Four 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 […]
Read MoreA little film about At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (The Bitter Oleander Press), by Franca Mancinelli, translated from the Italian by John Taylor
Read MoreThe poetic sequence « Postcards for a Landscape » has been published in the third issue of the January Review. Postcards for a Landscape earth, an obscure page: what happens is written shatters and crumbles in the darkness reaches meaning, is lost. * the sea changes the earth moves through furrows, rows of sowing, roads that […]
Read MoreThe Italian poet Elvio Ceci reads excerpts from Oblò (Pietre Vive Editore) for the project « Poetry Wall ». Here is the video.
Read MoreThe Italian poet Elvio Ceci has written this fine article about Oblò (translated by Marco Morello, illustrations by Caroline François-Rubino, postface by Franca Mancinelli, Pietre Vive editore), the Italian translation of Portholes: « Dalla finestra di casa il sole forte disegna lo spazio, mentre la sabbia sembra perdere la forma. Dal cellulare la luce brilla e […]
Read MoreFranca Mancinelli and John Taylor have translated a poem by Paul B. Roth for the Italian literary website Interno Poesia: Midnight Blue After snowy headlights blotch the hotel lobby’s ignored fica, fern and spider plant shadows and its elevator goes up before coming down, noise filled streets are muffled by slush swirling round the mushy […]
Read MoreCycladic Press has published John Taylor’s memoir Harsh out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos. Elias Petropoulos was the most controversial Greek writer of the twentieth century. Imprisoned three times during the Junta (1967-1974) and persecuted by Greek judges as late as the 1980s, this poet and « urban folklorist » produced a […]
Read MoreExcerpts from Franca Mancinelli‘s « Croatian Notebook, » in John Taylor’s translation, have appeared in The Fortnightly Review. Here is an excerpt from the excerpts: I DON’T KNOW why I’m here. Perhaps I have obeyed the sound of broken branches, which reaches me from this unknown language, like walking in a dense forest. There is something immediately familiar […]
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