Tears in the Fence 83 is now available at http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward and features poetry, prose and visual poetry, flash fiction, fiction and creative nonfiction by Judith Willson, Kelvin Corcoran, Kym Martindale, Lucy Ingrams, Michelle Penn, Mandy Pannett, Rimas Uzgiris, Kenny Knight, A.W. Kindness, Daša Kružlicová, Wendy Brandmark, Anya Reeve, Cherry Smyth, Lesley Burt, Kasia Flisick, Steve Spence, Charles Wilkinson, David Punter, Andrew Henon, Nigel Jarrett, Rachel Goodman, Robert Sheppard, Rebecca Rose Harris, Sarah Watkinson, Jane Wheeler, Jeanette Forbes, Vincent De Souza, Cathra Kelliher, Norman Jope, Pamela Coren, Beth Davyson, Heather Hughes, James Sutherland-Smith, Phil Williams, Kareem Tayyar, Basil King, John Freeman, Susie Wilson, Robert Hampson, Jean Atkin, David Pollard and Penny Hope.
The critical section consists of the Editorial by Joanna Nissel, Aidan Semmen’s 2025 Tears in the Fence Festival Address, Richard Foreman on J.H. Prynne, Elźbieta Wójcik-Leese on Ágnes Lehóczky, Barbara Bridger on Virginie Poitrasson, Guy Russell on Mark Goodwin, Peter Larkin on recent British & Canadian Ecopoetry, Kym Martindale on Eliza O’Toole, Robert Sheppard on Tim Allen, Ian Seed on Jeremy Over, Mandy Haggith on Gerry Loose, Mandy Haggith on Katherine Gallagher, Mandy Pannett on Lesley Saunders, Kelvin Corcoran in conversation with Alan Baker, Graham Hartill on Caroline Goodwin, Mandy Pannett on Agnieska Studzińska, Keith Jebb on Gavin Selerie and Tim Allen, Vincent De Souza on David Miller, Elaine Randell on Chris Emery, Morag Kiziewicz’s Electric Blue 18 and the Notes On Contributors.
In Berlin Lines, Penny Hope’s fine pamphlet published by Tears in the Fence, an observer recounts their perceptions and experiences of the city’s history, language and environment. Throughout the poems runs the theme of reflections – reflections in the sense of pondering and thinking but also with the meaning of vibrations and echoes, the resonances of the past.
The evocative cover image, ‘Reflections in the Spree’, is taken from a photograph by the author. This significant river, seen in the context of the city’s present environment and its history at the time of the Cold War, is one of contrasts. The ‘slow drift of dark water’ may be beautiful with its ‘trail of rippling light’ that is ‘dissolving in reflection’, it may be ‘a busker’s water-music’ and a source of purification, but it is also like a polluted soup, thick with sulphates, pesticides, ‘detergents residues of oil cigarette butts bicycles’. (‘Museum Island’). Overshadowing all this is the memory of the Spree during the time of the Berlin Wall when it was part of a natural but heavily fortified border, a dangerous escape route where several children drowned, a barrier that was both physical and ideological.
A striking feature of Berlin Lines is the way different poetic forms are used to capture diverse aspects of the city and beyond. Several poems feel fragmentary and notelike, a form that suits images of ‘maps// diaries, letters/blown about’. (‘City Notes’). Throughout, there is skilful use of white space, a poem may be punctuated or not (‘Treptow’), several poems are written in a minimalist, short-stanza style (‘Stones’. ‘Palace of Tears’), others are lyrical and expansive. (‘Trail’. ‘Bridges’). Among my personal favourites is the prose poem sequence ‘Bridges’. Other favourites are the longer prose poems that are set out in blocks, especially the surreal poem ‘In the Square’. Here the author imagines herself climbing into a carving of a gigantic ‘Great Ear’ where she passes through a tunnel ‘lit dimly by overhead lights’ until she reaches the membrane of the tympanum whose ‘meshed quality reminded her of a textured curtain pulled taut, or the screen of a confessional… Here, in this inner sanctum, she would make herself as comfortable as she could, as she prepared to tell what she needed to tell.’
