Mercury Project

MERCURY PROJECT poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski 18 pp. paper. staple-bound. Cover design based on a painting by the author. Toad Press, 2008 $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Mercury Project here & add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About: GRZEGORZ WRÓBLEWSKI was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland; he has lived in Copenhagen since 1985. He has published seven volumes of poetry and a collection of short prose pieces in Poland, three books of poetry, a book of poetic prose and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark, and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also published a selection of plays. His work has been translated into five languages. English translations of his poems have appeared in London Magazine, Poetry London, Magma Poetry, Parameter Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Delinquent, Chicago Review, 3rd bed, Eclectica, Mississippi Review, Absinthe, Common Knowledge, Practice: New Writing + Art, Jacket Magazine, and in various anthologies including Altered State: The New Polish Poetry, Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird, and A Generation Defining Itself - In Our Own Words. His selected poems Our Flying Objects was published by Equipage Press in 2007, and the chapbook These Extraordinary People was published by erbacce-press in 2008. Excerpt: Read more excerpts (and something nice about us in Polish): http://cycgada.art.pl/?p=1055 More on Grzegorz Wróblewski at Jacket2 and the Project for Innovative Poetry .

The Factory of the Past

THE FACTORY OF THE PAST poems by Mariana Marin translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Daniela Hurezanu 35 pp. paper. staple bound. Toad Press, 2008, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Factory of the Past here & add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About: MARIANA MARIN was considered one of Romania’s most important poets at the time she died at the age of forty-seven in 2003. During the Ceausescu dictatorship, Marin was one of the very few intellectuals who dared to speak up against the regime. As a consequence, she was silenced for much of the 1980s—“an unpublishable poet, a heavy cross,” as she tells us. Her uncompromising attitude can be seen in her poems even when she is not directly political, as is the case with many of her later poems, such as the ones that appear in this book. But during dictatorships everything becomes political, and even her descriptions of the quotidian are pained records of a historical time when private life cannot be separated from the political. Similarly, her “Love Poems” are bitter and unsentimental, not unlike her “Elegies.” For Marin, as for other Eastern European writers, happiness was a foreign country. Mariana Marin published five books of poems in Romanian. The poems here are from her 1999 collection, The Mutilation of the Artist as a Young Woman, which won a number of major prizes. In 2002, the Romanian Writers Museum Publishing House (Bucharest) issued a career retrospective, The Dowry of Gold, including a handful of new, previously uncollected poems—her last, as it turned out. A selection of Marin’s poems, Paper Children, was published in 2006 (Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling Presse). Excerpt: Love Poem Do you remember when you used to play Apocalypse with me? When you counted my days, so very few, on the marbles that never brought luck? Why do you keep whining? My little fortune of illusions lies crushed in the dust with the muses tricked out in motley, feasting on dead swans. Now it’s your turn to count the Beast’s heads. Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Stare hard in your mirror, find me if you can.

Submission Information

Toad Press accepts open submissions of chapbook-length translations for the International Chapbook Series each year between October 1 and December 31. We now accept submissions by email only. Send ~14-24 pages of poetry or prose, a cover sheet with name and contact information, table of contents (if applicable), and acknowledgements page (if applicable) to us at toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com. Please attach your work as a .doc or .rtf file and put the word "submission" somewhere in the subject line of the email. Toad Press publishes between 1 and 3 chapbooks a year. Chapbooks accepted for publication will appear the following Summer/Fall. Payment is in copies only. There is no reading fee. Questions? Email toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com

Fernando de Rojas Asleep on His Own Hand

FERNANDO DE ROJAS ASLEEP ON HIS OWN HAND A book of aphorisms by Rafael Ballesteros translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart 20pp. paper. staple-bound. Cover photography by Sean Bernard Toad Press 2007, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Fernando de Rojas Asleep on his own Hand here & add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About: RAFAEL BALLESTEROS (1938-) lives in the Mediterranean city of Málaga. He was a member of Spain’s national legislature and helped draft its post-Franco constitution. Ballesteros is the author of numerous works of poetry and criticism, including the collection of poems Los dominios de la emoción which was released in 2003 by Pre-textos (Valencia, Spain). In 2010 he won the Premio Andalucía de la Críticia for his novel La Muerte Tiene la Cara Azul (Death Has a Blue Face). Ballesteros is also the founder of Editorial Veramar, a publisher of experimental literature from Spain. Excerpt: They asked me, In truth, who are the most harmful men in these realms? I answered immediately, Those who speak to us of eternity.

Woman Bathing Light to Dark

WOMAN BATHING LIGHT TO DARK prose poems by Paul Eluard translated from the French by Justin Vicari 21pp paper, staple-bound. Cover photo courtesy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Toad Press 2006, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Woman Bathing Light to Dark here & add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About: Paul Éluard was born in France in 1895. In 1920 he met Andre Breton, the influential founder of the Surrealist movement. Éluard became an official member of this movement in 1924. Éluard’s many books include: Duty and Disturbance (1917), Animals and Their Men, Men and Their Animals (1920), Repetitions (1922), Dying of Not Dying (1924), Capital of Sadness (1926), Love, Poetry (1929), Immediate Life (1932), Public Rose (1934), Fertile Eyes (1938), Political Poems (1948), and The Phoenix (1951). He died in 1952. Excerpt: From Zero He places a bird on the table and closes the shades. He fixes his hair, his hair in his hands is softer than a bird. She tells the future. And I’m in charge of making it come true. The bruised heart, the aching soul, the broken hands, the white hair, the prisoners, the entire water covers me like a raw wound.

Of the Same Mind

-- click book cover to read OF THE SAME MIND online --

OF THE SAME MIND

poems by Jóhann Hjálmarsson
translated from the Icelandic by C.M.Burawa

41 pp. paper. staple-bound.
cover photograph by Jóra Jóhannsdottir
Toad Press 2005, $5.00

We're sold out of this title, but there are a couple copies left at The Lost Bookshelf.
Even better, you can read it online via ISSUU, here.
You can purchase our other titles here.
And, don't forget to add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

JÓHANN HJÁLMARSSON is one of Iceland’s premier poets. He has published 18 books of poetry and seven collections of international poetry in translation. In 1961, after his first book, Hjalmarsson moved to Spain to study romance languages at the University of Barcelona, where he began translating the French post-symbolists, French and Latin American surrealists, modernist and post-modernist American poets into Icelandic. He returned to Iceland and began a career as an arts reviewer and travel writer for the country’s largest circulating newspaper, Morgunblaðið. He was presented with an Icelandic Parliament Award in 2003 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Icelandic literature as a poet and translator.


Read more about Jóhann Hjálmarsson and see some translations by C.M. Burawa on the Project for Innovative Poetry blog.

Read an interview with C.M. Burawa at The Writer's Center.


Lyle Daggett writes that these are "Remarkable poems, quiet and meditative, by a poet of contemporary Iceland, filled with ocean waves and rock, gray sky and birds' wings, blackberries and silence, mingled with sudden scenes of the modern busy world." Read more on his blog.




Excerpt:



OF THE SAME MIND


I once saw birds of like mind arrive.
I hid

as they flew in from the south
bound for the north
to their summer on the glacier.

Those that made it were met by storm,
yet still sang to each other
as they recovered by the bare trees.

The trees began shooting the youngest birds
when I—
who had intended to flee with them—
noticed that July was over.

A young girl with red lips
laughed at me
from below the surface of a blue spring.

I drank from her shadow.