Translation Tuesdays – Looking forward! Dear Reader, It probably hasn’t escaped your keen powers of observation that we struggled to deliver our translation feature last autumn! We rely on collaboration with fellow authors from other countries, and it’s difficult to find a replacement at short notice. We’ll be rethinking our strategy for the coming seasons, but are delighted to be sharing Polish work for our Spring Translation Tuesdays. Literature is international. We draw inspiration from formulations, images, words, and ideas from other literatures. That is why translations are so important: to keep the dialogue going; to grow and breathe; to understand that there is more than one’s own experience. Therefore we would like to keep the feature as part of our magazine, but we need to change the way we source translations. (Do you have a translation you’d like to share? Send us your work here!) This spring we bring you three new voices from Poland. It is thanks to the versatile and multilingual Romanian author Mircea Dan Duta, who organised everything. Polish literature is considered one of the great literatures of the world. No less than six Nobel Prize winners in literature come from Poland, the latest one being the amazing Olga Tokarczuk.We hope you are as excited as we are by these new voices from Poland, which represent only a small sample of what this country so rich in poetry and stories has to offer. Natalie Nera Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
Translation Tuesday – Japanese Poetry It’s almost November. The nights are cold, crisp, and brutal here in the North-East – but the skies are glorious, and the colours… Oh! Join me for a cuppa whilst I share today’s autumnal offering: translated pieces from a volume called Japanese Poetry Now, remade into English by Thomas Fitzimmons. Enjoy! Rue Collinge shares pieces from Japanese Poetry Now, 1971, trans. Thomas Fitzimmons Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
Three Years On… Dear Reader, If you’ve followed us for long, you will know that this all began in 2019 with three friends getting frustrated. We were looking at the literary world and seeing the same kinds of voices again and again – and many others being left out because their owners were “too pointy”, or they “didn’t fit” the publishing model… We wanted to create a platform without borders, a space to celebrate the triangles! Finn the Fox, our mascot, is made entirely of triangles. When you put enough stunning, unique voices together, you end up with something truly special. You build bridges. You see the world is bigger than you thought, after all. We especially welcome first time writers – those who have struggled to have their work published. English isn’t your first language? Wonderful! We’d love to hear from you, or see your translations. We became accidentally international when our fantastic Prose Editor Natalie Nera moved back to Prague with her family – in the middle of Brexit, and as we were trying to become a CIC. Eek! We’ve embraced the madness though, and love that our international status means we can better connect writers and readers across the globe. So, thank you. Thank you for submitting your work to us – to our online magazine, published twice a week between February – May, and September – December! Thank you for being part of the conversation, and for reaching out to look at life from a different perspective. Thank you for getting involved with our yearly Big Books – collections of poetry and prose which celebrate the wildly different experiences we go through on the face of this here rock. Want to know something exciting? Since we began, we’ve had over 45,000 reads of our online magazine. It’s reached over 20,000 different people, and has nearly 3000 pairs of eager eyes on it every month! Our first Big Book The Language of Salt featured voices from around the world, including Ireland, Europe, Nigeria, the United States, and the UK. We received 1500 poems during our callout, and whittled it down to a mere 50 poets for the final collection! Our second Big Book Heart/h was a celebration of the short form, and featured writers from the North-East of England, the rest of the UK, Iran, the United States, Germany… Again, we distilled your incredible entries down to only 40 authors, who explored what home was to them in tales of diaspora, of rushing to safety, of loss and longing. And our third Big Book? Well, that’s this year’s Summer Callout. You’ll have to keep an eye on our social media on Wednesday 1st June! Spoilers! Rue Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
‘Slovakia and its Literary Landscape’ by Natalie Nera ‘Slovakia? Do you mean Slovenia? Aaah, Czechoslovakia!’ This statement reflects myriads of conversations I used to have during my time in Britain, whenever I mentioned that my sister-in-law was from Slovakia. No, it is not a country by the sea, and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1993. And no, the Czech and Slovaks did not try to murder each other in the 90s – that was Yugoslavia. When it comes to literature, the situation is even worse. The Wikipedia entry on Slovak Literature ends with 1945, and the information you will find there is limited. Even an avid reader might struggle to name a single writer or poet. In short, Slovak literature is probably the most underrated literature in Central Europe – virtually unknown in the West, hiding in the mighty shadows cast by the Poles, and to some extent also its Czech neighbour. And it is not just the proximity of its better-known neighbours. It is an image problem, which is not the fault of Slovakia or its authors. Historically, throughout the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Slovak language was considered to be ‘a dialect’ of the Czech language by many. It emerged as one of the pseudoscientific constructs based on nationalistic theories during that era, and took a long time to go away. Nonetheless, the idea of the