There is something delicate and extremely fragile about Pierre Lepori’s poetry and about the character(s) he creates. The voice he writes in is hushed – you really need to be free of any distractions to tune into it, to adjust to the seemingly plain language and pace, to the language stripped of
Fleur Jaeggy has been writing concise, unsettling works of fiction for four decades. Her haunting prose is all the more addictive for being doled out in slim portions. The publisher New Directions recently served up a veritable feast with two collections: I am the Brother of XX, a medley of twenty-o
Much of what poetry is about occurs on the border – where the written words meet the white of the page. This may be one of the reasons why so much poetry is written in provincial areas and border regions. Italian-speaking Switzerland – the canton of Ticino and part of Graubünden – once played
YOU’RE A TREE – SO WHERE ARE YOU FROM? My kindergarten teacher was a kindly soul: one day, she dressed me up as a tree, with brown trousers, a dark-green felt hat on my head and, if I remember, she also put green greasepaint on my face. The reason was that I had a part […]
A young woman, a tour guide on a cruise ship, befriends an elderly couple after they announce politely that they would ‘prefer not to’ go on the luxury cruise their son has booked for them. They’d rather go to see a film. This old-fashioned modesty creates a turning point in the young woman’
What if the World Wide Web were to disappear? This is the secret wish of a few people scattered around the world. The author, herself part of the generation she depicts, plays on her characters’ contradictions. Without ever condemning the WWW or its users, she makes the virtual world real by descr
