There ought to be a law against Henry coming around… Weird that I have never read anyone point out that Bob Dylan's ”Ballad of a Thin Man” is something of an homage to Berrymans Dream Songs. Is it too obvious of a point? Anyway Id be interested to know if theres any mention of this anywhere?

Might be a couple more additions to the lineup 🤫 but here's what we have in store for Wednesday! Starting AWP on a high note

New books from Action Books coming this spring! Two Poems by Jaime Saenz (trans Schluter/Dodson) and Call the Necromancer by Leia Penina Wilson. The Saenz includes the long poems The Cold and Death at the Very Touch. Both visionary masterpieces.

"Memory is mortal. Some evenings, Billie Holiday lays her sick rose in my ears." - Antonio Gamoneda (trans. Hedeen/Nunez)

"Almadhoun, formed in the crucible of diaspora and residing now between Stockholm and Berlin, is more an Aimé Césaire refreshed for an age of post-9/11 neoliberalism and identity politics." - Alex Tan on Ghayath Almadhoun's I Have Brought You A Severed Hand clereviewofbooks.com/ghayath-alma...

"The voice in the poem is not your friend." - Sean Bonney

Because it's Valentine's Hating love Roque Dalton Without your hands my heart is the enemy in my chest.

I wrote a substack post about the superb podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" and Bob Dylan, genius, corruption, mimicry: open.substack.com/pub/johannes...

rarefilmm.com/2017/07/abis... Wuthering Heights? A blatant hacienda melodrama that camps out on poverty row, pushing mediocre actors & hyperbolic montage to the max, before blasting triumphantly into the stratosphere, Luis Bunuel's 1954 Mexican version is a true surrealist classic.

The wheel upon which Minnesota broke them

Great to see a lot of groundbreaking new work in translation from the Scandinavian countries. This morning Im reading Mette Moestrup’s brilliant To the Most Beautiful (trans Ögaard-Jensen, @coimpress.bsky.social ) which uses nine different formal system (”magical machines”) to engage with Beauty.

ICE AGENTS ARE FOLLOWING OBSERVERS TO THEIR HOMES. THEY ARE DOING THE EXACT SHIT JOHNSON SAYS IS INTOLERABLE!

This is the 38th time that the U.S. military has unlawfully killed civilians on the orders of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. At least 130 people — never charged with crimes, their identities unknown to their executioners — are now dead.

Had a discussion about this yesterday so I'm posting a link to it again. And to @neonpajamas.bsky.social 's prompts. I think I called it a "haiku" bc of the snow: "The poems which maybe at first were written in a crystal ink were meant to protect me against the snow’s beautiful gestures"

Read six poems by Ann Jäderlund, translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson, in WPR 8: worldpoetryreview.org/2023/05/17/a... WPR is currently open for submissions for issue 13! Translators of poetry encouraged to apply! worldpoetryreview.org/submissions/ #translation #poetry #poems #poem

Joyelle McSweeney on Claude Cahun: "the writing is rambunctious with puns and made singular by its instinct to drive all syntaxes toward the plural. It's also stylish, sexy, and funny, a kind of handbook of what Cahun called "angel slang." hyperallergic.com/claude-cahun...

AWP 💥 BALTIMORE 🚨 Mark your calendars‼️ It’s all happening on March 4. See you there?

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

This is really excellent, glad to see you given the space to go big with this @jamellebouie.net www.nytimes.com/video/opinio...

An observer arrested in Suth Minneapolis. Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune

More parenting poems... I think this was when they watched Spirited Away or something like that.

Super happy to share "Haiku Against the Police" from @neonpajamas.bsky.social 's "Sunday Poem" feature. It's the first poem I've published from my new manuscript, The Adorations, and it's a signaling from the flames. (Also please post your responses to the prompts.)

"I’m not sloppy, I’m meticulous. Working on sonnets or something like that would also be fun, but that’s so old-fashioned, and I want to communicate with the contemporary world and find a new language, not show off conventional skillfulness." - Aase Berg Interview: paulsemel.com/exclusive-in...

