Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Kaganczuk.

Currently reading : Alabama Song By Gilles Leroy

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Khorshid.

Khorshid

Iranian Women's Poetry Prize

About the Prize

Iranian Women's Poetry Prize (Khorshid) was founded in the spring of 2008 by Sepideh Jodeyri, contemporary poet to celebrate more than two decades of Iranian women's outstanding achievement in the field of poetry.

The Prize is unique in Iran and promotes the finest in Iranian women's poetry by rewarding the very best book of the year.

The prize aims to reward the best poetry book of the year written by an Iranian woman. Khorshid judges are selected from the finest critics, poets and academics among Iranian women. The winner of Khorshid Prize receives 5 golden Bahar Azadi coins, a statuette and a citation signed by all the judges.

Rules

The Prize

1. The Prize is worth 5 golden Bahar Azadi coins to the winner. It will be awarded to an Iranian woman who has written the best, eligible poetry book in the opinion of the judges.
2. The chair of judging panel and a volunteer judge will be responsible for compiling a longlist of at least twenty books.
3. All the judges will be responsible for compiling a shortlist of up to ten outstanding books submitted for the Prize. For inclusion in this shortlist a title must have the full support of at least one judge in whose opinion it is a valid contender for the Prize.
4. The panel of judges is chosen by Sepideh Jodeyri, founder of the Prize .  

Eligible books

1. Any poetry book, written by an Iranian woman with scheduled publication dates between 20 March 2007 and 19 March 2008 is eligible.
2. Neither an anthology nor a combination of short stories and poems is eligible.
3. No Persian translation of a poetry book written originally in any other language is eligible.

Closing date

21 July 2008

This year's prize

Keep visiting Khorshid Prize website for the latest news about Khorshid Prize 2008.

2008 Judges

The Chair of Judges and the judging panel for Khorshid Prize 2008 were announced on 10 June 2008.

Chaired by Sepideh Jodeyri, poet, translator and founder of the Prize, the eclectic line-up of judges consists of Banafsheh Hejazi, veteran poet, writer and scholar; Azita Ghahreman, poet, writer and translator; Roya Tafti, poet and literary critic; Pegah Ahmadi, poet, translator and literary critic and Mehri Jafari, poet, literary critic and women's rights activist.

2008 Sponsors

The sponsors for Khorshid Prize 2008 were announced on 10 June 2008.

Khorshid Prize 2008 is sponsored by a line-up of Jundishapour (Ahwaz) University graduates consists of Dr. Farideh Farhadi, chairwoman of Alghadir hospital in Tehran and member of several NGOs; Dr. Fatemeh Haghbin, surgeon and ophthalmologist, member of American Academy of Ophthalmology and European Society of Ophthalmology and Azam Paki, veteran teacher and scholar of biology.

Are you a volunteer for sponsoring? Please send Khorshid your contact information.       

2008 Longlist

The longlist will be announced during the first week of October 2008.

2008 Shortlist

The shortlist will be announced during the first week of December 2008.

2008 Winner

Marcello

Currently reading : The Great Railway Bazaar By Paul Theroux

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The Vagabonds’ Bordello.

So, the book is ready. Below, you can find (copied from the book) the back cover summary and the acknoweledgements' list :-) I am waiting for your reviews. Thank you -all of you.

Back cover summary

"Focusing on what remains untouched and what can't easily change, the fifteen short stories of this book most serve as shortcuts of daily life.

"Ascension": An architect explores a building of her own designed, among an anonymous crowd.

"Part Man, Part Product": A man that marked the century with his invention is trying to escape –or maybe not?

"The Bottle": How one visit in a stranger's house can change your last wish.

"A Night at the Strip Show": Where flesh meets flesh, but not exactly.

"Satori in Antwerp": A walk in a city through one's foggy mind.

"The Visualisation": Trying to find the meaning of objects left outside the door of your rented house and what happens if you try and follow the signs.

"Our Story": How words can produce love between a man and a typewriter.

