John Taylor’s translation of Franca Mancinelli‘s « The Boy among the Rocks » has appeared in The Trovaille Review. Near the seaport of Gouvia there is a small beach from which one can see the profile of the island all the way to the city of Corfu; opposite, uninhabited and barren, the mountains on the Greek-Albanian border […]
Read MoreThis article about John Taylor’s translation of Franca Mancinelli‘s The Little Book of Passage (The Bitter Oleander Press) has appeared on Tony’s Reading List: After last week’s reviews took us to Quebec, I fancied a change of location, so we’ll be heading over to Italy for the next couple of posts – and why not? […]
Read MoreFranca Mancinelli‘s sequence « Strands », translated by John Taylor, has been published in Strands. Photos by Mitar Simikić. An excerpt: whatever I can I heat up over the fire. We found a well-made saucepan. Whoever bivouacked here is perhaps already in Germany. A matter of time, money, and luck. Our guide took the money. He drinks […]
Read MoreJohn Taylor’s book Harsh out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos has just appeared at the Cycladic Press. « It was a Saturday afternoon in May, 1979. Elias Petropoulos had started laying a stone walkway behind his and Mary Koukoules’s country home in Coye-la-Forêt, a village located north of Paris. It was […]
Read MoreFranca Mancinelli‘s prose text « Living in the Ideal City », in John Taylor’s translation, has been published in Asymptote. John Taylor’s brief introduction to Mancinelli, followed by the opening passage: Franca Mancinelli (b. 1981) is one of the leading poets of her generation and has received several important prizes in Italy. I have had the pleasure […]
Read MoreCarlo Tosetti has written a fine article about Oblò (Pietre Vive Editore), the Italian translation (by Marco Morello) of Portholes (included in Grassy Stairways, The MadHat Press), and also available in French: Hublots (L’Oeil ébloui). Così come l’altissimo Jorge Luis Borges – penso senza alambiccarsi, ma con superba eleganza – accostò la sconfinata pianura argentina […]
Read MoreThree prose texts by Franca Mancinelli, in John Taylor’s translation, can be found in Trafika Europe (No. 17): « A Very Risky Game », « The Butterfly Cemetery », and « Yielding Words ». These texts, which evoke the author’s childhood in Italy, cast an original light on her verse poetry in At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (The Bitter Oleander […]
Read MoreFour poems by Franca Mancinelli, in John Taylor’s translations, have been published in The Blue Nib (April 11, 2020): one can play dead: arms spread, the backbone for a keel, nothing in the mind, motion like a memory of water. * the day’s come, the wind won’t rise. Running between beacons and beatings—at the dock a […]
Read MoreJohn Taylor’s poem « The Secret » has been published in the Spring 2020 issue of The Bitter Oleander. from « The Secret »: The landscape is interior. * What is high is higher. What is narrow is narrower. What is dark is darker. * What shines like snow shines like ice or pure light. Streams flow […]
Read MoreThe British poet Peter Riley has written these words about Franca Mancinelli‘s « At an Hour’s Sleep from Here » (The Bitter Oleander Press): « . . . Much could be said about how . . . [Franca Mancinelli] will again and again present us with an intimate moment or act which is then effortlessly woven into a […]
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