chaturangik/SQUARES - A chess book of collaborative poetry

CinnamonTeal Press has recently published a square-shaped thin book of bilingual collaborative poetry, where each page of the book is designed like a chessboard. Two stubs of bilingual text (English and Bangla) are placed in or over certain squares following an undercover stratagem.

chaurtangik/SQUARES is a book length collaborative poem by Pat Clifford and Aryanil Mukherjee. The book is inspired by Satyajit Ray's seminal film Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players). The work deals with the mechanics of chess and politics in both a thematic and formal way. At times the language is opaque and confrontational. In other places there is a resigned melancholy.

Often what started as longer poems were chopped or condensed. In the end, each installment was placed into the boxes of a chess grid. The poem's use of languages is more complex than it would appear. Translation was part of the collaborative process itself, not something done after the fact. In a typical section, Clifford would start out writing in English to which Mukherjee would respond in Bengali, who would then translate Clifford's English lines into Bengali and his own Bengali into English. Critical focus would be placed immediately on the modifications and then prompt the next section. In the end, a linguistically reflected text was produced— a poem that can be read in multiple ways.

chaturangik/SQUARES
Pat Clifford and Aryanil Mukherjee
A bilingual booklength collaborative poem
Illustration by Mithu Sen
Published by Cinnamon Teal
45p/Paperback/6.25" x 6.25"
ISBN - 978-81-907296-6-6
Distributed by Kaurab

To know more about this book visit -

http://www.kaurab.com/aryanil/chaturangik-english.html

Speaking in Tongues

As is well known, James Joyce moved from Ireland to Switzerland, then Italy, back to Switzerland, then finally France. His daughter, Lucia, was famously described as being "illiterate in three languages." It was actually four: Italian, her native tongue, spoken at home, English, German and French. With more people displaced than ever, many living in their third or fourth country, the world is full of Lucia Joyces, those who are not quite at home in any language, but have a loose command of three or four. If they decided to write, what sort of literature would they produce? Composing with a borrowed tongue, they could become hyper-conscious and write in an ultra-correct, conservative style. Or they could let go and act like a drunk tourist, an intoxicated interloper. Such seems to be the case of Nguyen Ducmanh. Born in Vietnam, he came to France as a teenager, traipsed around Europe, married a Finnish woman, then moved to New York. His English prose, always manic, reckless, often ungrammatical, sprinkled with serendipitous malapropisms, mixes the truly awful with sudden brilliances. (His poetry I find not as satisfying. Forced into linebreaks, conscious of forms, he's neutered.) There are only two examples of Nguyen Ducmanh's prose online, here and here. At its best, it does sing like poetry. Some excerpts:

Walking through the petrified forest called life beside the women, I did some metiers to enhance my status: street vendor, typographer, bar-boy, busboy, very good waiter, very snob maitre d', remnants baler lost 25 pounds in no time... ouch for my hernia, barkeeper make good money sending son to Lycee Francais but every medal has 2 faces: John Barley corn got hold of my finance, body, soul and spirit! ...taxi driver, yellow cab (holder of a world record never equal in earth life time: 5 summons issued in one day) ... artist in residence, designer of the Gaelic alphabet (15 letters) in calligraphy and in the tree language, art teacher, gigolo, 3 cushions billiard shooter, nom de guerre "chinito pollo" and do art 4000 year backward.

she is late, as Mohammed said : If the Mount Chauve don't come to me, I come to the mountain. Her chambre de bonne was all dark few candles, all veils, incenses. I had a twinge inside, spooky feeling that my head is on the block for the guillotine or I am a lamb sacrify for the black mass; but when I gave a leer to her kimono ajar, then I know I am for a voyage with no return to the moon! Her complexion scented of saffron and almond, her boobies: 2 tangerines, a bony corps like a young boy. Her name is Dagmar Webb. 32 springs, father Gaelic, mother walkyrie and...here I go ompahpah for the souper du roi! Mouth to mouth, I am into her lips as 2 ripped Corinthian raisins, her Pandora box flesh smells a faint air of gorgonzola mama mia, c'est si bon then I gave my life in her petit trou. The battle lasts all night, I was not quite free through and...

You do something in Paris: jalousie they hate it then you do nada they call you a schmuck so the alternative is suppuku... n'est-ce-pas!

I think big but I paint petit because manqué of space; the most largest I could produce is 2' x 3' here at the land of abbondanza

fluid of her pisseuse stacked it to my hair, ears all over my fuck face. I am late for work, can not fresh up myself just a giggle of brandy; then I jumped to the bus cross-town. While try find a big lie to say where I was last night, the woman sat next to me beheaded me with her look, then I realize that my BO stinks oozed out odor of copulation, or Roucoulous cheese; but the girl standing in front of me: see me with an accomplice eye, the way she sways her hips like she dumps her steak tartar at my kisser!

Voice Exchange Rates - (H.Yepez-Mexico)

Hope you check this out.

Dime, baby, la razón

I’ve just spent two months on the Texas-Mexico border, where reggaetón rules the airwave, at least among the young. What strikes me about this music is how easily and naturally English is woven into the Spanish lyrics. Since many of the singers and listeners are bilingual, this should come as no surprise. Here’s a snatch from the Puerto Rican Daddy Yankee:

Yes yo, tu sabes quien tiene el best flow
El dueño y señor del mambo
Me piden crema y la suelto
Yo baby let’s mambo

Living and breathing English, subjugated, we all have at least a smattering of English flourishing and festering, erecting condos in our brain cells. For Daddy Yankee, it has become second nature. What’s disturbing to me are instances where English-babbling subjects at the furthest reaches of Empire still feel compelled to drop a latinated anglo saxon into their literary labor. Consider, for example, these brief poems by the Vietnamese Nam Di:

Occasionally

không thể khóc nấc lên
nghe có vẻ giả tạo
cũng không thể khóc âm thầm
chẳng hiểu vì sao
chỉ thi thoảng
lắng nghe đâu đó
trong đêm
tiếng những giọt nước rơi


Uncertainty

Không gì tệ bằng sự không chắc chắn
về mình - về người - về mọi điều
Nó làm ta có cảm giác rơi xuống
rơi xuống với tốc độ
dù chậm chạp hay chóng mặt
vẫn khó thể gượng dậy

Không gì tệ bằng cảm giác rơi xuống
Nhói ở tim và buốt các mạch máu
cảm giác mất thăng bằng
về mình - về người - về mọi điều
Nó làm ta không thể định vị
dù nhắm mắt hay
mở trừng nhìn


As you can see, only her titles are in English, nothing else. I suppose that the use of English in a non-English poem is justified when you want to evoke a specifically English, American, Kiwi or Belizean reality, etc. Otherwise, dime, baby, la razón?