"Dream Days at the Bookshop 'Kermadec'": An employee of a bookstore and the postponed oracles of a shared past.

"Call Me Etter": If newspapers are society's mirror then what is a mind?

"A Weird Dream About Paris": How can you escape from a dream when you have to focus on your personal reality?

"Don't Leave Me Alone in Wonderland, Alice": Memories of childhood can haunt you every day.

"A Day At the Circus": Moving crowds of no purpose towards a fiesta.

"Oh, Sally": Just after 08:46 nothing will be the same anymore.

"Night Train": Travelling through an inconvenience.

"Strange Clouds Over the Attic": The meeting point of lost Masters and the way things might look from up there.

At last, there is "The Vagabonds' Bordello". It's the place where everything and everyone comes together, a novella beneath the night sky, where no one is lost or forgotten or haunted anymore. It's the little rebellion of a crew in a city where no one pays attention to them; it might last only one night, but that night is a good one for the ones participating –or at least, that's what their screams are portraying, while a lonely dog watches them with a single word in his mouth."

Acknowledgements

Adding a section like this is the least I can do to thank the friends who have made this book a reality.

I would like to thank April Wolland for her valuable help with editing this book; without her patience, I really doubt if I could ever have done it by myself. April, you are one of a kind.

Also, I would like to thank my very good friend Gretchen Adreon, for letting me use her painting "Rocking the Boat" for the front cover; her oeuvre is always inspiring for me and one day we will collaborate together on a book for sure. That's a promise, Gretchen.

Of course, I would like to thank the following artists –appearing here alphabetically- for giving their best with their paintings and making the book richer –not only in images, but in sentiments, too:

-Vanessa Castro, who is fighting every day her good fight using pure hope and her drawings.

-S.P. Crow, an enigmatic girl who's sailing the seven seas and is always, somehow, reaching Antarctica.

-Sophie Dali, for being a modern Florence Nightingale, with a critic's eye and a rare talent in writing poetry and in painting.

-Jeffrey Diamond, whose surname portrays what kind of a person Jeffrey is –and what kind of a painter and photographer, too.

-Ellom, whom I have always admired as a poet -and lately I discovered what a great painter she is as well.

-Christopher Foley, for his great skill in making cartoons full of humour and tenderness.

-Mary Micheli, for her ability to paint attractive fairy tales for all audiences and all ages.

-John Francis Peters, for his natural romanticism as well as for his romantic nature landscapes.

-Jessica Whitright, for the captivating look of Sally behind the door.

Also, I would like to express my gratitude for Dee Norris, a modern day hero and a fantastic writer. General, don't ever doubt your abilities.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank Gloria James for letting me use in my fiction the poems and the character of her son, Peter James. I never crossed roads in real life with Peter and, unfortunately, I won't have the chance to. But, since I met him through the writing of The Vagabonds' Bordello, it feels to me like we met further on up the road. Be well Peter, wherever you are.

You can view or buy the book here: 

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Announcing...(Update 01/28)..

Everything seems ready and the book is a matter of time! :-) Been waiting Vel's paintings and one from Mary. Then, the process will start. Please send me your names or nicknames (the ones you want to appear). :-)
Thank you very much! :-)

Update: 01/28/2008

 (24 November, 2007)

After twenty months of uploading stories, there comes a time when one needs to do something for/with their writings. Borges put it better than anybody else: "we publish our writings in order not to edit them forever." I don't live in the States, therefore I have no agent representing my writings and I know that it isn't worth a try without an agent. After all, there are a lot better writers than me, native English speakers, who deserve more to be published (Dee, you know for whom the biggest bell tolls right now.) On the other hand, I had a hard time publishing a novel in Greek, although I finally did; in the publishing field, one can easily visualise the old Greek cliché metaphorical image: a man on a donkey sauntering down the path. Please, be polite enough not to ask who the donkey is.

