European Poetry Anthology (Croatia PEN Centre)
Nine years in the making, the 500-page European Poetry Anthology Ima li pjesnika u Monte Carlu?, edited by Damir Šodan, was published by Croatia PEN Centre this summer. It includes four poems from my first book Spitting Out the Mother Tongue (Wurm Press, 2011) , in Šodan's translation into Croatian. The anthology - whose title roughly translates as Are There any Poets in Monte Carlo? - gathers poetry from across the continent through the work of one poet 'representing' each European nation, or in some cases like Cyprus and Ireland of two (one for each official language). It was conceived by Šodan in the wake of Poetry Parnassus , a week-long festival at Southbank Centre part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, in which (almost) every nation in the world was represented by one poet, and in which Šodan and I both participated . The anthology was launched in Zagreb last June on what was the tenth anniversary of Poetry Parnassus. (Incidental...