From Lokis (1869) by Prosper Mérimée

“We are now coming into a forest, Professor, where the kingdom of the animals still flourishes—the matecznik, the womb, the great nursery of beasts. According to our national traditions, no one has yet penetrated its depths; no one has been able to reach to the heart of these woods and thickets, except for poets and magicians, who can travel everywhere. […] Lions, bears, elks, the joubrs, our wild oxen or aurochs, all live very happily together. The mammoth, who is preserved there, is highly thought of; he is, I believe, the Marshal of the Diet.”

Matecznik News

New publication

I’m delighted to announce the publication of waterlines, the first collection by Élodie Laügt, which will soon be available to order on the website. Here, to whet your appetite, is the short text Élodie wrote for the back cover:

‘waterlines is an invitation to follow penelope as one wait ends and another begins, in renewed invention. she paints rather than weaves, and distances shift as a result. each of the poems in this precise collection measures these transformations and displacements.’

How Do We Talk About Knives

We’re delighted to announce the date and venue of our forthcoming (excuse the pun!) Stirling launch. If you’re in the vicinity of the Book Nook, it would be great to see you there:

Stirling: Forth Fridays at the Book Nook, Friday 24 May, 7pm. [Link TBC]. Readers: Marcas, Laura Fyfe - others TBC.

Beth McDonough has written an excellent review of How Do We Talk About Knives, together with Jean Taylor’s Litany of Coal, in DURA (Dundee University Review of the Arts): https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2023/12/19/where-and-who-we-are-two-pamphlets/?fbclid=IwAR05yDT94t3wAj2UtTBLApTQkPqXsAZ_mKbDN0Nw4OqwCuXUFf36MjYLI34

Listen to Vahid Davar being interviewed by Mary Blance for The Books Programme on BBC Radio Shetland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001t8qt

Interview with Vahid Davar

Poet and gallery owner Beth Junor has recorded an interview with Vahid, now available to view on Beth’s website: https://junorgallery.scot/art-and-poetry-videos/

The full text of Vahid’s contemporary epic, Nassim’s Testament, appears in English and Persian in the Atlas of the World, an artist book created by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, a Dubai-based artist collective from Iran. The Atlas was exhibited at Laurel Parker Book studio in Romainville near Paris this summer:

https://www.laurelparkerbook.com/en/projects/rrhv-atlas-of-the-world/

‘Portrait of a Poet’ by Lindsay Macgregor

For a while now I’ve been meaning to post new poems that have impressed me by poets whose work I admire. You can find the first of these, ‘Portrait of a Poet’ by Lindsay Macgregor, in the ‘Poems’ section of the website. Lindsay’s new collection, Desperate Fishwives, has just been published by Molecular Press; if you’d like to purchase a copy - which I’d strongly recommend - you can contact Lindsay directly: 7lindsay12@gmail.com/