Anyway, since I always wanted to design a book of my own, I thought of giving a chance to self-publishing. Hence, Lulu.com. The faithful reader will remember the Lulu-on-the-bricks joke with the wannabe actress promoted by Myspace; well, you never know when an old name will find you and make a joke against you –I think I can hear her whispering: Don't Tease Me If You Can't Please Me. So, I checked Lulu's site, I made up my mind (although I have some doubts) and thought of giving it a try –with the site, not the girl.

I had forty of them; some were really, really bad; some were defeated by time; some of them I once liked but not anymore, so I'll sell them on e-bay (doesn't everything useless go there?) I decided to publish 16. Most of them have been uploaded here, a few never found their way out of my drawer, and one of the locked up ones will give the title to the short-story book -and explain why I wrote all of these stories. The title will be "The Vagabonds' Bordello." It might sound a bit weird, but that's it. Please don't blame me –unless you are Amartya Sen- I gave up on economics in the first grade and marketing is not my thing.

I'll let you all know when the book will be ready –probably no earlier than a month or so- and I'll set the lowest price I can. Meanwhile, I have a proposal for everybody, for readers and non-readers, for friends and non-friends, for constant readers and adorable yawners: I've been thinking that it would be nice to have a drawing/sketch/painting with every story. Since I have two left hands when it comes to painting (trivia: I'm right-handed) I thought of asking you to create something for each story. Whoever is interested, just let me know. The painting/sketch/drawing should be black and white because the cost of colour printing in Lulu is high and I think that nobody would buy the book, not even me. The book size is 6" x 9", so drawings should be a bit smaller.  Below, you can find the list of the stories, and tell me if you are interested on painting something for one (or more) of them. You can also "practice" with my face, do whatever you wish, paint me as I am, as I will never be, as you think I am, more handsome (I'll love you for that), make a caricature, make me and Tom best friends and all the wonderful stuff you have on your mind. I'll do my best to publish all your drawings, I promise –just remember the black and white restriction.

Cover: Gretchen Adreon

 (Not by order of appearance)

So, now you know almost everything although you are not any wiser than before opening this post. Let me know if you are interested in any of these subjects. That's all I have to say for the time being, now I have to go back to Lulu (the website.) So, think about it. Till the next time, be healthy, wealthy, and all the good things ending in –ealthy, God bless you, Dog bless you, and if it's cold outside and you're sneezing, just bless you.

And, above all, thank you for being here for so long.

Currently listening : The Three Penny Opera By Kurt Weill Release date: 29 April, 1994

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Night Train (on a Gretchen’s painting).
Current mood: disappointed

The train was damaged midway. There was engine trouble, they said.

Most of the passengers feared a terrorist assault, that somebody blinded by an idea or by a bandana, forever hidden even after death, had stopped the motion of the train and that in a moment or two a mechanism would cough, the wagons would blow, the steel sheets would erupt across the sky and the colossal fireworks would become an hysterical show on the televisions. At once the seats emptied, the handgrips started to rattle like teeth, backpacks thrown on arms, and in the midst of the panic a couple of coffees ejaculated onto the napes of necks, already burned by daily life anyway. But no one really cared. They just needed to save their belongings, to save the life they had before the journey started, the life that had already caused severe damages to their scruffs.

"What the hell's going on?" Giusti asked himself when the hand of a ticket inspector woke him up once and for good from a dream that he would never enjoy again. "There's a problem with the train," the inspector announced officially, wearing the face of a doctor, "You must get out." Giusti stared outside the window. People were huddled by the exit door of the wagon, then they were descending to the ground; it looked like a sandglass from there: passengers landed by passing through a rectangular hole, maybe the border between the natural and the mechanical world, maybe not, and the sandglass' time seemed to end, like every day. Soon enough, a human railway formed a line next to the train, a crowd without rail connection.

Giusti always liked inconveniences, he thought that during one of them his life would reach a point blank, a crux, and from then on his life would begin without him even noticing it. He took his backpack and debouched with the masses. The more extroverted in the crowd started to serve their purpose, ready to turn into eye-witnesses, cameras on standby, cell phones hanging from their ears like earrings, a pure Babel in which everyone was speaking without communicating; a whole crowd was breathing next to the train, hundreds of individuals were gushing over the ground.

"Boom," Giusti said and ten hearts flirted with infarction.

"Are you an asshole?" a voice asked him, not politely enough.

"Who did that?" a macho guy wondered, but his wife held him back with an invisible rein, as always.

"Just a joke," Giusti said, but someone interrupted him.

"Yes mum, I'm fine," a voice said next to him, unrecognizable, probably somewhere between twenty and sixty, the usual target group of the daily eaters from the Tupperware of fear.

"Asshole."

"Smartass."

This went on for several minutes; but Giusti was rather happy because his fellow passengers found something else to observe even if only for a few minutes. Then  two train-mechanics arrived, in white shirts with a red cross on the back, maybe a crossroad of sorts, who knows, moving with pride their extra-baggage.

"Hurry up, guys, I have to be in a play!" a cameo voice said.

"Uhm," Giusti reacted, always passing through life as if in a perpetual cameo.

It wasn't that bad, he thought. They were in the middle of nature, in a valley full of lilacs, tulips and dandelions in the grass, like in a Hettie Jones poem.

We need weather baby,

we need tulips, lilacs,

dandelions in the grass

and your sweet ass.

They needed weather and probably a sweet ass, it was true, but no one was in the mood for asking; plus, if the train was about to explode and they knew that they had one last wish, it probably wouldn't be for sex but for a phone call. An orgy in a valley  had not happened so far in his life and Giusti felt rather disappointed. Their lives were so important, he thought, that they had the illusion of being heroes throughout a mass-tragedy. Masses are nowadays heroes? He questioned himself. His inner voice remained silent, or he didn't hear it, as the mechanics announced loudly that "The train has been fixed, everybody get in." Life was getting back to normal, the human grains were taking their places in the other side of the sandglass. The inspector whistled, slowly in the beginning and then more steadily, and the train left the valley behind following the route not of the rails, but of the lives crying inside it.

It was night when the train arrived at the station, a black starless night in which everybody hugged and kissed their loved ones, who were waiting for them after the discomfort caused midway through their journey. Everybody had a story to tell, but this story was always the same, no matter which mouth was narrating. Giusti climbed down last, passed through the noisy crowd and when he felt sad and free like in a Springsteen song, all he could see was the night, realizing that once again his life didn't begin, that this disorder didn't put his life in order.

Currently reading : Austerlitz (Modern Library Paperbacks) By Winfried Georg Sebald Release date: 03 September, 2002

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Part Man, Part Product.
Current mood: happy

"Earl, Earl!" Lulu Clark barked at me; since she was my mother and far from being a real Earl myself, I had to walk to the route of her voice. Mothers have been the same since the time of Eve: "Come here boy, it's time for your apple," she said. I couldn't stand that daily torture; I felt that each time I was losing paradise. I had to do something.

It was the years after World War I, and those years consisted of my own Great Depression, which appeared long before the real one arrived. However, during those lonesome years my first patent showed up in the world: it was a funny machine that was actually a frame facilitating in the cleaning of chickens. I was so proud to see my name displayed in the inventors Hall of Fame: Earl Silas Tupper, Patent No. 10583. Meanwhile, I started selling the products of my father's greenhouse door-to-door, and this was my initiation for learning the rules of the market.

Now that I'm old enough to understand, it seems to me that I was trying to invent a reality in which I could feel comfortable; a daily routine, well protected, like in a plastic box. After I started working for the DuPont Chemical Company in 1937, I knew that I could do revolutionary things with plastics. All I needed was a good idea, something that could show the way to my own little place in the stars. I stayed for one year at the DuPont Chemical Company. One night, I came up with an idea that I thought was more than good: industrial plastics for daily use.

The following morning I resigned, and a couple of months later my own company was started. But World War II was just months away. I had to deal with that fact and postpone my major plan. I started creating gas masks and Navy signal lights. Soon enough, everyone in the American Army was carrying one of my products. The masks especially were a great success, although I had problems with the Lucky Strike tobacco company. Since the gas masks needed to be green, this dye had to be used first for the Army. Lucky Strike disagreed but after a while they took several steps back; they changed the colour of their brand from green to red and white. Green color was low in stock and whatever supply remained had to be used for the Army. Was there a hidden symbolism for the lack of Green and Hope?  Anyway, this was one of my major wins. Slowly, I started feeling like an Emperor.

The War didn't touch me. In 1946, humanity was trying to recover, people were attempting to forget the wounds that they will always remember. It was time for healing, it was time for relief. Everyone was in need of some calming years; a period of time that they could change the scenery in front of their eyes; to eat tasty food after a Six Year Diet. I felt ready to give the market a chance and to give people an escape. With my new product they would be able to take their food with them, keep it in good condition and enjoy it far away from home - somewhere beneath the sky, with clean air all around them. It didn't take long; the first Tupperware products were soon a reality.

In the beginning it wasn't easy to spread the word. Tupperware wasn't selling well in the department stores. It was obvious that I needed some help. I was lucky enough to know –from the 40's- a woman named Brownie Wise. Her last name said everything about her, although she was not an easygoing person. Women started becoming important members of society in the Post-War world and I saw the future of Tupperware in her; she was the ideal woman of her era. She came up with an idea that created a trend around the States –and later, around the globe: Tupperware parties. Every day, Tupperware parties were being held in houses; ladies were chatting amidst my products, they were keeping their food in them, they were filling them with lunch for their children and husbands; they were smiling. People were socializing thanks to Tupperware. Brownie Wise made my product a hit. By the end of the 50's, every house in the States had at least one of my products; I was the Earl of Tupperware. I was happy, although my mother wasn't on earth anymore to see where I could store my daily apples.

By 1958 the whole thing was out of my control. Brownie Wise was acting like a celebrity, as if I never existed; I had no other choice than to show her the exit. Shortly after her dismissal, I decided to sell the Tupperware Company. I wanted some peaceful years, I was fifty-one years old and I thought that I had done my best. I wasn't young, I wasn't that old; but I needed to get out of the Tupperware. I felt like I was trapped in a box, I needed fresh air. I had my nice little place in the stars after all, and it was time for me to live door-to-door with the people I loved. Later that year I sold the Company for $16 million to Dart Industries. I had to change my life; I had to be alone in a paradise, where I would never be interrupted.

I was rich and I could buy anything. Goods always have their price, and I could buy whatever I wanted - even an island. In the early 60's I bought San Jose Island in Central America, I gave up my American Citizenship and I divorced my wife. I wanted my freedom back. I didn't want to live life anymore in a Tupperware. My product, my brand name, my fame, trapped me in the biggest Tupperware I had ever created.

Today, it is 1981 and I'm an old man. I spent peaceful years on the island. I enjoyed friends; I observed my products as they spread around the world; I became a synonym of plastic boxes; every language used my new word. In a way, I was in every house. People were travelling with me, people were talking through me, people were buying me. Even after my death, I will still be present on Earth. If there is only one thing to know it is that every single moment I'm living in millions of places at the same time. To be present everywhere and anytime is the best way to exist.

I am.

Currently reading : The Decline of the West By Oswald Spengler Release date: 11 April, 2006

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Ascension (Based on a painting by Gretchen Adreon).
Current mood: indifferent

 

   Now she could feel satisfied, she was in the elevator among black people speaking out loud and cutting the words, Mexican kids hanging on to fajitas or mother's hands, Chinese who spoke in their language –it seemed like the voices of crows mixed with a seagull's accent- Mediterraneans who thought that New York was the ultimate place to be –although those times seemed to belong to the past, before the movie cowboy became president, before the eighties dawn turned out to be a suspicious, perpetual night. Next to her, an old American man –tweed jacket, brown hat, nails cut carefully on the edge as only Protestants do- said in a voice of 80 decibels, "It's not a skyscraper; it's the Tower of Babel." In a way, he was right, she thought: they were moving towards the sky, closer to the clouds; instantly, she thought of putting her hand out and causing some trouble to a passing plane. Nobody worried: it wasn't a plane like the ones that destroyed the city's blind faith in safety. "Terrorists won't strike like that again," she said to a woman who was probably a lesbian –she had a wet look in her face, like wearing a pair of sexual contact lenses. "They surprised us back then; if they do it again, they won't succeed. To scare means to surprise; to repeat means you're out of new weapons." The lesbian kept staring at her, totally out of new weapons.
   The elevator kept counting the floors of the skyscraper like seconds; they were already up to the 156th floor. This colorful population –as in a Benetton's commercial- was ascending quickly to the top, where everybody ("Who is everybody?" she asked herself) said that the view could take your breath away and never give it back. A retired Japanese man in his early sixties was taking pictures with a camera smaller than his palm, clicking all the time as if he was in a contest against the speedy counting of the elevator. "All these voices…" she thought to herself and closed her eyes, listening to that post-modern gospel, a mixture of a dozen languages air-painted by their accents, saying opinions which under normal circumstances would be assumed as crap; speaking without listening and watching without seeing.
   A sexy mechanical voice -carried through five thousand neurons of wires located in the basement and brought straight to their ears- announced, "Floor 365." The triple-steel door opened. "Wow," "Yay" and "Oh my" were the top gasps of the crew. She remained speechless, thinking it was the best way to welcome the feeling; a feeling that zeroed her existence –which meant that now she had fewer responsibilities. After all she was standing on the very top, the skyscraper she designed was now ready to be filled with humans or humanoids –who really cared about that slight difference? She had been responsible just for the building; marketing would do the rest. While the happy crew was taking pictures, she was observing the view. The river, the red bricks, the forgotten lights of the past night, the neon letters which gave information about the city's priorities, the roads creating a black river full of shipwrecked cars, the lost loves, the postponed plans, the cancelled dreams…everything was down there. It was absurd, she thought. Even Central Park seemed like a jungle from up there. Meanwhile, people were posing next to her, claiming the dubious advantage of a photograph on the top of this new skyscraper, Colgate-smiles, ready to celebrate an empty event without wine, a moment of personal glory without any true historical echo.
   "What have I done?" she asked herself, feeling a million ants climbing up her backbone. She knew exactly what she had done. She had offered a possibility to the masses; she had helped people attempt to move closer to the sky; she had listened carefully to the orders of a deep and rich pocket that belonged to a poor mind; "It was business, darling," she thought. She knew it before, she knew it already, but now it was different. Everybody ("Who is everybody?") would like to ascend to the top of the great skyscraper, with its phallic antenna scratching wrinkles into the air. "We're leaving the ground, we're losing contact. One day the roads will be in the air, too. The windows will offer corridors from one place to another. We were always lonely acrobats –but in the future we will be literally. I prepared a part of the new world. And right now, this coming world seems worse than the previous one."
   She knew there was an emergency exit –it was her building, but not literally this time. Her palms pushed a button; she then moved a piece of glass on the roof. She climbed up, while the colorful crew thought that it was an extra-event; a woman on top, the lesbian thought sexually. She walked against the wind and moments later her body was an anti-elevator: she started counting the floors to the ground quicker than any machine. Zero. By the time her body hit the road the traffic was heavy.
   The following morning, The New York Times wrote her name on the front page. Her obituary covered a column, familiar to the shape of a skyscraper. To the left and right of the column the daily news was rolling; each word was a falling body and all of them together made a population headed towards its loss, a population thinking that you can only survive by ascending in whatever can be assumed today as a Tower of Babel.

---------------------------------------------------------
Thank you very much for your support, Gretchen.

Currently listening : The River By Bruce Springsteen Release date: 25 October, 1990

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I Thought My Father Was An Ambassador.
Current mood: happy