Moses' Footprints - Milorad's new collection!

Milorad's last book was published posthumously by Nine Arches Press and launched on 2nd March 2012.

Copies can be purchased from the Nine Arches Press website.

Here is an extract from the poem Moses' Rod:

Now, I have the placement of Moses' voice

left out through this gradient of English -

the words are as close as the well is deep:

  if you can smite stones

  into water drops instead of dust,

  the view of mountainous rocks

  will be clear and open like a waterfall.

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

Connection

For me it was a surprise to discover that Milorad was one of those special people. I don't meet them too often in my life. People whose presence has the power to take me into a different zone. I found this especially after he became ill. Sometimes speaking slowly about small things he seemed to be helping me reach a deeper connection with the world and with myself. And strangely, I felt he knew he was doing this.

I remember driving him back to Harborne one night. Before we set off, he put on a coat and pulled on a cap. Glancing at him in the car, I saw the cap had changed his appearance. He seemed experienced in struggle and quietly sure of the value of comradeship. The streets were also altered. Darker and more poetic - reminding me of how I had sometimes felt in the past, walking at night in Belgrade.

Do videnja - he said to me, at the end of the journey.
- Nick

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/

Making Waves

As we move through life we leave a wake. Some of us make waves but Misho’s wake spread wider and wider because he had a great capacity to make friends – friends who stayed in contact. His special capacity was to introduce friends to other friends with the result that many benefited. Cathy and I have many friends today both here and in Croatia which we would never have met without Misho’s wake crossing and re-crossing others in all directions. During his last illness these friends became a great support, strength and encouragement not only to Misho but also to Cathy (in particular) and myself and also many for each other.
When Cathy and I were in Croatia on holiday a few years ago we were up early one bright clear morning and went down to the seafront. The sea was an absolute mirror of blue, not a ripple. Then one little fishing boat came chugging round the point and across the view its wake came to us , disturbing the water for the first time that day and it also widened out to reach the further shore a mile away and then rebounded and interwove , it was clear to see, with more waves from the wake coming in again. Often we don’t see this in life but in Misho’s case it is clearer. He boat has carried on round the further point but the friendships and influences will go on bobbing up and down and to and fro nudging each other and disturbing the gulls, rocking memories, setting off other interactions, as all good poems and writings do to those who read them again and again.