Even though Milan Šelj is a translator of poetry from English into Slovene, and has lived in the UK and spoken English on an everyday basis for some time, Tracing the Unspoken is his first book in English (he has published four poetry collections and a novel in Slovenia). What a daring debut it is. …
Read more “#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews TRACING THE UNSPOKEN by Milan Šelj”
This book offers a very intricate, highly precise collage of images, each capturing something about the times we live in. It shows various versions of the discontent and crises that have become the trademark of our era. Each chapter can be read as a short story – at least that was how I started my …
Read more “#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews PIXEL by Krisztina Tóth”
I delved eagerly into this book, excited to have the chance to learn more about the Bauhaus outside of my more usual art-historian context. The book tells the story of a Bauhaus student, Luise Schilling, who first does a stint in Weimar and then, after a three-year break, comes back to study at the Bauhaus …
Read more “#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews BLUEPRINT by Theresia Enzensberger”
These are very intimate poems; reading them is like peeping into somebody’s private space or spying between the pages of a diary that was written only for the author herself. There is, therefore, a lot of fragility here; the poet is delicately exposing herself to us. One does feel like an intruder at times, even, …
Read more “#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews TIDAL EVENTS. SELECTED POEMS by Mária Ferenčuhová”
This is the fifth volume in the Periscope series of translated poetry by the New York-based publisher A Midsummer Night’s Press, following One is None by Kätlin Kaldmaa, Anything Could Happen by Jana Putrle Srdić, Dissection by Care Santos and Caravan Lullabies by Ilzė Butkutė (the last was reviewed in The Baltic Riveter last year). All of these books are pocket-size. And I mean it: …
Read more “#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews HAVING NEVER MET by Inga Pizāne”