An ephemeral site specific public art work featuring two poems by Czech poets Milan Děžinský and Kateřina Rudčenková (whose books Secret Life and Selected Poems are published in English by Blue Diode Publishing and Parthian Books respectively). Penned onto the tarmac using ECO biodegradable paint the poems bring the street to life and put a smile on your face.
Translated by Nathan Fields
Discover one of the finest exponents of the current renaissance of Czech poetry through Nathan Fields’s fluent translations – Milan Děžinský’s collection of poems was recently published by Blue Diode Publishing.
Milan Děžinský’s poems twist and turn through murky forests and dig into the debris of the world: its hidden motivations, overlooked objects, and mysterious wounds. From the “dead-motionless floating island,/ sinking into the shadows” to the hazelnut that’s been “burrowing all the way to the bottom” of the muesli bowl, Děžinský brings the otherwise unseen into eerie half-light. This collection is unsettling, concise, dark, mischievous, and emotionally astute. It’s a great opportunity to discover one of the finest exponents of the current renaissance of Czech poetry, through Nathan Fields’s fluent translations.“Milan Děžinský writes at ‘the edge of the ordinary’, about the ‘secret life’ of the seemingly mundane – there are poems here about a bowl of muesli, the armpit of a TV star, ironing, slicing bread. But his work is also full of surprises and traps, mined with philosophy, allusion, and existential dread. Piercing in their truthfulness, Děžinský’s masterly poems will not allow us to unsee the ‘celery’s fuse’.” – Clare Pollard “All hail to Nathan Fields, and Blue Diode, for drawing our attention to Milan Děžinský’s A Secret Life – his flights inside ‘monstrous banality’ to extract ‘the one atom of oxygen that Cleopatra exhaled’. Wry and invertedly-romantic, slyly humorous, yet drawn to the telling, grim detail that wakes us up; rarely has stoic pessimism been so gorgeously gilded…” – Matthew Caley
Tomatoes
Milan DěžinskýYellow and rusty layer of leaves
peel like old skin,
light sprays along houses, cars, fences
pours over a greyish face in the window – it’s me,
life behind me, another life before it
in a series of small movements.
This moment is only a delay:
tomatoes,
waiting blankly at the executioner’s block,
on the verge of exploding and sourly burning
the impression of morning,
scorch the light,
burn the face.
Victorious tomatoes.
A SECRET LIFE
by Milan Děžinský
Translated by Nathan Fields
Publication: 20 July 2021
ISBN 978-1-9164051-6-5
70 pages
£10
www.bluediode.co.uk
Kateřina Rudčenková – Dream of a Journey: Selected Poems
Translated by Alexandra Büchler
A book of poems by Czech poet, prose writer and author of stage plays Kateřina Rudčenková selected from her four poetry books and translated by the editor/translator Alexandra Büchler were released in October by Parthian Books.
Kateřina Rudčenková’s fourth collection was awarded the Magnesia Litera prize for 2014 in the category of poetry.
On her debut work, the collection Ludwig (Klokočí, 1999):
‘In the poetry collection Ludwig, every word emanates cranked-up destruction, and at the same time it is as if this motion slowly shifts whole images into other places and other bodies.’ – Marie Langerová, Lidové noviny
On her fourth collection, Walking on Dunes (Fra, 2013):
‘[The poems] emanate carefulness, circumspection and patient consideration. The groundwork for most of them is composed of movement, specifically walking. Walking serves as a source of inner strength which pulses throughout this outwardly calm and patient collection.’ – Markéta Kittlová, iLiteratura
Born in Prague in 1976, Kateřina Rudčenková is a poet, prose writer and author of stage plays. Winner of the German Hubert Burda prize (2003) and the Magnesia Litera (2014), she secured second place in the drama competition the Alfréd Radok Awards (2006). Her poems and plays have been published in German, English and Slovene. Rudčenková is also the author of four stage plays; for Niekur she was awarded 2nd place in the Alfréd Radok Awards, and it was staged by the Prague theatre Divadlo Ungelt.
Nights
Kateřina Rudčenková
Mostly warm nights with windows open wide
are filled with cries and sobs.
Visitors are invisible through treetops.
This is where the year draws to an end.
A student who is a pedestrian in the street
and a drowning man at sea
becomes a tiny saintin some family alcove.
There, the night has come. You’ll know me
by my footsteps and the shape of my shadow.
DREAM OF A JOURNEY: SELECTED POEMS
By Kateřina Rudčenková
Translated by Alexandra Büchler
Publisher: Parthian Books
ISBN: 9781913640545
Number of pages: 120
www.parthianbooks.com