Czechoslovak nation with its unique language helped to establish Czechoslovakia in 1918. The problem with the grammar books on the Czechoslovak language and all these theories was that nobody actually spoke it. Naturally, it is easy to criticise this approach from the prism of the 21st century; however, this was also a political necessity. For two small nations in Central Europe, it was important to convince the powerful politicians in Britain, France and the USA during WWI that there was a medium-sized nation in the heart of Europe with its own language and culture, which deserved its independence and had the right to self-determination. The other issue is that when editors in English-speaking countries look East, they have no reference point with Slovakia. They know the impressive canon of Polish Nobel Prize laureates, such as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Czeslaw Milosz or Olga Tokarczuk; then they look to its smaller neighbour, and they can probably name Jaroslav Hasek, Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera, and Miroslav Holub and Jaroslav Seifert in poetry, before they even start searching for new names. Can you recall any of the Slovak literati? No? It is time to change the narrative. This spring season, we will be celebrating Slovak authors. Rich tradition and musicality penetrate every word, every line. There are no small literatures. There are only literatures that deserve to be discovered. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
‘Merry it is while summer lasts’ by Natalie Nera Miri it is while sumer i-lastWith foulës song;Oc now neghëth windës blastAnd weder strong.Ei, ei, what this night is long,And Ich with wel michel wrongSorwe and murne and fast.Medieval Poem on the cycle of the Seasons… we think. Hello there, What a year it has been! We have had a marvellous summer. This year’s Big Book – a prose anthology celebrating the short form – is in the works, after a fantastic submission period. We were blown away by the micro, flash, and short stories that poured in, and can’t wait to reveal our cover art and title in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on our book launch – we’d love to see you there! I must confess I still struggle with the backlog of submissions caused by an insane workload during lockdown, coupled with a year of teaching my kids at home – like millions of other parents around the world. As a result of overexertion for a prolonged period of time, some of my chronic health issues flared up again, not aiding my efforts to catch up on the neverending To-Do list. As I am writing this editorial, I am beginning to tackle many of my Fragmented Voices duties now, approximately six weeks after I thought I would have done it. If you are awaiting a response to your prose submission, you’ll be receiving one soon. I’m sorry it’s so delayed! So, what can you expect this season? Our online magazine will continue to publish twice weekly, bringing you the very best prose, poetry, themed translations (we have Peruvian poetry for you this autumn – facilitated by Professor Emilio Paz) and the occasional editorial. We will no longer be featuring visual artists, as we found that it wasn’t a popular submission. Photo by Kristina Paukshtite Besides this year’s Big Book, an edition of ‘The Language of Salt’ is planned for Europe – post-Brexit bureaucracy permitting! We are looking into Virtual Coffee Mornings, where writers and readers can come together to enjoy language – wherever they are in the world. We also hope to offer a summer internship next year. Let us know what you think. Would you be interested? We love what we do. We dream of an international community of writers without borders. Let us see where the untrodden path is taking us – and take the odd detour into Middle English, just for fun! With warmest wishes, Nera Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
How do you take your triangles? Editors. We don’t always get it right. At the end of the day, we are simply people with opinions – lots of them! Take, for example, these infamous rejection letters for books and series which would later become absolute classics. “An irresponsible holiday story that will never sell.”Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy that was rubbish and dull.”William Golding, Lord of the Flies “I haven’t the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say. Apparently the author intends to be funny.”Joseph Heller, Catch 22 “I’m afraid I thought this one as dire as its title. It’s a kind of Prince of Denmark of the hotel world: a collection of clichés and stock characters I can’t see being anything but a disaster.”Fawlty Towers T.S. Elliott rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm whilst working for Faber & Faber. F. Scott Fitzgerald was told to de-Gatsby The Great Gatsby. Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women) was encouraged to “stick to teaching.” One person’s trash is another’s treasure. It’s an undeniable fact that as editors we are gatekeepers – but are we opening the door to new voices, or checking names against a VIP list? We started Fragmented Voices because we know all too well the feeling of not fitting in, of not being the right shape. We do want good writing – writing that gets you in the belly, that sticks with you. We just don’t believe it comes from one type of person. Meet Finn. Our mascot. Our totem. Finn the fox is a loner. He is made up of all the pieces that wouldn’t fit – those thought too pointy, too awkward, just… not the right shape. Put ’em together, and you get something special. There is a place for everyone in the publishing world. You just have to make foxes out of them! So, English isn’t your first language? Submit to us! You haven’t yet been published? Submit to us! You’re just dipping your toe in? Dive in! We currently have an open callout for our Big Book project over the summer. Our online magazine opens again from September. You may not be accepted. We receive a lot of submissions, and we have a very full publishing roster – but we will aim to help you understand why you weren’t successful this time. Let’s demystify the process! We can’t wait to hear from you. Rue * With thanks to good old QI, Season 15, for many of these rejection letters. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