Third poetry book of the year was Aase's Death by Aase Berg translated by @johannesg.bsky.social. Spare and uncomprising, these small poems left a big impression, taking the reader to the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the heart with a dark humor and wisdom in simplicity.

@jamellebouie.net is correct again. But it's really not a complex solution. It's common sense. End this authoritarian BS.

Today at 34 & Park in Minneapolis, a woman tried to drive down the street where a protest had broken out in front of a home ICE was raiding, saying she had a doctor apt to get to. ICE agents busted out her windows, cut off her seatbelt, and pulled her out before arresting her.

ICE kidnap 17-year-old U.S. citizen working at Target then dump him bleeding and crying miles away in a Walmart parking lot… 🤬

"I never consciously start with an explicit theme, because the purpose is to learn something new about the world + influence it in my own way. At least push some small particle in the universe around. I feel like some kind of quantum ghost. The book writes itself once I get started." - Aase Berg

"Giving up, no matter how much you want to, doesn’t work." Aase Berg interviewed by Paul Semel about her latest book, Aase's Death paulsemel.com/exclusive-in...

Aase Berg tr. @johannesg.bsky.social

AOC: What we saw today was a criminal murder a woman while she was trying to flee for her life. What we saw today was a manifestation of every American’s worst nightmare: their government turning into a tyranny.

This was a fantastic event. Great poetry, great vibes. Brought joy and defiance into my heart. Expertly organized and curated by @neonpajamas.bsky.social . Also what a bar The Whistler is. Like a black lodge of poetry.

Looking forward to this reading. I'll read some poems from Aase's Death and some of my new poems. Really looking forward to this. Hope to see you there, Chicagoans.

Strong recommend for this approach to reading Spencer's Faerie Queene (and vice versa)...

this is kinda it. I'm posting and flailing and irl just havin a fuckin Saturday I guess because what is there? but it sucks. the US destabilizing governments wantonly for a century plus sucks.

I haven't had time to write any Substack essays for months but I did write one this morning about the year that passed - about Chile and my mom and flowers and the poetry I did and did not write: open.substack.com/pub/johannes...

Here's a good thread with tips for poetry in translation -

Excited to have the long title poem of the new book ms in the latest Notre Dame Review alongside some of my favorite poets— especially @rodrigo-toscano.bsky.social and @richard-siken.bsky.social and @dylanwk.bsky.social and @samuelamadon.bsky.social Thanks so so much to @johannesg.bsky.social

Samuel Beckett on longing Cascando the hours after you are gone are so leaden they will always start dragging too soon

"In a handful of words, that evokes the haunting glimpses of nature found throughout this collection, as well as the way that Berg establishes a sense of the familiar turning alien. Aase’s Death memorably juxtaposes the cosmic and the quotidian, and it gives this book a disquieting energy."

NEXT NEON NIGHT MIC! 📚 @blackoceanbooks.bsky.social takeover edition, celebrating the launch of AASE’S DEATH by Swedish author Aase Berg (translated by Johannes Göransson) 🎤 Johannes Göransson 🎤 Hedgie Choi 🎤 Paul Cunningham 🎤 Carrie Olivia Adams 🎤 Brian Foley 🎤 Nathan Hoks

"I Love The Perfect Theft You Write That You Have Wept Enough Tears To Wash All My Clothes But Have You Seen My Closet You have Lost The Ticket Before The Theater Is Even Built Black Horsese In Your Alley Black Horses In Your Alley" Some early Bruno K Öijer

”And wanting to live in Maria Callas’s voice. And not having money. And waiting for payment from poetry.” Wow this poem by Afrizal Malna… i dont want to read anything else for a week or ten. (Trans Daniel Owen)

"You know very well that God gouges out the eyes of flowers, as his obsession is blindness." - Huidobro

There will be a special Aase Berg night in Chicago in January. I will read with a bunch of Chicago writers to welcome my translation of Berg's AASE'S DEATH into the world. Thanks to @neonpajamas.bsky.social for organizing, for foregrounding translation.

"fervent and propulsive. devastating and sublime." - Christine Shan Shan Hou on Summer in Goodreads (lol I'm the last person in the world to discover Goodreads) www.goodreads.com/book/show/62...

The racism and incompetence of AI.