This last sentence about needing to tell brings to mind the question of language. In many of the poems there is a fascinating, seamless interplay between English and German. Phrases in both languages flow like the river, the use of German gives the English reader the feel of being in a foreign city. Notes at the back of the pamphlet are helpful for those who need them for translations and references. In the richness of this multi-lingualism, words may be forbidden, kept secret or spoken aloud ‘in a nostalgia/of naming’. (‘Trail’). ‘We must speak our stories when we can’ say the women in ‘Circle’ referring to the need to ‘shake up our languages, speaking in turn, around the table in our own and other-mother-tongues’.
Words may be ambiguous, loaded with double meanings. But they may also be used in fun, to be relished for their sounds and complexities. Berlin Lines is full of examples of alliteration, and the Text Tile ‘Urban Weave’ can be enjoyed for its clever blending of image and anagram.
One more inspiring feature of language is Hope’s use of quotations. Biblical quotations in German add lyricism and symbolism to ‘Museum Island’ and German writers such as Brecht, Goethe and Hölderlin add their energy to new contexts such as in the poem ‘Waldbühne’ where the international concert brings harmony like ‘a swoop of great wings’. ‘Who would wish to laugh alone, cry alone?’ asks Goethe.
Tears in the Fence 82 is now available at http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward and features poetry, prose poetry, translations, fiction, and creative nonfiction by Jeremy Hilton, Guillaume Apollinaire trans. Ralph Hawkins, Lydia Harris, Mandy Pannett, Mélisande Fitzsimons, Jennifer Harrison, Daragh Breen, Gul Ozseven, Michael Farrell, Hortense Chosalland, Laure-Hélène Zinguereevitch, Joanna Nissel, David Miller, Lisa Dart, John Mateer, Alan Baker, Geraldine Monk, Peter Oswald, Rebecca Danicic, Biljana Scott, Alexandra Fössinger. Chris Beckett, Eliza O’Toole, Peter Larkin, Martyn Crucefix, Kerri Sonnenberg, Aidan Semmens, Andrew Duncan, Mohammad Razai, Fianna Dodwell, Valerie Bridge, Lesley Burt, Victoria Brooks Helen Kay, Mark Goodwin, Isabel Greenslade, Huw Gwynn-Jones, Tamsin Hopkins, Steve Spence, Jason Ioannou, Claire Harnett–Mann, Sharon Kivland, Simon Collings and Gerald Killingworth.
The critical section consists of the Editorial by David Caddy, Robert Sheppard on A Line Of Tiny Zeros In The Fabric, Robert Hampson on Andrew Duncan’s Beautiful Feelings, Chris Turnbull on Jennifer Spector, Guy Russell on Dominic Hand, Mandy Pannett on J.R. Carpenter, Andrew Duncan on New German Poetry, Nadezhda Vikulina on Caroline Clark, Peter Oswald on Paul Stubbs, Mandy Pannett on Lynne Wycherley, Andrew Duncan on Rachel Mann, Keith Jebb on W.N. Herbert, Steve Spence on Arcadian Rustbelt, Robert Sheppard on Poetry’s Geographies, Steve Spence on Plymouth Language Club, Keith Jebb on Frances Presley, Morag Kiziewicz ‘s Electric Blue 17, Notes On Contributors, David Caddy’s Afterword
Tears in the Fence 81 is now available at https://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward/and features poetry, multilingual poetry, prose poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by Alicia Byrne Keane, Lesley Burt, Kate Noakes, Lucy Ingrams, Jane Wheeler, Florence Ng, Angela Howarth Martinot, Kasia Flisiuk, Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, Norman Jope, Frances Presley, Jessica Tillings, Steve Ely, Ian Seed, L. Kiew, Michael Henry, Catherine Fletcher, Bel Wallace, Holly Winter-Hughes, Tristan Moss, Paul A. Green, Julian Dobson, David Sahner, Jess Bauldry, Mandy Pannett, Andrew Duncan, Blossom Hibbert, Keith Jebb, Paul Stephenson, Poonam Jain, Greg Bright, Helena Steel, Michael Loveday, Charles Green, Penny Hope, Charles Hadfield, Luke Emmett, C. P. Nield, Hannah Linden, Richard Foreman, Ilse Pedler and Charles Wilkinson.
