#belgian women poets an anthology

[soracities]

Marie Nizet, from “The Torch,” Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology, edited and trans. Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran (ID in ALT)

[lulavvpoetry]

"To hold your hand once more, to come and wake the dawn."

-Françoise Delcarte, from Here I desire nothing.. Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology

[wordsintheattic]

"I am a dancing flame, a forlorn brasier, a torch that burns alone."

-Marie Nizet, from “The Torch,” Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology, (ed. and trans. Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

Your light, my shadow, And nothing around us but void, Void and sun

Nicole Houssa, from Twilight Narcissus; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[majestativa]

This is you, poetry, disturbing and disturbed: plunging into dark waters, to find the brightness of pulpous dawns.

Jeanine Moulin, Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology

[jhonanthonycandidato]

Written Work #4

MARJORIE EVASCO

Marjorie Evasco is an award- winning Filipino poet, born in Maribojoc, Bohol on September 21, 1953. She writes in two languages: English and Cebuano-Visayan and is a supporter of women's rights, especially of women writers. Marjorie Evasco is one of the earliest Filipina feminist poets. She is a recipient of the S.E.A.

BIOGRAPHY

Born into a family of teachers who were "always talking English", she was brought up and educated as a Roman Catholic and her formative years in school were spent under the tutelage of German and Belgian nuns. Evasco and her family then moved to Manila. She finished her B.A. in 1973 from Divine Word College of Tagbilaran, Masteral Degree in Creative Writing in 1982 at Silliman University and her Doctor of Philosophy in Literature (Ph.D. Litt.) at De La Salle University-Manila. She became a member of the faculty at De La Salle University, while completing her doctoral degree in 1998.For many years, she was Director of DLSU's Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center. She is currently a University Fellow at the same university.

WORKS

Evasco's prize-winning poetry books are: Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987) and Ochre Tones: Poems in English and Cebuano (1999). Ochre Tones was launched last May 1997 at National Artist Edith L. Tiempo's residence on Montemar (Sibulan, Negros Oriental). Evasco calls this volume a " book of changes," following Dreamweavers which for her was a " book of origins."

She is currently working on a third poetry collection and hopes to finish it soon.

Evasco's other books include A Legacy of Light: 100 Years of Sun Life in the Philippines, Six Women Poets: Inter/Views (co-authored, with Edna Manlapaz), Kung Ibig Mo: Love Poetry by Women (co-edited with Benilda Santos, A Life Shaped by Music: Andrea O. Veneracion and the Philippine Madrigal Singers and ANI: The Life and Art of Hermogena Borja Lungay, Boholano Painter

Evasco was a founding member of two organizations espousing the cause of women writers: Writers Involved in Creating Cultural Alternatives (WICCA) and Women in Literary Arts (WILA). She has written many essays on women's poetry, several of them finding their place in various anthologies.

She served as editor of a special issue of Ani in 1998 that featured writings and art work by Filipino women.

She is an associate fellow of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC).

In September 2002, she was invited for a three-month residency at the International Writing Program in the University of Iowa.

  ©  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Evasco

[chpinthestacks]

In The Stacks with Su Hwang: Muses

Poet Su Hwang was awarded a 2017 In The Stacks residency at Dickinson House, a space for writers and artists in East Flanders, Belgium. Over the next several weeks, she’ll share stories and photos from her time in residence. This is her fourth dispatch from Dickinson House.

Every creative friend who’s been at a residency over the years has said that group chemistry can make or break a residency experience, even with all the fixings and prestige up the wazoo. It’s essentially online dating for artists and writers to form fruitful communities, but what are the chances/algorithm of a perfect match? This means some group dynamics can be pretty awful––from annoying to awkward to atomic. Some can leave you feeling absolutely nothing, nada, and sometimes, that’s even worse. Then there’s the fairy tale, the stuff of fiction: something that can take your breath away. With larger residencies, you can sidestep cliquey baloney by disappearing into a work-wormhole or letting your introvert flag fly really high (both tactics at my disposal), but at Dickinson House or other intimate, personal residencies with only three of you or less, it’s really luck of the draw, or rather, flip of a Flemish coin. And because of these odds, I’m grateful for the serendipitous outcome of having Asiya and Arra share this amazing experience with me. It was truly poet-love at first sight.

It’s like we read each other’s minds from the moment we first arrived in East Flanders. Conversation was easy and natural––unpacking could wait. That said, we immediately respected each other’s need for solitude to think, rest, and get our work done during the day (in whatever capacity) yet each night we lingered after dinner over a bottle of wine to chat about the poetry of H.D. or Edna St. Vincent Millay with Eireann, the wonders and perils of love, or the state of our messed up world. We took bike rides to nearby villages for supplies which also included detours for cold Belgian brews, or a daytrip to the delightful city of Ghent where they were such great sports about letting me make them stand in front of random doorways and pose for pictures, etc., etc. These are independent, passionate, driven women we’re talking about!