Not quite the Last Word by Natalie Nera Our second season is nearly done and dusted, and I can’t help but reflect on the challenges we have faced in the past year and a half. “Hang on a minute!” I hear you say. “You have a job, you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world – what challenges are you talking about?” This makes light work of what has been a challenging time for all of us – those in caring professions, children and teenagers, mums and dads, older people, (though I prefer “people of significant life experience”… Ha!) It isn’t natural to sit at home, starved for the chance to touch or see each other. Fear is an everyday companion, and so is the reality of our own mortality and helplessness. Nearly everyone has lost someone. I am not just a writer, or a creative, or editor. I am also a mum of two young school kids and a teacher, and I have seen what this pandemic has done to our young people, how it affects them – and have discovered how hard it is to teach your own children while working full time! After one particularly painful afternoon of wrestling with maths, my older son blurted: “You’re not my teacher, you’re my mum!” How right he was! The impossible confusion of mixing work and domestic life could not have been summed up better than by my eight-year-old. I have struggled more and more to answer submissions on time, which brings me to my next point: if you are currently waiting for a response, I will get back to you within the next month. Please accept my heartfelt apology for the delay! And yet, there is so much to celebrate! In the midst of this mad year, despite a global pandemic, we have grown and we have achieved so much. Crick, Rue and I have enjoyed our own creative successes, as well as transforming our small press into a community interest company, which perfectly fits our mission: connecting creative communities everywhere, building bridges between people through their creative output, and offering a platform to those niche and unheard voices if and when we discover them. Our experience keeps growing, our friendships remain intact, and our determination to forge ahead is as fierce as ever. After the astounding success of our debut publication, The Language of Salt: Poems on Love and Loss, we are thrilled to announce we will be creating another anthology this year. Keep your eyes peeled for the callout once our reading window closes! If you haven’t yet got your hands on The Language of Salt, it’s now available from our online shop, and we hope to have a second print run before long as well as an official publication for Europe. So, what’s the moral of the story? It’s not important if you fall. The important thing is to get up – and it looks as though we might be getting pretty good at it. About the Author Natalie Nera is Prose Editor and Co-founder of Fragmented Voices. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
Happy International Women’s Day … to all the girls, young and older women, childfree, childless and mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, Grandmothers, wives, partners. There are many reasons to celebrate. There are many reasons to remember. There are many reasons not to forget. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...
2020: A View from the Editors To start a new season in Fragmented Voices, we looked back at the past year…. Rue Collinge What a year! I have been researcher, editor, performer, teacher, financial director… like many of us, I have become used to a never-ending carousel of hats – many of which I did not expect. 2020 yielded opportunities I couldn’t foresee, even as my crammed diary of planned projects and contracts dissolved. I was commissioned by the NewBridge Project to research the experiences of asylum seekers in lockdown last summer, and respond with a spoken word piece writing into the gaps. I contributed to Poetry NI’s global poem ‘Covidioms’, as an international community wrestled to come to terms with a world on fire. Most recently I have been shortlisted for the East Riding Festival of Words Poetry Competition, and published in two anthologies. Overwhelmed by how beautiful, diverse and intimate the global poetry community has become, as even competition moved to virtual platforms. I was crowned Oooh Beehive UK Slam Champion in December, and have performed in online gigs as opposed to pubs, concert halls, and parks! My teaching and literacy work has moved online, and involves 100% more sock puppets, to the delight of my students. Through it all, our little press – humming with potential, the joy of working with close friends and colleagues, and navigating the complexities of an international company in the middle of Brexit. Our anthology, which celebrates so many voices, was an unexpected treasure in the chaos. I cannot wait to see where 2021 will take us. Natalie Crick This last year has been different in so many ways to any other year, most certainly challenging and at times devastating as Coronovirus has touched all of our lives to varying degrees and extremities, but it has been an exciting year for Fragmented Voices. For one, we have seen the introduction of a third team member, Rue Collinge join our original Natalie duo. A host of wonderful writers have been published online at our new beautiful website. We have seen the publication of our first book in print, a poetry anthology of love poems. As poetry editor, I was delighted to select 50 beautiful poems for this book. The isolation of the past months has been fruitful for my own creativity. In the lonely warmer months I found inspiration from the