Belle Ling ('Mum is the faithful gate')

a new tag all the same, reacting somehow to David Byrne's 'Social Studies': "As if the point of view was somehow in the food", as I think it is.

east - west

"I’ve been a writer for 27 years and I’m one of the older generation of writers in Korea, who’s been around forever and forever, but when I come to the West it’s like, it’s as if I’m a first time author. They’ve only read one book and it’s not even my oldest first book, nor my newest even; it’s one of my middle books that has been published as my first book in English. In their consciousness, I am a new writer or emerging writer. It’s quite funny when in Korea I have a signing and I’m the one who has the longest line, whereas here, I felt a bit sheepish. There were a few people who’d read my book, and others who said “oh I can’t wait to read your book, I just heard about it.” And I’m just not used to that, and I thought it was so cool that I can kind of re-go through the feelings of being a first time writer. You know, that kind of nervous heartbeat of who’s going to have read my book, but what will they think, and I am so lucky. Then, I get to go back to Korea and pretend to be an old established writer, then back here to pretend to be a first time writer who’s waiting eagerly for what people think.

In Korea, so much of the reading market is foreign books translated into Korean and the opposite is not the case; I am only one of two Korean writers who have been translated properly in the West. And, it’s just a bit weird when I’ve kind of read everything from that side. It’s just a sad situation where it’s more like a one-way street.

(...)

Korea’s got a kind of strange exception for any modern country, I think, where literature actually plays a big role in public life and there are so many different viewpoints within literary circles. It has a great vibrancy. For example, poetry, I feel, may be perhaps dying as a collection thing in the West, whereas in Korea, the poetry industry is growing and publishers are publishing hundreds of different collections every year.

When I was living in Korea, not out of it, I didn’t even realise it was that precious. And when I went to Japan, France, and America, that’s when I realised that, “oh Korea’s got a peculiar focus on literature. Oh no! I’m not being patriotic!” You know, like “Korea is the best”! I should be praising the unique literary life of Korea more."

- -
na Istanbul Review, #2.

pic from here.
(ou a caixinha ocidental)

Anton Frost

Countryside

the center of the universe
is far away

and my heart
is a countryside of roots.

the moon is a bread-crumb
as the sky
turns to nothing.

i can hear the drumming
of water falling
onto rock,

i hear something
like a pulse
in the open cupboard.

my head
is a closed space.
it is an
occupied shell.

remembering
is like
watching a woman
from a distance
walking both toward me
  and away from me.

it occurs
it is hard
to remember.

between days
and only sometimes
we remember we
have
more than
just memories.

my cupboards are empty
shells, repeating
the pulse of my ears.

my heart
is a diorama
of a universe
that is all center.

it is your silhouette;
it is me trying to decide
if you're walking toward me
or away from me.

- -

rainy

alone in my mouth
a bruised plum of light

something that i am
hangs on
like a drop of water

on a thin branch
that’s black with rain

it reminds me there is a bell
crashing
like you breathe

like you wouldn’t believe

the rain is a blue plate
of peas

somewhere in space
where the earth once was

my mother’s voice
floats says

you sit there
until it’s finished

peas like drops of rain
gleaming and tight

alone in my mouth
i wait out the pouring

i lean out
with my wet face

it smiles
so i smile too

the rain is riding the river
like it’s a horse

i want to be the rain so bad
the river
the horse it could be
i could be

instead i stand all alone under my awning
like the tongue of a bell

overhead a window
gets shoved open

the sun is still shining
someone says

their own mouth
bruised
too

- -

table window

when she turns
away

i swap our straws
and drink.

- -

Anton Frost, um dos poetas no número 2 da The Istanbul Review (o que a Granta Portugal poderia ser mas não é, independente).