The Sheep's Intestine and the Human Sestina

From Velingrad to Sozopol
News from Kristin on the translations so diligently done from English to Bulgarian at the spa hotel at Velingrad in January:'We - VBV, Nadia and Georgi - will gather on Dec.4 to read the whole En-Bg book once again and make some final touches and go to the next step. (Things with the publisher seem to be fine.)'So the next stage of exchange goes on. The publisher remains Altera, and the goal remains a launch at the Sozopol Festival, now, perhaps in 2010.I can feel the anoxic waters of the Black Sea caress my sauna-starved toes even as we dream of Apollo: dream forwards, fellow Northeasters! Never dream sideways -- where has that ever got us?

Night Market Q&A
This second instalment is from July this year.VBVIt starts with "These fish have crossed the desert to be here –...". But I found another version online: "These fish have crossed the Gobi to be here". So?WNHIt's actually the Taklamakan Desert, tho people tended to refer to it as the Gobi. 'Taklamakan' doesn't really scan, of course -- this is in iambic pentameter with couplet half-rhyme, and Gobi came to seem misleading. So I changed it to 'desert'.VBV "so press among the Uigur breaking fast // on long kebabs...". Press? There are 3 verbs - press, push and ask. But the first one sounds strange to me "press among...on..." - I am not sur

Chinataur Dialogue
I promised I'd start posting the dialogues that took place over chatrooms or by email in relation to the Velingrad stage of this project. It's taken me a long time to get going on this, but here's a first go. This is the exchange between Kristin and myself between 28th January and 2nd February 09 over my poem 'The Chinataur' (you'll find that in my posting of work to be translated on January 14th). More -- and hopefully more about someone else's work -- when I next get a mo.KristinNight Market and The Chinataur (The China Minotaur?) are your last two untranslated poems. Is that correct? Vasil and I will take them. Do you have any preferances, like who tak

Bluba Lu on soundcloud
There are a couple of sets here by the band Fadia, Mark and I worked with the first time we visited Bulgaria, including World Nostalgia. We still await the release of our much-vaunted spoken word album, Air Pants, a turbulent performance.