Chris McCabe

One endangered language is dying out every two weeks. Of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world, over half of these are endangered. By the end of the century, half of the world's current languages will be lost, which will also mean the loss of unique poetic traditions. This book will showcase a collection of poems in rare languages from around the world and raise awareness of this huge, urgent cultural and political issue. Edited by Chris McCabe, Head of the National Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre, and founder of its Endangered Poetry Project, each poem is accompanied by an English translation and commentary providing insight into the language and its speakers, as well as the poem itself. The collection is introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the SOAS World Languages Institute, and Dr Martin Orwin, who explain the global situation of endangered languages and the efforts that are being made to document them.

Poems from the Edge of Extinction

-A Poetry Book Society recommendation -A book of the year - the Poetry School The Triumph of Cancer blurs the borders of science and poetry, working with forensic attention to capture the 'inscape' of the living world. In this powerful new collection, presented as a museum of artefacts, Chris McCabe returns to the site of personal trauma to confront disease head-on. Elegies for his father, poets and celebrities mingle with still-life portraits of organic and synthetic subjects. These poems move with lyric grace and surgical precision against a backdrop of terror and cancerous global politics, showing McCabe at the height of his powers: dextrous, darkly comic and a true original.

The Triumph of Cancer

To end their relationship Borak and Karissa must find a bubble of air buried among twenty-four types of mud. On their descent into subterranean London they are followed by a film crew and its odious Director, documenting their quest. As they chance upon bones, bricks and a talking mole, they must restrain themselves from throttling each other, and falling in love all over again. Chris McCabe's macabre version of Orpheus and Eurydice brings its themes into the present day: a contemporary re-tuning of the mythic 'Father of Song'.

Victoria Bean

"The New Concrete" is a long-overdue survey of the rise of concrete poetry in the digital age. The accessibility of digital text and image manipulation, modern print techniques and the rise of self-publishing have invigorated a movement that first emerged in an explosion of literary creativity during the 1950s and 1960s. This new volume is a highly illustrated overview of contemporary artists and poets working at the intersection of visual art and literature, producing some of the most engaging and challenging work in either medium. Edited by poets Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe, with an introductory essay by renowned poet Kenneth Goldsmith, "The New Concrete" is an indispensable introduction to the breadth of concrete poetry being produced today. "The New Concrete" features new works by poets and artists including Vito Acconci, Augusto de Campos, Henri Chopin, Paula Claire, Bob Cobbing, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Furnival, Ilse Garnier, Pierre Garnier, Eugen Gomringer, Hansjorg Mayer, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan and Décio Pignatari, as well as new work by Jordan Abel, Fiona Banner, Michael Basinski, Erica Baum, Caroline Bergvall, Derek Beaulieu, Jaap Blonk, Christian Bök, Sean Bonney, Pavel Büchler, Simon Cutts, Alec Finlay, John Giorno, James Hoff, Jenny Holzer, Geof Huth, Leandro Katz, John Kinsella, Anatol Knotek, Christopher Knowles, Richard Kostelanetz, Liliane Lijn, Tony Lopez, Steve McCaffery, Donato Mancini, Stuart Mills, Gustave Morin, Tom Phillips, Jörg Piringer, Colin Sackett, Sue Tompkins, Andrew Topel, Cecil Touchon, Nick Thurston, Barrie Tullett, André Vallias, Nico Vassilakis, Emmanuelle Waecklerlé, Sam Winston and others.

Visual Poetry in the 21st Century

The New Concrete

Gold winner in Poetry and Special Honors Award winner for Best Anthology Nautilus Book Awards The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library Featuring award-winning poets from cultures as diverse as the Ainu people of Japan to the Zoque of Mexico, with languages that range from the indigenous Ahtna of Alaska to the Shetlandic dialect of Scots, this evocative collection gathers together 50 of the finest poems in endangered, or vulnerable, languages from across the continents. With poems by influential, award-winning poets such as US poet laureate Joy Harjo, Hawad, Valzhyna Mort, and Jackie Kay, this collection offers a unique insight into both languages and poetry, taking the reader on an emotional, life-affirming journey into the cultures of these beautiful languages, celebrating our linguistic diversity and highlighting our commonalities and the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life. Each poem appears in its original form, alongside an English translation, and is accompanied by a commentary about the language, the poet and the poem - in a vibrant celebration of life, diversity, language, and the enduring power of poetry. One language is falling silent every two weeks. Half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today will be lost by the end of this century. With the loss of these languages, we also lose the unique poetic traditions of their speakers and writers. This timely anthology is passionately edited by widely published poet and UK National Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, who is also the founder of the Endangered Poetry Project, a major project launched by London's Southbank Centre to collect poetry written in the world's disappearing languages, and introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS University of London, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic, SOAS University of London. Languages included in the book: Assyrian; Belarusian; Chimiini; Irish Gaelic; Maori; Navajo; Patua; Rotuman; Saami; Scottish Gaelic; Welsh; Yiddish; Zoque Poets included in the book: Joy Harjo; Hawad; Jackie Kay; Aurélia Lassaque; Nineb Lamassu; Gearóid Mac Lochlainn; Valzhyna Mort; Laura Tohe; Taniel Varoujan; Avrom Sutzkever

The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library

A powerful new anthology depicting how love over the past two-and-a-half millennia has found its expression in the words of the world's greatest poets. No, Love Is Not Dead is a timely affirmation of the great linguistic diversity of poetry and its ability to express passionate love, the most extreme of human emotions. With influential, award-winning poets including Kim Hyesoon, Laura Tohe and Warsan Shire, and languages ranging from Amharic, Akkadian and Ancient Greek to Yankunytjatjara, Yiddish and Yoruba, this unique anthology engages the reader in reflective tales of unlikely love stories and impossible love, love in a time of politics, surrealist love, visual love and free love, offering an intuitive insight into both historical and present-day perceptions of love across cultures. Including over 50 poets, writing on each of the world's continents, this new anthology of poems about love features a diverse range of original poems written in a variety of languages - modern, ancient, endangered and constructed -, accompanied by English translations and commentaries. Poets included in the book: Apollinaire; Nicole Brossard; Augusto de Campos; Catullus; Chaucer; Dante; Robert Desnos; Ali Cobby Eckermann; Goethe; Kim Hyesoon; Louise Labé; Federico Garcia Lorca; Vladimir Mayakovsky; Miklós Radnóti; Kutti Ravathi; Sappho; Warsan Shire; Laura Tohe; Marina Tsvetaeva. Languages included in the book: Akkadian; Amharic; Ancient Greek; Faroese; French; German; Hungarian; Italian; Japanese; Latvian; Maori; Persian; Polari; Portuguese; Russian; Sanskrit; Scots; Scottish Gaelic; Serbian; Spanish; Urdu; Welsh; Yoruba. Foreword by Laura Tohe, the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus with Distinction at Arizona State University, who has won awards including the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, and the Arizona Book Association's Glyph Award for Best Poetry.

Chris McCabe

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