The critical section consists of the Editorial by David Caddy, Gerald Killingworth’s Tears in the Fence 2024 Festival Address, Andrew Duncan on Allen Fisher, Barbara Bridger on Carol Watts, Guy Russell on Guillaume Apollinaire, Emily Moore on Gayl Jones, Robert Sheppard on Philip Terry, David Pollard on Alina Stefanescu, Barbara Bridger on Aneta Kamińska, Frances Presley on Hazel Smith, Steve Spence on Norman Jope, Charles Wilkinson, Michael Lee Rattigan on Anthony Seidman, Joanna Nissel on Ilse Pedler, Bob Cooper on Lesley Burt, Steve Spence on John Phillips, John Brantingham on Judy Kronenfeld, Morag Kiziewicz’s Electric Blue 16, David Caddy’s Afterword and Notes on Contributors.
This interactive book, edited by Hari Marini and Barbara Bridger, and artfully designed by Westrow Cooper, celebrates a ten year project created by the Part Suspended Artist Collective, and is available from
SPIRALS, a collaborative multidiscipline, multilingual project involving artists with a shared feminist perspective, spanned a decade of activity from 2013-2023. Using the symbol of a spiral as an inspiration, a series of performance rituals, artistic interventions, performance writing, audio-visual manifestations, online projects, exhibitions, and theatrical events took place in the UK, Europe and beyond.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part explores time, topos, arrival and longing. The second part considers isolation, Covid and Women’s writing, spirals, circles, galaxies, turning points and breath. The third part features the SPIRALS open archive and selected contributions to that archive from 2022. Lockdown, with its enforced period of contemplation, and the associations of spirals as a geophysical feature serve to contextualise the juxtapositions of different languages and cultures within a common humanity. The work is profoundly ethnographic, feminist, and celebrates a togetherness and unity as opposed to division and conflict at a time when populist nationalism began to widen its appeal.
Involving poets, translators, and artists from throughout Europe, SPIRALS transcends the constraints of linear time and space, spiraling in and out of temporal boundaries. It initiates conversations that traverse waking and dreaming realms, navigating through cityscapes and landscapes, and forces the reader to think and feel more laterally. The interplay between interiority and exteriority creates a tapestry that invites contemplation and engagement through time and space. As Niya B writes in the poem, ‘an end and a beginning’:
every seed carries its own memory
every skin carries its own history
every body carries its own weight
every step carries its own intention
every soil carries its own dead
The anthology includes a series of QR codes enabling the reader to access videos and other documents from a tapestry of collaborative events during a tumultuous decade. SPIRALS offers a ritualistic probing of origins, naming and time through the cycles of birth, life and death, ethnographic and archival materials, appendices, editorial notes, preface, and colour artwork. It is a joy to read.
Amongst the contributors are Niya B, Suparna Banerjee, Barbara Bridger, Sarahleigh Castelyn, Sally Pomme Clayton, Noèlia Diaz-Vicedo, Georgia Kalogeropoulou, John London, Erini Margariti, Hari Marini, Simon Persighetti, Nisha Ramayya and Beatriz Viol.
“Only after I decided that I would not or did not have to choose a language did I arrive at my writing.”
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, (English) Foreword to Gazelle, Gazela, Gazelle, ‘My arrival at writing: on the (non-)sacrifice of writing’
This carefully chosen and presented collection of multilingual poetry extends generous invitations to the reader.
It offers immersion in ‘the words, worlds and sonorities of the different languages’ at work and at play here, Croatian, English and French; it offers participation in the power of multilingual poetry to challenge linguistic hierarchies, structures, expectations and assumptions; it offers multiple experiences of multilingual poetry’s potential to disrupt, perhaps to disturb, certainly to delight.
