Misprint

Häftad, Engelska, 2012

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‘The only end of writing,’ Dr Johnson said, ‘is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.’ Misprint offers the reader countries and languages perceived through the eyes of youth and loss. Untimely deaths and memories of far-off lands abound, some dreamed, some lived. In this first collection, James Womack plays with ideas of tradition, lightly conjuring heavy themes, and makes a bow to pulp culture. He ferries us between Russia, Spain and North Korea and the differently ‘real’ virtual environments of film, dream, ghosts, the North Korean Press Agency. ‘Eurydice’, the concluding sequence, draws the different strands of the collection together.We end up dislocated: bewildered but rather happier about the future. As Mr Edwards said to the Great Cham: ‘I, too, Sir, in my time have tried being a philosopher; but somehow cheerfulness kept creeping in.’

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2012-07-26
Mått137 x 211 x 8 mm
Vikt113 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor80
FörlagCarcanet Press Ltd
ISBN9781847771384

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Poesi inom Skonlitteratur

James Womack is a poet and translator, based in Cambridge. He is the author of four collections with Carcanet: Misprint (2012); On Trust: A Book of Lies (2017); Homunculus (2020), and Why Are You Shouting? (2024). He translates widely from Spanish and Russian, and has put together anthologies for Carcanet of Vladimir Mayakovsky ('Vladimir Mayakovsky' And Other Poems, 2016) and Manuel Vilas (Heaven, 2020). He is currently working on contemporary Russian and Spanish poets and has recently completed a science fiction novel.

From a NotebookThe ThingThe Water Cycle: Variations on a ThemeHalfway through the A-FeatureInternet PoemsYoung RomanceThree EpigramsThe UnderworldAriadneTourismLittle Red PoemFishThe Dogs of a House in Mourning and the Naked GirlMaster ChuangFound Poem: President’s Reminiscences Read WidelyPropertyMaisky PoemsVomitLikenessExperimentFoiled again…CriticismThe True Scholarfrom The Literary Encyclopaedia Dark and stormysMosaicNow, / A / Poem / That is Called / ‘Of Insomnia’MisprintEurydice1Was it that long ago you died?2Pray for us sinners, that we have climbed3The shutters falling4After, it is you who lie in the hollow of my elbow5Slowly and patiently we have forgotten it all6You never told me how boring it is to be mad7Leaving the bright town to the desert8A garden, as a child might draw it9I wrote to you last March in Madrid10Thick fog. I walked down the way of all flesh11Your smile fades and the garden is now dark12Death is not the end; some doors are never fully closedCodaWith two bags where his two hands wereNotes

'James Womack is another bright young poet... he is capable of lugubrious comic inventions such as 'From the Literary Encyclopaedia', which charts an experimental novelist's doomed career, alongside 'Tourism', a clipped and chilly poem about the export of jihadis to the Middle East... on the evidence of Misprint Womack has scope, curiosity and a refreshing sense of not having foresuffered everything he encounters.'Sean O'Brien, The Sunday Times