Taming Space by Petar Tchouhov.
Translated by Hristo Dimitrov, Jonathan Dunne, Kalina Filipova, Zoya Marincheva, Tom Phillips, Angela Rodel, Katerina Stoykova
Published by Bulgata book
ISBN 978-619-92474-0-2
Have you ever felt this too? After reading haiku, an overpowering urge to write haiku? (Or an approximation of haiku, let’s not be too perfectionist about definitions and definitely no judgement of good or bad. No one else is going to see them after all, unless I decide that some are worth making public.) Sometimes other forms of poetry inspire too, but there is something about haiku, perhaps it is because they are so short, lulling you into a sense, quite false, that they are therefore simple to write. They are not simple, but I do find that they are fun and that is probably part of the lure, for me.
And sometimes – and this is rare, it has only happened to me a few times, with a few writers – after reading something they have written, I not only feel inspired to write, it seems to me that I am writing in a similar way. It’s not a question of conscious imitation, there is nothing conscious about it, it’s more a question of energy, in the same way that enthusiasm say, or joy, or motivation, they can be infectious, and before you know it, you are feeling the same way as the other person, their energy has spilled over into you.
I found that recently after reading Petar Tchouhov’s poems. His style, structure and subject matter is quite different from mine, or from the way I usually write. Or so I think. But do I have a usual style, a recognizable way of writing? A lot is talked about ‘finding one’s voice’ but I like to imagine I have many voices rather than just one. And we are surely influenced by so many things, not just the words of writers, but by the music and the images of daily life, by everything that is around us, and why one image or one thought or one feeling should hold our attention rather than others, that is surely one of life’s mysteries and life’s great joys if you are one of those people who prefer to express experience rather than see it as something to be explained or a puzzle to be solved.
Petar Tchouhov certainly celebrates the indefinable, the curious and the poignant in life. I admire his ability to be concise, to evoke a dry sense of humour, to almost put on a show of taking life, with all its vicissitudes, in his stride. He plays with irony as one might play with forming different kinds of knots in string or wool, to make a curious, intricate tapestry. He has a way of combining practicality with style and design and experimentation as if he wants to weave designs to catch the reader’s attention, to deflect from any admission of vulnerability. His poems tell stories and carry you along, you want to know what happens, the outcome, and it is often unexpected, often goes against the grain, against expectations, as if to say, did you want a cheerful happy outcome? That’s not, in my experience, how things work out. Did you want it to be clear and definite? But life is so often ambiguous, is it not?
His poems often pose questions and give us unexpected answers; or swivel the viewpoint, challenging our assumptions. They need to be quoted in their entirety I think, for the full force of their enjoyment or their secrets, to be savoured. So I’ll just quote a couple of short ones, beginning with this one, where the title is longer (almost) than the poem.
A Question you’ve never been asked but you’d like to have been asked
Which room do you prefer –
the one
with sunrise
the one
with sunset
or the one
with me
Petar Tchouhov, translated by Katerina Stoykova (you can read a review of her poetry collection The Porcupine of Mind here
Lucifer
While you are in the meadow,
obsessed with thoughts
of your happiness,
let me remind you that St Patrick
used a kind of clover called shamrock
for an easier explanation
of the Holy Trinity.
Given that, what do you think
the fourth leaf you’re looking for
means?
Petar Tchouhov. Translated by the author and Angela Rodel
Petar also writes haiku, and I’ve written about his collection Safety Pins, here where you can read some examples of good haiku.
I’m not posting the poems I wrote as they are under consideration elsewhere. But here is one written recently, ekphrastic, inspired by the street art.
Yellow Bird
…. There’s the big yellow bird painted on the end of a building.
One can’t be sure of this bird I feel, not hostile but not benign
it looks at you not as if you might be prey or even dangerous
but more as if it cannot place you in the cannon of its perceptions.
It seems to be considering that you might be
no real shape at all, no real anything it can identify,
you could be just a blur of movement,
a trick of its bright bird imagination.
We catch the uncertainty in the full gaze of its bird eye.
A sense of future, not yet formed.
The traffic passes underneath. People cross the street.
This possibility of outcome, this bird observation
of the flickering and moving swarm of humans
is reflected in the glass frontage of another building in the Euston Road.
It is framed here like any other picture,
just one in the gallery of London’s streets.
Removed from direct perception, it looks backwards, like a mirror,
the sense of predator or promise, that has gone,
there is almost nostalgia, as if it sees that you are free to leave the gallery.
On the busy streets, in the sunshine,
traffic lights count seconds, as you cross.
A pedestrian, you are low down on the scale of street importance.
But you are free to choose your route, to change your mind,
to pause or to stop and talk to others.
I choose the low red-brick entranceway
into the courtyard garden of the British Library.
shakes me like a duster and we laugh together.
Maybe this is what the yellow bird had in mind for us, as future, all along.
Morelle Smith
Comments
Your poetry moves me.