A Celebration: Milorad Krystanovich

The launch of Milorad's new collection, Moses' Footprints, was attended by about 60 people. Former colleagues, friends and fellow poets joined in a real celebration of Milorad's poetic life.

In the picture, Jane Commane introduces the evening. Readers included Julie Boden, John Alcock, Jon Morley, Myra Connell and Luke Kennard.

Friday 2nd March 2012 at 7.15pm.
The Moseley Exchange (courtyard behind the Post Office), 149-153 Alcester Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8JP

Event starts at 7.30pm. Free entry and refreshments available.

The launch of Milorad Krystanovich’s seventh and last collection of poetry, Moses’ Footprints, and a celebration of his extraordinary legacy of poetry.

Including music and readings of poems by Milorad Krystanovich by John Alcock, Julie Boden, David Hart, Luke Kennard, Myra Connell, Martin Underwood, and others.
 
About Moses' Footprints:

In the shadows of war, loss and longing, a poet seeking his homeland finds his memories and dreams of its distinctive beauty refracted through a second language.  These subtle, elusive and potent poems build bridges of imagery and language between the past and present, the lost and found.

“The poems seem driven, necessary; Croatia and its language call him back, his distinctively developed English finds image after pertinent image. The book is a bounty of metaphor as he is led by Moses and by delight and necessity of observation and discovery; the natural world seems to come to him to be named.” - David Hart

"I can't stop reading these poems. This is work of atmosphere and tone first, narrative second, but it's a narrative that combines deep melancholy with a hard-won sense of joy in the slightest shaft of light, and the thought it provokes." - Luke Kennard

www.ninearchespress.com/mosesfootprints.html

Seagulls, by David Hart

David writes that his poem Seagulls appears in the current edition of Modern Poetry in Translation and the following is his note which appears in that edition:
"Milorad Krystanovich came to Birmingham from Croatia in 1992, from the upheaval in that part of Europe, and after a few years made the transition from making poems in Croatian to writing and publishing in English. His latest is Improvising Memory (Nine Arches Press 2010). In recent years he has been in less than good health, and as a gift I had the idea of a poem of a meeting of gulls from his birthplace and from my own. The words were put into Welsh by someone I was at school with, Helen Wallis, for which thank you; the Croatian is by Milorad, and I am grateful to his close friends Cathy Perry and Martin Underwood for enabling the process."
To read the poem, go to the Poems page on this site.

Posted on behalf of David Hart
http://davidhartbirminghampoet.blogspot.com/