Asiya’s debut collection

crosslight for youngbird

 will be published by Nightboat Press early next year. Originally from Washington DC, she is currently based in Brooklyn, NY but also has roots in the Bay Area. A Stanford and UC Berkeley grad with a Masters in Urban Planning, Asiya came to poetry “late” like me, but has bloomed like nothing/no one else. She received a prestigious grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and is one of a select few writers awarded a studio on Governor’s Island this year. She has always been a voracious reader and is one of those naturally gifted people in whatever she puts her mind to, having traveled to Europe and Africa for past humanitarian projects, and is you know, training for some big race, among a million other worthwhile things. And of course, she happens to be the raddest, sweetest, coolest human on earth. She is currently writing about bodies of water as metaphor for the heartbreaking refugee crisis gripping Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and is hoping to work with a forensic scientist based in Milan who is attempting to identify the remains of those found in the water. Asiya’s sparkling mind and generous spirit struck me right away, and the more time I spent with her, the more in awe I became. She is a fearless, spectacular poet, and there isn’t anything Asiya can’t master.

Arra’s beautiful first book Seedlip and Sweet Apple was published by Milkweed Editions, which involved extensive research and gorgeous leaps of the imagination. I’ve come to really admire her precision of language and powerful images. Arra is currently juggling several ambitious projects while she balances teaching a full load of creative writing classes at Saginaw Valley State University in central Michigan. She organizes the Voices in the Valley Reading Series (that has brought writers like Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith), and tends to her fixer upper home and gardens with her husband, nine-year-old son, a new puppy named Warrior and two cats. Arra, who has a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a Minnesota native and still has familial ties to my adopted home state. A bit shy at the outset, it didn’t take long for Arra to come out of her shell, and oh what an inner life! Her compassion with her stark honesty about herself and the world around her is something I value and respect so much. Not only that, she is truly a gifted poet. While at Dickinson House, she completed her longstanding project in which she studied the very specific and complex form in John Berryman’s seminal long poem, “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.” This project about the very real highs and very real lows of motherhood ends with 99 eight-line stanzas (that’s 792 lines, and Berryman only got to 59!). Simply mind-blowing!

I can write a novel about Asiya and Arra, but I’m bound to a certain word count here, so I’ll just add links to their fellowship proposals for Dickinson house and you can find out more about how awesome they are! We came hungry for adventure, openness, time to work on our writing, and fun! We left with meaningful friendships. Asiya Wadud and Arra Lynn Ross––remember these names––I’ll never forget them. (I hope to have them come to the Twin Cities in the fall for a reading/panel discussion, stay tuned!)

http://dickinsonhouse.be/possibility/meet-our-2017-fellows-asiya-wadud/

http://dickinsonhouse.be/possibility/meet-our-2017-fellows-arra-lynn-ross/

Su Hwang received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota in May 2016 and was a 2016-17 recipient of the Loft Literary Center’s Minnesota Emerging Writer Grant. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she grew up in New York then moved to San Francisco before transplanting to the Twin Cities. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Drunken Boat, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, and Poets.org.

[suning111]

Your light, my shadow, And nothing around us but void, Void and sun Nicole Houssa, from Twilight Narcissus; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[soracities]

I am a dancing flame, A forlorn brasier, a torch that burns alone.

Marie Nizet, from “The Torch,” Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology, (ed. and trans. Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

He ran with the wind He sleeps in my heart

Madeleine Biefnot, from He came...; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

I would come [...] madly, in the new moon’s glimmer.

Anne-Marie Kegels, from Farewell to Memory; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

I want the night to die. I want to die in you.

Françoise Delcarte, from Here I desire nothing…; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

And I, for loving you, will have My hands flecked with salt spray, My lips bruised by blades of grass.

Françoise Delcarte, from Here I desire nothing…; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

[...] she is blue. Blue as the peacock, blue as the starless night, blue as the faces of the dead

Andrée Sodenkamp, from Chinese Statuette; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

All I have for loving him is a dress of air and leaves but dawn has graced me with birds.

Madeleine Biefnot, from He came…; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)

[megairea]

Before noon death is behind us in hot pursuit. After noon death walks by our side.

Claire Lejeune, from Scoria; Belgian Women Poets: An Anthology (ed. & tr. by Renée Linkhorn and Judy Cochran)