Sometimes, it happens weeks in a row, me feeling that I have enough to say by the end of a week—enough to justify a newsletter. But my own thinking is disordered today, like cutlery not put back in a drawer separately but rather all at once and together, and so to begin here is a thought on poetry and the need for tough language from writer Jeanette Winterson instead:
“I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
The majority of my most-recent time has been spent putting together the pages for the Brazilian Portuguese edition of Lost in Translation, a slow and careful thing, one that I might be finished with within the next few days. I'm intrigued to know what they will want to have as a over, because we haven't quite reached that stage—it's stunning, how the publishers in different countries believe that this, or that, will appeal more. I think this will be the eighth translation, which is somewhat ironic, because very little seems to be lost, and people only seem to keep finding themselves in between the pages (like the quote above, the finding places).
And having also been through my thousands and thousands of universe-related words so closely that they began to swim, the copyedited manuscript is now back with the publisher, and the next time I see the chapters will be at typeset pages (or when it all begins to resemble a book, with page numbers and actual order and when their interior book designer has made everything look good).
I also think we've decided upon a cover for the universe, which is horrid-exciting, and there will be more on this front (it's a very literal front) soon.
Above, the Japanese word tsundoku described in Brazilian Portuguese.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
The small signs of humanity in Guim Tió's series of paintings 'Unreal Spaces'.
The end.
This is where I leave you.
Copyright © 2018 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.