The Write Advice 097: URSULA K LE GUIN

Utopia, and Dystopia, are intellectual places.  I write from passion and playfulness.  My stories are neither dire warnings nor blueprints for what we ought to do.  Most of them, I think, are comedies of human manners, reminders of the infinite variety of ways in which we always come back to pretty much the same place, and celebrations of that infinite variety by the invention of still more alternatives and possibilities… To me the important thing is not to offer any specific hope of betterment but, by offering an imagined but persuasive alternative reality, to dislodge my mind, and so the reader’s mind, from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live.  It is that inertia that allows the institutions of injustice to continue unquestioned.
      Fantasy and science fiction in their very conception offer alternatives to the reader’s present, actual world. Young people in general welcome this kind of story because in their vigor and eagerness for experience they welcome alternatives, possibilities, change.  Having come to fear even the imagination of true change, many adults refuse all imaginative literature, priding themselves on seeing nothing beyond what they already know, or think they know.

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)


 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American novelist URSULA K LE GUIN (1929–2018):

 

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/

 

 

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Styles of Writing (2014) by GRANT SNIDER

 Re-posted from the blog INCIDENTAL COMICS

© 2014 Grant Snider

People tend to think that inspiration, exploration, and elation are the majority of the creative process, that artists live in this magical land of ideas.  But most of creative work is getting something down, being dissatisfied with it, reworking it, reworking it again, throwing it out, starting over, and continuing until some deadline arrives.  Creative work, aside from those rare moments of pure inspiration, is real work.  Taking time each day to put in the work and be at your drawing table: that’s how it gets done.  If nothing happens, you still have to be there in the chair, otherwise absolutely nothing will get done.  Those moments are hidden from the public eye; no one sees the hours at the drawing table waiting for ideas to come or reworking things. They see the finished product.

GRANT SNIDER

Interviewed in The Los Angeles Review of Books

16 July 2017

 

Use the links below to visit INCIDENTAL COMICS, the wonderful blog of North American cartoonist GRANT SNIDER, and purchase his many fine books from ABRAMS COMIC ARTS and CHRONICLE BOOKS:

 

 

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/


https://www.abramsbooks.com/contributor/grant-snider_15889594/


https://www.chroniclebooks.com/collections/read-aloud-childrens-books/products/what-color-is-night?_pos=1&_sid=48c1770e7&_ss=r

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Poet of the Month 041: EDUARDO WHITE

EDUARDO WHITE
c 2004

 

 

 

 

THE BURDEN OF LIFE

 

The burden of life!
I loved bearing it, just like you,
hearing it grow inside me,
in living flesh.

 

I didn't only want
to open your wound,
I didn't only want
the patient vocation of a labourer:
I wanted the earth's vocation too,
which also is yours.

 

Treat love like a profession,
to be practised with great care.

 

Repeat to perfection
as often as necessary,
until it lasts
and everything inside
is in the right place.

 
Let the sun rise into the night.
Never let love become a leftover, a memory.

 

 

 

1990

Translated by  

 

STEFAN TOBLER

 

 

 

Eduardo Costley White was born in the Mozambique port city of Quelimane on 21 November 1963.

 

After training for three years at the Industrial Institute, he founded the poetry magazine Charrua in 1984 before going on to be named President of the Mozambican Writers Association.
 

 
His first collection of poetry Amar Sobre o Índico [To Love the Indian] was published in 1984.  He published ten other collections, the last being Até Amanhã, Coração [See You Tomorrow, Heart] which appeared in 2005. The poem O peso da vida [The Burden of Life] is from his third collection País de Mim [Country of Me, 1990].  In 2001 he was named Literary Figure of the Year by the Mozambican Press Association.

 

Preoccupied with his mixed Portuguese and English heritage, White's poetry was both a reflection of his personal history and an exploration of Mozambique's war-torn past characterized by the unceasing quest for human dignity.  Whether speaking of his beloved, of the land or of his relationship to his own work, his poems are notable for their tone of tenderness, musicality and occasional eroticism.  Now considered one of his country's finest poets, White died in Mozambique on 24 August 2014.

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more poems posted on the website of the Poetry Translation Centre:

 

 

http://www.poetrytranslation.org/

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 096: JOSHUA JENNIFER ESPINOZA

I’m not interested so much in being included as I am in fucking shit up.  Representation, to me, implies subsumption.  I don’t want to belong in this world.  I want to end it and make something new, something better.  That said, the ways in which certain folks are institutionally excluded from the literary world are glaring.  There is work out there that deserves to be heard that is instead being actively silenced while racists, transmisogynists, and other bigots are given platforms for their mediocre and harmful shit.

Interview conducted by ERIN TAYLOR [18 June 2016]


 

Use the link below to read the full 2016 interview with North American poet JOSHUA JENNIFER ESPINOZA:

 

http://maudlinhouse.net/joshua-jennifer-espinoza/

 

 

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