Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Alexander Booth is a writer and translator who, after many years in Rome, lives in Berlin. More information can be found at www.wordkunst.com
In my writing I attempt a certain form of painting-within-the-word in which the sharp distinctions between the interior and exterior landscape begin to blur. Essentially lyrical, my work makes use of open forms and concentrated language in order to create imagistic nexuses of highly charged moments, unearthed fragments, flickering chiaroscuro. As such, a good deal of the main narrative details also remains unstated or, as in miniatures, floats just beyond the edges of the frame. This combination of elements seeks to focus contemplation and the aesthetic experience as a whole, while at the same time directing attention to what is at the pieces’ heart: the expression of our most fundamental human emotions.
This book is tripartite: the first section (Roman Hours) is a collection of minimalist mourning songs, and is located almost exclusively in Italy; applying the Delaunays’ definition of Cubism as simultaneous contrast the central section (The Little Light That Escaped) explores metaphorical and literal dislocation against the backdrop of the Mediterranean, twinned with Berlin, no Shelleyan “paradise of exiles” but something darker; and the third section (Insulae) is a series of rooms remembered, from cities that have played an important role in my adult life, primarily Rome and Berlin, but also from further afield now: Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, DC: a memory of architecture an architecture of memory.
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