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

A poem

A year ago, the Flemish review Yang published a longish poem of mine called Gewrichten. I thought the poem might work nicely in English as well, so I attempted an English version, under the title of Joints, which I just put on-line, and which I hope readers of this blog will enjoy.

Ton van 't Hof & Leevi Lehtoeyeball-aching ballast

affecting aspects of human life, on a non-raining day, the predestinated pedestrians
peddling dope on a zebra crossing, pill-popping gossip gone by the wind

in wooden tone (wd intone): "The Bussibilleties Are Intinife." "The
Wrestling Nudes (men & women) Orgasized Into Searchable Flutter." (as if

this wd include molecular biology, genetics and embriology of the maxillo-facial
but HELL NO - it's not a matter of turning the feel-good factor into flesh

of the said Zebra, still st-t-tuttering in the selfsame wind, lest become glacial
or marrying an old man for his cash - A human e life is full of danger

if also besticles!) Indeed the festivalleties are starting to look good at this point
dolled up banstickles are gesticulating: ???? - a passer-by blows himself up

as one of them drives to the park, finds dead man. Hears sound, runs out
of roe but luckily meets a loud chatting pregnant single woman [crucial test

since I'm only Tolkin in Spingues now] who, alas, what the *&^!!###!~%))((??!!!", which
eyeball-aching mystery is exposed beneath the ballast pile? what fingers

now point back to it, to her, her history, his lack of history, the poem,
a Zebra Song, that spin-dried sliced us foot this summer - we flap in replica.

We flip in La Republica. Text-Dosing in Dallas. It's my mystery now. Yours.
day after day. and the eye s e y e s in our head s s e e the world spinnin g a r o u n d

http://www.bbc.co.uk/collective/tracks/_NOIRSC_joanaspolicewoman_idefy_au.ram
i love it! but, sd I play it now, who'd höre mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen

Authors' Note. The poem was written in January 2007, using online correspondence, as an experiment in collaborative writing in second language.