Sunday 30 September 2012

Sunday night is...Pussy Riot,
Krasznahorkai and Reggae



Time goes so extraordinarily fast. Yesterday I was writing the introduction to Catechism, the Pussy Riot anthology. I don't have a poem in it but was glad to write the intro when invited. It's a little under 2,000 words, all written fast. I hope it makes sense. Today I changed it a bit according to editorial advice. Nice to have editorial advice - and quite right too.

The case for Pussy Riot is absolutely clear cut and I won't write about it here until the e-book is actually out tomorrow as the idea is to make publication coincide with the date of the appeal against the two year sentence. It will also be a day of protests outside the Russian Embassy. I wish I could be there, but I am teaching my first classes of the year, C has to go for a check up and I am at least three hours away. On Thursday it's Grimsby. On Saturday... well, we'll see.

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The rest of the day was spent in expanding an earlier article titled Foreign Laughter about translating Márai and Krasznahorkai that I had written for The Dublin Review so as to include Satantango, so it is now over 8,000 words long. This was on request from Almost Island (India) and Music and Literature. I'm not sure they'll want the lot but it all links up so I'll find out. The Foreign Laughter link takes you to the original article so you must imagine that extended.

Weaving between the two was exhausting and I am still a little tired from the Wymondham Words Festival, about which I promise to write more. But since this is Sunday, I think music is appropriate. Marley and the Wailers. No introduction needed to this. Stir it Up.



3 comments:

Gwil W said...

Two good videos there for Sunday albeit I'm 2 days late getting here. It's a strange world when you can whizz 5 nuclear reactors containing so-called spent fuel roads into the Arctic Sea not to mention scuttling a nuclear submarine containing two nuclear reactors and that's just the tip of the iceberg and that's all ok. Meanwhile 3 girls languish in jail for doing basically nothing. It's hypocrisy gone mad.

I'm following Vatileaks with interest. He says he was kept in a cell with the light on 24/7 and not enough room to stretch his arms out. Wasn't there some guy called Jesus who leaked stuff about the Pharisees? So where's the difference? It stinks of Inquisition.

George S said...

Say more about the nuclear reactors, Gwilym/ Completely missed that.

Re Vatileaks: “We treated him with kid gloves, so much so that he thanked us,” said the officer.

Torture with kid gloves sounds somewhere down the Vatican line.

Gwil W said...

http://barentsobserver.com/en/nature/planning-new-expeditions-arctic-nuclear-dustbin-26-09