Beyond the text, a journey outwards beckons from the printed page to sound readings of selected poems from the collection (alongside some additional poems) – encouraging a departure from the too often silent act of reading to engage physically with the multiple sounds and sensations of the poems’ language(s) (an experience essential to Jasmina’s multilingual, multifaceted work) – and to discover interlinked images, essays, interviews and meditations on the many forms and meanings of the ‘gazelle’ and the #ghazal which gives the collection its title.
This additional content can be accessed through the QR code included at the opening of the the collection and at https://jasminabradovani/pages/gazela. Explore the generosity of material which exceeds and spills over from this concise collection and enter the world in which Gazelle, Gazela, Gazelle comes into being.
Gazelle also offers a different approach to much of the poet’s previous multilingual poetic practice in which multiple languages often weave together inside one poem. In the recent Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues(Tears in the Fence, 2022) multilingual poems are further interwoven with visual-textual fragments and ‘poem-tattoos’ (irresistibly calling to mind Abdelkébir Khatibi’s ‘mémoire tatouée’). There, poems in turn interweave across the collection, moving beyond poetic and linguistic experimentation to complex language interplay. In Gazelle, the reader experiences the multilingual differently: each poem apparently complete unto itself within its language…. and yet, and yet…… each poetic creation and each language calls to the others, exceeding apparent boundaries and borders. Both approaches to engaging with the multilingual and with poetic interplay articulate fullness and loss inherent in these forms of poetry-making, carrying memories, emotions, sensations; both articulate the in-betweenness of identity, of culture, of language(s).
Of poetic creation in three languages, Jasmina writes:
“The three versions of the poem that I have written become translation of something that does not reside at the level of the linguistic; they become representations, reflections of a non-linguistic form of thought, of a series of images that exist ‘before’ language and that only acquire their meaning and linguistic form in the system of language” (‘“Unbound” Lines: Writing in the Space of the Multilingual’, Balkan Poetry Today, February 2018; https://jasminabradovani.com/blog/unbound-lines-writing-in-the-space-of-the-multilingual).
The open, curious, alert reader shares this experience of the journey towards and within multilingual poetry and the experience of how the practice of poetry and – essentially – the poetic voice comes into being(s), takes shape(s) and finds expression(s).
Most readers will not read, speak or understand all three of the languages here. The collection, then, offers further invitation to collective and personal experiences. For me, this takes place back and forth between English and French; the French ‘invitation au voyage’ further carrying resonances of the rhythms and sounds of Baudelaire’s invitation to travel with the poet. The presence and sounds of Croatian intrigue and urge me on to new discoveries.
This is an elegantly crafted collection – both in content and in form – to carry with you. The poems are given multilingual form by a publisher who understands a reader’s delight in the multi-sensory experience of the printed word. It is an elegant treasure to hold, an intellectual pleasure to navigate. Allow yourself to alight on a page and ‘to embrace the familiar and unfamiliar signs on paper through play’ as the poet’s foreword invites us to do.
*The gazelle is an elegant animal, but there was something more; the title that came to my mind has, of course, an irresistible resonance with Moroccan-born, French educated Muriel Barbery’s philosophical French novel L’Élégance du hérisson (2006)/The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008).I then realised that in Gazelle’s concluding poem, René has a (philosophical) cat, while the novel’s concierge Renée also has her cat… Coincidence? Serendipity? Languages at (inter)play……
Images from the Gazelle book launch, 29 December 2023, Galerija Kranjcar, Zagreb (top to bottom: Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, guitarist Ana Čehaić, author Ksenija Kušec, guest and poet, Branko Čegec)
We are delighted to announce that the book launch of Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani’s Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues will take place
at Morocco Bound bookshop, 1A Morocco Street, Bermondsey, London SE1
3HB, on Thursday, 23rd February, from 7.00 pm.
The event has now ended.
