Here are a few of the writers I met at Neptun, and tiny excerpts from their translated works ...
Elena Vladareanu, from Romania:
...from "Virtual Space":
I'm not afraid of death
I couldn't care less about glue-sniffing orphans
In general I don't like
or wish for anything
only a space where I can hear myself
breathe in and out . . .
Translation by Adam Sorkin and Saviana Stanescu
* * *
Philip Meersman, from Belgium:
... from "Luna":
I rode the moon
and I survived
eating dust like an astronaut
Her Stubbornness eats long juicy green leaves
neighing to do the opposite of what I thought
or planned to do
Translation by Philip Meersman
* * *
Arnau Pons, from Spain/Catalonia:
...from "You Mark the Waters":
You mark the waters
underneath the navel, closed . . .
you spit fire and darkness, and darkness;
and you warm up, like a snake
you seek out milk from the rock
and drain it dry . . .
You have your father's smell.
Translation by Matthew Tree
* * *
Ioana Craciunescu, from Romania, now living in France:
... from "Cut and Sutured":
Cut and sutured, sutured and cut,
The glow of the nurse bending
Over the wounds.
Death just resurrected, searched inside her body,
The way one searches sturgeons for their eggs,
The way one feverishly searches mussels for pearls . . .
Translation by Dumitru Radu Popa
Enes Halilovic, from Serbia/Montenegro (on right; left, Joey Goebel, American fiction writer):
. . . from "Boustrephodon":
On Crete, writers used to carve letters
On the stone in a way of writing called boustrephodon.
They carved one line from left to right,
Then another line from right to left,
And so on,
Alternately.
They were driven by the turning of an ox in ploughing.
Translation by Danijela Jovanovic
* * *
Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, from Japan (facing the camera):
. . . from "Dinner":
We are having dinner face to face.
My wife says something, to which I reply, and all the while
we hear the knives and forks clattering on the plates . . .
Bread crumbs falling from the edge of my mouth into the abyss.
Cool wind blows up from far below.
My wife passes me the salt.
Translation by Akiku Yotsumoto
