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From the esoteric to the sonic, tQ’s bookshelf revealed
Emily Berry speaks to Spanish poet, editor and journalist Luna Miguel - via a translation by Electric Cereal editor Luis Silva - about the personal significance of mermaids and tattoos, life, death, community, why inspiration is like orgasm, and guts of both the metaphorical and literal sorts. (Photograph by Laura Rosal)
Tim MacGabhann, Mariana Rodríguez and John Z. Komurki — Editors of Mexico City Lit — consider racial and gender exclusivity, cultural appropriation and erasure in the light of Kenneth Goldsmith's 'Body of Michael Brown', Vanessa Place's Mammy-toting twitter feed and the Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo
From its password-protected tumblr past to a purple-hued Faber present, Charles Whalley re-examines Sam Riviere's latest collection — Kim Kardashian's Marriage — via data processing, flarf (and post-flarf) poetry, the commodification of the self and the cultural tragedy of reality vs. expectation. (Image by Yung Jake)
In the second instalment of his new column on contemporary poetry (abstractly titled 'Poetry Column'), Sam Riviere considers the writings of Chelsey Minnis, Frederick Seidel & Jon Leon from the starting point of Leon's own seemingly-innocuous declaration — taking in privilege, obscurity vs. self-exposure and the poet's own contempt for poetry en route — ‘Art is redemptive’
Lauren Oyler sits down with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist Atticus Lish to discuss a simultaneous influence and eschewing of minimalism, the secondary nature of language, and the gift of autonomy in relation to his full-length debut — Preparation For The Next Life — via sartorial guidance and looking for ninjas in the phone book
To mark the completion of — and provide some insight in to the work which collectively comprised — Rhizome and the New Museum's online-only Poetry as Practice exhibition, Sophie Collins sent a single set of questions to all six contributors, relaying below each of their voices in response to the ideas of translation and performance, poetry as media and digital media, the influence of the reader or viewer and the possible collapsing of 'poetry' as a discrete category
Pete Mitchell considers Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World — the author's only full-length work currently translated in to English — in the light and shadow of its macho, othering, counterparts in Anglophone border fiction, as well as its translated contemporaries, and the spectre of that last great imaginary line in the sand
Eric Obenauf, publisher and editor at the excellent Two Dollar Radio, talks to rightly-celebrated rock critic, writer and — as of this month — novelist, Carola Dibbell about being an out "women's libber" in the male-dominated 70s music-writing scene, the potential for stream-crossing in music criticism and fiction and, of course, her debut novel The Only Ones. (Artwork by Greg Skrtic)
Oscar Gaynor speaks to the authorial element of writer/musician Momus' multifariously-split artistic personality about his new free-to-download book, Herr F, the limits and possibilities of fog, arts culture post-Here Comes Everybody and the social functions of acting
Extracted from the novel Binary Star, published earlier this year by Two Dollar Radio, Sarah Gerard's prose, both haunted and haunting, possesses a celestial quality seemingly drawn from the beauty of fluttering, astronomical luminescence and the terror of what feels a near-immeasurable vastness. In Binary Star personal reality becomes the vacuum and the horror of the metaphysical numinous abject. (Photograph by Josh Wool)
Sophia Deboick considers the English-language version of Adam 'Nergal' Darski's autobiography, a work of more than just sensationalism for its own sake, via the Polish people's love for scrambled eggs, The Voice and polarising views on religion
In a selection of excerpts from his recent Strange Attractor-published book, The Bright Labyrinth, Ken Hollings discusses - via John Cage and Edgard Varèse - mass production, organisation, repetition and the (perhaps only) advantage human beings have over machines. (Illustrations by Matthew Frame)
This month’s column swings the focus to the unsung hero – the literary translator – but just as much on contemporary Swedish literature and inventive ways of publishing literature in translation. (Portrait of Saskia Vogel by Richard Phœnix)
As part of our running Peer Review series, where authors are interviewed by their contemporaries, Crispin Best and Rebecca Perry sit down - at different computers in different locations - to talk about avocados, the key events of 1983 and the titles that could have been for her recently-released book of poems, Beauty/Beauty