outdoors, and more recently from inside the seclusion of four walls of my apartment and from my head, as the weather has become colder and darker. This past year I have had new poems published in various literary magazines online and in print including Stand, The Dark Horse, Poetry Salzburg Review, Orbis, Agenda and The Interpreter’s House and elsewhere. I have poetry forthcoming in The Poetry Review. A short piece, ‘Acute Admissions Ward’, was commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020 on the theme of diversity, which I read from the pages of the competition anthology at the festival in Birmingham. I was awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020 with a poem on the subject of coercive control, ‘Girlfriend-Watch’. I was thrilled when a little poem received a special mention by judge Ilya Kaminsky in the Poetry London Prize 2020. In recent weeks I achieved a high commendation in the Folklore Poetry Prize with my poem, ‘Sister is Still and Light’. Communication has transitioned to an online setting in many spaces, and I have participated in and enjoyed viewing countless literary events online during long nights in lockdown. My work as a creative-practitioner-in-residence at the Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University is continuing, with regular zoom meetings and socially distanced project meetings in the park between myself and the artist I am collaborating with, MA art student Lorna McKay. I am into the second and final year of a creative writing MPhil at Newcastle University supervised by Bill Herbert and Tara Bergin, writing to define a poetry of violence in the work of Simon Armitage and Pascale Petit, whilst drafting a sequence of poetry, ‘Lee’, to narrate a pathway to violence in the life of a male from childhood to early adulthood. I feel that 2021 will be a good year: hope is in sight. Reading the creative work that enters our inboxes brings genuine interest and light to our days and nights as editors, and I look forward to enjoying more poetry subs and giving a voice to many more writers and artists. Natalie Nera Without a doubt, last year was challenging: stress, isolation, uncertainty, bad news, worse news, dreadful news, Zoom fatigue and simple physical and mental exhaustion… I made more mistakes than I can count, which I would not have made otherwise. The new year with its promises brings only a glimmer of hope – and that is one of the things we want to go against in Fragmented Voices. Let us overcome obstacles. Let us celebrate what goes right and learn from those things that go wrong. Let us bring down borders and bring people together through creativity and arts. Our first publication came out in December and we hoped to launch our CIC simultaneously. However, we did not anticipate the bureaucratic difficulties to open a business bank account. Who would have thought that as a UK non-resident, you can register a business, but most banks do not want you at all, or you have to produce an outrageous amount of money (we are talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds) to be eligible? Now, we have got one (thank you, Rue Collinge) and we can hopefully grow, transform and gain more support for our small press. But all this time, Natalie Crick, Rue Collinge and I have remained close friends who support each other through highs and lows, who celebrate each other’s achievements (we are all working authors as well as editors and publishers). I am very happy to say that not only was I recognised internationally for my writing last year (The Selkie or High Commendation in the International Proverse Poetry Competition to name but the few) but in January 2021 I was honoured to be invited to join the Czech Centre of the Pen Club International, which I happily accepted. 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We Are Back! Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com The summer has nearly gone, autumnal rains and morning chills penetrate my skin. We, in Fragmented Voices, have spent it trying to update our website – work which has been started but not finished yet and will be continuing throughout the year. However, much of our summer months have been devoted to the love poems anthology, something we are already proud of it. I hope that you will feel the same once the book is out this year. We have also made changes to our online magazine. What can you expect? It will be out twice a week from September till about mid- December and from February till May. In that time, you can expect poetry (Wednesdays), and prose, creative non-fiction, essays or visual art (Fridays). Once a month we are going to introduce some exciting new authors in translation. This 2020/2021 season we have Romanian and Moldovan poetry as well as Czech poetry. I hope that you will like our changes and updates. We made them after careful consideration that reflects our experience from last year’s season. What does not change is that we are still looking to discover new talent – illustrators, visual artists, poets, fiction and non-fiction writers. When you decide to submit, please read our guidelines carefully, otherwise, it can lead to rejection on technical grounds, i.e. submitting outside our submission window. Also, before you write THAT angry letter (to which we never respond), please take a few days before you press the SEND button. I am the first one to admit that I have done it in my life more than once and always when I was in a raw place. Trust me – it is always a mistake. I look around and see the world in chaos. Globally, we live in uncertain times, we live in stressful times. I believe creativity and art are one of the few things that connect people everywhere. I do not think that I can change the world’s problems at my desk by typing my lines but I believe that our work can make it a bit more hopeful place, a place where things are possible. Natalie Nera Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading...