Un lapin francaise visite a Edimbourg!

We're delighted to be hosting Sylvain, the French travelling Moulin Roty bunny from Cottontails Baby! He is equally delighted to have found a shelf of French books in our flat!

You can read more over on Crafty Green Poet here.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more!

The Languages I Speak (and some I Don't)

Nà totally made my day recently by telling me I write Italian very well and asking if I had studied it at University! I was very flattered, but no, I only studied it for two years at evening classes at the Institute for Applied Language Studies, in Edinburgh. I have worked hard extra to that in learning grammar at home and reading a lot in Italian. It helps that I enjoy a lot of Italian writers, especially Italo Calvino and Alessandro Barrico. I also read the Italian magazine Focus, which is a wonderfully bizarre magazine, full of articles about weird things. I watch a fair number of Italian films too (the Italian Film Festival starts this weekend!!!). I've found Italian much easier to learn than either German or French, both of which I studied at school. I learnt French for five years at school and have done little with it since, though I did a year of evening classes and sometimes read in French as well as watching a fair number of French films. My real problem with French is that I can't hear it very well! German I studied for three years in school but have always used it since, I've visited Germany more often than any other country and have several German friends, some of whom I even speak German with! German is hard work though, all those long words and endless sentences with the verbs at the end.... I use both German and Italian for work sometimes. I can understand Spanish quite well because its very similar to Italian, but I can't speak it, mostly for exactly the same reason.... I can speak a few phrases of Polish, as I was on an archeology dig over there once. I keep meaning to learn a bit more as there are so many Polish people over here now, but its a very difficult language and I don't expect to get beyond the very basics. Gaelic is a language so strange and incomprehensible (to make the present tense you use the future tense - how weird is that!) that I don't think I'll ever get past Hello, a fact not helped that whenever we visit 'Gaelic speaking' areas of Scotland, we never find anyone who speaks the language! I learnt some Chichewa when I was in Malawi and still occasionally come out with the odd 'pepani' (sorry) or zikomo (excuse me, thankyou).



So what languages do you speak and how do you use them?

Le voyage de Slaboulgoum - Pierre-Robert Leclercq

J'ai reçu cet livre petit d'un autre Bookcrosser. C'est un histoire d'un vieux griot africain, qui raconte toujours les mêmes histoires embellies. Pour moi, le choses plus interessants sonts les questions de la role d'un conteur. J'ai trouvé deux citations:

'Le doute n'a pas place dans les legendes. Pour un conteur, la vérité est un support, elle ne doit pas être un fardeau.'

'On ne demande pas a un poète d'être historien.'

Cette citation deuxieme peut-être est un idee pour un poême!

Si tu veux lire cette livre, seulement dites moi!

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I received this little book from another bookcrosser. It's the story of an old African griot who keeps telling the same stories, but embellishing them. For me the most interesting aspects of the book were the questions it asked about the role of the storyteller. I have taken two quotes:

'Doubt has no place in legends. For the storyteller, truth is a support, it does not need to be a burden'

'We do not demand our poets to be historians'.

This second quote could be a great starting point for a poem!

If you would like to read this book, please let me know!

Giveaway

In Love's Shadow is a short bilingual collection by Canadian poet Jay Black with translation into French by Sandra Chiancone. As the title suggests the poetry here is dark love poetry, as in this extract from WILDWOOD DARK:

Thus with insatiate thirst we supped
from one another's gaping cuts,
then kissed with lips that dripped
our bittersweet commingled blood.

Many of the poems set love firmly within the natural environment as in GENEVIEVE:

You are fallen yellow leaves
carried on quiet streams of tears

You are an evening breeze
whispering disconsolate dreams.

You are the ebbing ocean
washing over a naked beach

Continue reading my review here. If you would like this book, please leave a comment below. Names will be drawn out of a hat in about two weeks and the winner will receive this book along with a copy of my own miniscule haiku collection. The book is quite thin and I'm happy to post it anywhere! It's also registered with Bookcrossing and it would be great if whoever wins the giveaway could leave their thoughts about it on the Bookcrossing site (this is not compulsory though!).

Comme un Roman - Daniel Pennac

This is a wonderful little book about why we read and how to encourage children to read. It is totally inspiring and thought provoking, though sometimes the style is a bit annoying. It includes the ten rights of the reader:

The right to not read
The right to skip pages
The right to not finish a book
The right to re-read
The right to read whatever you want
The right to 'bovarysme' (think Emma Bovary here....)
The right to read wherever you are
The right to browse
The right to read aloud
The right to stay silent

Its a must read for anyone who reads and anyone who wants to encourage others to read. And yes it is available in English, as 'Read Like a Novel' (if memory serves, i saw it in a second hand bookshop, just as I was finishing reading it in French!). Thanks to Bookcrossing for the French language version.

L'Erotique - a collection of French erotic haiku

This collection gathers together haiku in French and offers haiku moments from the whole range of erotic experience, from first attraction to breaking up. All translations here are mine and attempt to stay true to the original whilst also attempting to become successful haiku in English.

There are a number of haiku about seemingly unacknowledged attraction, my favourite of these being the following by Olivier Walter:

nuit de juillet
elle pèle un pêche
coleur de sa peau.

July night -
she peels a peach
the colour of her skin.


There are also haiku about the first stages in the relationship, including this observation of an explosive first kiss (Angela Leuck):

dans son labo
â côté du réacteur haute pression
premier baiser.

in his lab
next to the high pressure reactor -
first kiss


Some of the haiku present everyday sensual experiences, in such a way to magnify their significance (Anne Marie Labelle):

voile brumeaux
de la douche
nos corps confondus

the misty
shower curtain -
our confused bodies.


Several of the haiku offer pictures of human sexual relationships set in the context of the natural world, with sometimes humourous effect (Jessica Tremblay):

dans la forêt
un bruyant orgasme
chevreuil effrayé

in the forest
a noisy orgasm -
frightened stag


and sometimes painting a picture of sex as abstract art (Gilles Ruel):

sur le mur
mon pènis géant
pleine lune

on the wall
my giant penis -
full moon.


For me, the haiku that most truly live up to the title of Erotic are those that really capture the sensuality of the sexual experience (Louise Vachon):

kama-sutra
nos essences mêlée
un goût de fruit

Kama Sutra
our essences blend -
taste of fruit


There is a certain admirable honesty about this collection of erotic haiku in its inclusion of haiku about breaking up (Angela Leuck)

tu en as trouvé un autre
les fleurs de l'arbre
tombent si vite.

you have found another -
the flowers of the tree
fall so quickly.


This is a refreshingly varied collection of haiku about sex and sensuality, covering a broad range of human experience in this area. Just as with relationships themselves, there are some haiku that won't work for some readers, and some I suspect don't translate well. So pick and choose the ones that appeal the most and read them - alone or with your lover.