It is possible to buy a copy of the book as part of the entry fee and collect it at the event. Please feel free to share the event with friends.
David Caddy will introduce the event. Jasmina will be reading from the book with Bridget Knapper, and in conversation with Professor Debra Kelly.
Simon Collings in review of the book in Tears in the Fence 77 writes:
Many of our memories are linked to words. When we move to a new country and adopt a new language our memories retain traces of the earlier tongue, our brains recalling events in a different vocabulary and with a different syntax and sound-pattern. This shift of memory-language can prompt moments of forgetting, a sense of loss.
In her poem ‘Vol interrompu’ (interrupted flight) Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, who is of mixed Algerian-French-Croatian heritage, writes of:
the breaking down of language agglutinated words, worlds swirling in her mind
je(jeux) volé(s)
‘Vol interrompu’ is a poem about a childhood memory, a seabird seen one morning in Brussels from a school playground, the image inextricably linked to French sound-patterns. The words je (I) and jeux(games) echo each other when pronounced, an effect impossible to reproduce in English translation. Volé means stolen, the single/plural agreement a written though not a voiced distinction. Volé picks up sonically on vol in the title, and there is also a play in the poem on mouette (seagull) and muette (mute). The reactivation of the memory causes a momentary ‘anamnesia’, or ‘selective mutism’. The mind searches for the language, which is tied to the memory, the text ‘swirling’ across the page in an enactment of that process. Certain phrases in the poem are also echoed in Croatian.
In addition to this sonic aspect of the work, Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues also has a strong visual dimension. Formal layout is intrinsic to our experience of Individual poems, as for example in the ‘swirling’ agglutination of words in ‘Vol interrompu’ quoted at the start of this review. The fragmenting text of the poem ‘Language loss’ is another example. Every poem in the book has a unique form, and alongside the poems there are photographs accompanied by brief fragments of text (the poet calls these ‘patterns’), and three graphic texts (called ‘tattoos’). These resemble street plans, psycho-geographic codifications of memories and places.
Tears in the Fence 77 is now available at http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward and features poetry, prose poetry, translations, creative non-fiction and fiction by Lucy Ingrams, Jane Wheeler, Eliza O’Toole, Steve Spence, Peter Larkin, David Miller, Beth Davyson, Benjamin Larner, Louise Buchler, Isobel Williams, Glenn Hubbard, Hanne Bramness translated by Anna Reckin, Daniela Esposito, Simon Collings, Poonam Jain, Giles Goodland, Michael Farrell, Richard Foreman, Cole Swenson, Lesley Burt, Jeremy Hilton, Greg Bright, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, John Freeman, Caroline Maldonado, Rosemarie Corlett, Robert Hamberger, Alicia Byrne Keane , Olivia Tuck, Penny Hope, Mary Leader, Christine Knight, Ann Pelletier-Topping, Jennie E. Owen, Natalie Crick, Sian Astor-Lewis, Laura Mullen, Gwen Sayers, Kevin Higgins and Graham Mort.
The critical section consists of the Editorial by David Caddy, Letters to the Editor by Andrew Duncan, Tim Allen, Jeremy Hilton and David Pollard, Peter Larkin on Rewilding the Expressive: a Poetic Strategy, Andrew Duncan on Peter Finch, David Pollard on Patricia McCarthy, Simon Collings on Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani, Ben Philipps on Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Olivia Tuck on Linda Collins, Will Fleming on Maurice Scully, Louise Buchler on Caitlin Stobie, Mark Wilson on Sandeep Parmar, Simon Collings on Stephen Watts, Martin Stannard on Julia Rose Lewis & Nathan Hyland Walker, Barbara Bridger on Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Claire Booker on David Pollard, Gisele Parnall on Paul Eric Howlett, Louise Buchler on Rebecca May Johnson, Simon Jenner on Steve Spence and Andrew Martin, Andrew Duncan on Philip Pacey, Mandy Pannett on Seán Street, Morag Kiziewicz’s Electric Blue 12 and Notes On Contributors.
