like the bellies of their drunk papis who have no work,
Passed out dead on the couch
While mami cooks him a dinner
That he no longer tastes.

I was under a blanket
On some couch
In some living room.

A Chihuahua was with me,
Near the window of these scenes,
Tried to close my eyes to dream
But then I heard sounds coming from my wall.
My new neighbors.
Two men. Swearing.
Beating each other.

The children fell out of their windows,
Each and every screamed,
“The country I left behind
Is all around me.”