Rachel Trezise sent WLE a postcard from her visit to India.Postcard reads:The view from a window at Humayyun’s Tomb where I visited following a Carnegie India event organised by Literature Across Frontiers at the Verdica Scholars programme for women in New Delhi. Later I attended the…more
Postcard from India
Rachel Trezise sent WLE a postcard from her visit to India.
Postcard reads:
The view from a window at Humayyun’s Tomb where I visited following a Carnegie India event organised by Literature Across Frontiers at the Verdica Scholars programme for women in New Delhi. Later I attended the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in Trivandrum, Kerala, where I read with novelist and playwright, Hannah Vincent and short story writer, Helen McClory. When in the future I think of India my enduring memory will be of a long hot day at Kovalam Beach discussing the works of Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren with writers from Latvia and Georgia while the street vendors traipsed along the promenade below, hawking textiles and coconuts.
Welsh author Lloyd Markham launched his novel Bad Ideas / Chemicals in Arabic translation at the Cairo Book Fair on 26th January. His visit was organised by Al Arabi Publishing in cooperation with Literature Across Frontiers, with support from Arts Council Wales. The novel had been selected to…more
How did this photo happen? Well let’s start at the beginning.
Late 2017 I threw together an outfit for the Bad Ideas\Chemicals re-launch event (yes – re-launch – like myself my literary child was a late bloomer who needed a second crack to get things right). The outfit was loosely based on what the protagonist of the book Cassandra Fish wears throughout the duration of the story and was comprised chiefly of a “space man” costume purchased from The Joke Shop opposite Cardiff Castle and a custom badge designed by my friend Jenna.
The outfit was intended as a one-off gag for a one-off event, but the photos from that event turned out rather good and were among some of the only high res pictures of me I had – so I ended up sending them out a lot when organisations would ask for Author Photos.
This led to Sherif from Al-Arabi – who had seen the photos – requesting that I bring the costume with me to Cairo for the launch of the Arabic translation of Bad Ideas\Chemicals. I didn’t want to disappoint our hosts so I agreed – thinking I would wear it just for my seminar and then get changed into something more comfy and practical.
Instead immediately afterwards lots of people came forward to speak to me about the costume and the book and I ended up doing a marathon of interviews all while wearing it – culminating in an interview for an Egyptian TV channel that produced the accompanying photo which I will treasure forever.
I feel it captures the essence of the relationship I have to my creative work – Gleeful amateurism. Cheerful disbelief that I am getting away with any of this. Self-effacement disguising self-aggrandisement, disguising self-effacement, and so on. An air of narrowly ducked calamity – like stepping on a rake only for it to miss your nose and there is also a tenner stuck to the handle (but with bubblegum so it’s bit gross peeling it off). And – of course – teeth-shattering levels of tonal dissonance – in this silly photo I am discussing a book that deals with suicide, substance addiction, and domestic abuse – heavy subjects presented by twenty quids worth of silly orange.
There is a lot of discussion in creative spaces about Imposter Syndrome and I believe I may suffer from a variant which I will term ‘Secret Alien Huckster Syndrome.’ At events like this I often feel like I am engaged in a Coen Brothers style farce-conspiracy where my goal is to convince everyone that situations like what is happening in this photo are in fact completely sensible and I am actually a normal Good Words Boy™ who should be listened to and taken seriously. Take me to your leader, etc.
At any rate at least the protagonist of my next book doesn’t spend the whole story in a bikini. I’m not in good shape at the moment.
Poet and performer Rhys Trimble spent the month of December in residence at the Ventspils International Writers' and Translators’ House, writing and translating Latvian poets. The residency was the outcome of several poetry translation workshops organised by Latvian Literature in cooperation with…more
Postcard from Latvia
Poet and performer Rhys Trimble spent the month of December in residence at the Ventspils International Writers' and Translators’ House, writing and translating Latvian poets. The residency was the outcome of several poetry translation workshops organised by Latvian Literature in cooperation with Literature Across Frontiers which brought Rhys to Latvia and Latvian poets to Wales.
Post card reads:
efficacy that
dissolves
in your
blood
spiritus loci
firebrick enclosure
turn your malleable fire
into a compulsion to
inexpressiveness
and yet
all expression//
coming to Ventspils house
represents my 7th visit to Latvia. This is a place, as described by Ieva Balode which provides whatever is needed by writers. Be it silence, shelter, support, a place to focus, a residency that provides in some cases political respite from oppressive regimes. The house isn’t asking for constant updates: a quota from a literary salt-mine. This open attitude like all true facilitation or good management produces ample results as evinced by shelves full of books written and translated in the library. I may now be able to add to them. I came here under some stress but the weight of industrious writers-past has pressed me down, compelled me to tease out the threads of my manifold projects and start to weave together and knot the fraying parts. I would recommend the international writer’s house at Ventspils to any writer who wishes to become part of its embodiment of a quiet kind of literary graft.