Tears in the Fence 76, 208 pp, is now available at http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward and features poetry, prose poetry, multilingual poetry, fiction and flash fiction by David Annwn, Charles Wilkinson, Lydia Harris, Jane Robinson, Daragh Breen, L.Kiew, Valerie Bridge, Sarah Watkinson, Poonam Jain, Helen Scadding, Alan Baker, Paul Marshall, Peter Dent, Andrew Henon, Mohammad Razai, Jennie Byrne, Luke Emmett, Mark Goodwin, Eleanor Rees, Sophie Segura, Robin Walter, Jill Eulalie Dawson, Rachael Clyne, Wendy Clayton, Mike McNamara, Diana Powell, Simon Jenner, Rodney Wood, Janet Hancock, Hannah Linden, Elizabeth McClaire Roberts, Michael Henry, Alan Dent, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Birgitta Bellême, Melanie Ann Vance, Mary Michaels, Huw Gwynn-Jones, Mike Duggan and John Kinsella, from Metaphysics.
The critical section consists of Joanna Nissel’s Editorial, Mark Prendergast in Conversation with Abigail Chabitnoy, Sam Warren-Miell on the British Right’s world of poetry, Robert Hampson on Nothing is being suppressed by Andrew Duncan, Barbara Bridger on Maria Stadnicka, Aidan Semmens on Jeremy Hilton, Barbara Bridger on Sarona Abuake, Kathleen McPhilemy on Giles Goodland, Sarah Watkinson on Steve Ely, Alan Baker on Lila Matsumoto, Kathy Miles on John Freeman, Marcus Slease on Chrissy Williams, Carla Scarano on the Poetry of Ian Seed, Vicky Grut on Wendy Erskine, Olivia Tuck on Victoria Kennefick, Andrew Duncan on Khaled Hakim, Graham Harthill on Gerry Loose, Siân Thomas on Pnina Shinebourne, Mandy Pannett on Caroline Maldonado, Paul Matthews on Kay Syrad, Norman Jope on Paul Celan translated by Joan Boase-Beier, Kiran Bhat on Rishi Dastidar, Guy Russell on Derek Gromadzki, Rupert Loydell and Steve Waling in Correspondence, Morag Kiziewicz ‘s Electric Blue 11 and Notes On Contributors .
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani’s ground-breaking poetry collection Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues presents the reader with thirty-five multilingual poems in English, French and Croatian structurally interwoven with thirteen visual-textual fragments and three poems-tattoos or “tattooed” drawings through the narrative device of “enchâssement” (embedding). Using the universal languages of the heart / love / music / rhythm the author seamlessly transgresses borders and provides us with a poignant, evocative, and fully inclusive, immersive experience. The recurring tropes of falling, absence, and loss, and the evocation of a fourth “shadow language” signify the narrator’s displacement from ‘home’ and language, whilst at the same time questioning the identity discourses of nostalgia, belonging and exile. Here, the central image of the “knitting drum machines for exiled tongues” can be interpreted both as an innovative artistic practice allowing the revival of lost and / or exiled languages, and as an enabling device for the (re-)coding of multilingual language patterns in which “poetry of the mind breaks free”.
A QR code included in the book invites the reader to access additional content related to the Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues collection such as a glossary, visual, and audio sources.
“In Knitting Drum Machines for Exiled Tongues, ‘harmonies’ are ‘sounding out’ spectrums of sonic frequencies, attempting to connect self/others. Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani brilliantly raises the old sword of the bard battling both the silences within herself and which plague us all – the ‘mutisms’ at the ‘edges’, our own wilderness being contained. The poet stretches through the unhearable, unsayable, claims ‘je capte’ ‘kapetan bez broda’ – but then leaves us a blank void to be filled in. That space is the remarkable work waiting here for readers to respond to, to find our ‘futures possible’ where ‘optimism’ is that ‘impossibility of closed passage’ of which she writes so eloquently.”
Jennifer K. Dick, author of, most recently, That Which I Touch Has No Name, 2022
