Friday, October 28, 2011

Tranströmer's Baltics available for pre-order!

We're particularly excited to be bringing you this long-overdue reprint of Samuel Charters' translation of Tomas Tranströmer's Baltics, a classic of Swedish literature and a masterpiece by any standard.

Tomas Tranströmer published this groundbreaking collection in 1974. In this book-length poem, Tranströmer creates a literal and figurative landscape where his family history becomes the psychological, perhaps even the spiritual, history of the poet himself. Time, geography, a family, an island, a country, the labor of seamanship - these elements, and so many more, show a voice whose multiplicities and conjunctions intertwine to resemble something like the layers of a symphony, a symphony of narrative, of the minimal, the liminal, the image, collisions, and fragments.

Baltics, as its plural name suggests, is an experiment in the conflation of time, a theme that has come to define Tranströmer's career as a poet. Out of print for nearly 40 years, this new edition contains a revised translation, a new afterword and translator's note, a series of photographs by Ann Charters, and the original Swedish text en face.

Of this new and expanded edition of Balitcs, Michael Burkard comments:

"It is especially moving to me now, with Tomas Tranströmer having just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, to have the generous and far-reaching Baltics available again, and in such a keen translation. Tomas Tranströmer leaves an indelible mark upon readers everywhere. The gifts of his poems are offered generously and without conditions. I cannot think of another poet who has left more lasting impressions - impressions which never cease, but instead keep creating new spheres of realities and imaginations. He is constantly a poet of nearness. We need Tomas Tranströmer's poetry as much, if not more, in this 21st century as we needed it in the last."

We hope to have this book printed by early January. Click here to make a pre-order. Cheers!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Books in the works...

Just a quick post to keep you up to speed with our many exciting titles in the works. Poems from the German, Swedish, Spanish, Hungarian, and English. Reprints from Poet Laureates and Nobel Prize winners. Poems never before translated into English. 12 full-length collections and 1 hand-sewn pamphlet. Books currently in production: Winterward by William Stafford, Batlics by Tomas Tranströmer, Selected Poems by Ferenc Juhász. Stay tuned!



My Blue Piano by Else Lasker-Schüler,
translated from the German by Eavan Boland

Baltics by Tomas Tranströmer,
translated from the Swedish by Samuel Charters
with photographs by Ann Charters

The Wounded Alphabet: Collected Poems Volume I: 1963-1983
by George Hitchcock

Glowing Enigmas by Nelly Sachs,
translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

Collected Poems: Volume One by David Wevill

Fire Water World and Among the Dog Eaters
by Adrian C. Louis

Collected Poems: Volume Two by David Wevill

The Fire’s Journey: Volume One by Eunice Odio,
translated from the Spanish by Keith Ekiss
with Sonia P. Ticas and Mauricio Espinoza

We Women by Edith Södergran,
translated from the Swedish by Samuel Charters

Selected Poems by Ferenc Juhász,
translated from the Hungarian by David Wevill

Who Whispered Near Me by Killarney Clary

Winterward by William Stafford

The Wounded Alphabet: Collected Poems Volume II: 1984-2010
by George Hitchcock

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Tranströmer's Prison broadside now available

To complement our release of Tomas Tranströmer's Prison, we've printed 5o promotional broadsides that feature the cover drawing by our in-house artist Cecilia Yang and a poem from the collection.

Cheers!

Tranströmer's Prison now available

Tomas Tranströmer's Prison is the second of three books we're publishing this year by the 2011 Nobel Laureate.

Tomas Tranströmer worked for several years as a psychologist for juvenile delinquents. In 1959 he visited his colleague Åke Nordin, who was also a poet, at the Hällby youth prison in the southern part of Sweden. Later that year he sent Nordin a sequence of nine haiku, giving his impressions of the prison milieu. These poems were rediscovered in 2001 and are presented here in a bilingual edition.

This book was first published as a limited-edition letterpress chapbook in Sweden by Edda Edition in 2001. In this new bilingual edition, we are proud to bring you the original text plus an additional essay by Jonas Ellerström that traces the roots of the poems as well as the relationship between Åke Nordin and Tomas Tranströmer. This unique and wonderful collection, translated by Malena Mörling, will add a new glimpse into the life and work of one of the world's most celebrated poets.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

New Tranströmer broadside


Our latest broadside, an excerpt from Tomas Tranströmer's Notes From the Land of Lap Fever, is now available.

Cheers!

Friday, October 7, 2011

Tomas Tranströmer's First Poems + Lapland Essay

Our 15th Tavern Books title!


In case you missed the great news, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. The timing for this new Tavern Books title couldn't be better! We are thrilled that Tomas Tranströmer is the 2011 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and we are equally thrilled to be publishing this amazing book. Here are the details:


This book collects two separate but related works, each translated for the first time into English by the noted poet Malena Mörling.


Tomas Tranströmer’s First Poems is a critical study by Jonas Ellerström that examines the connection between the poetry Tranströmer wrote as a teenager and the poetry that appeared in his first book, 17 Dikter (17 Poems). As requested by Tomas Tranströmer, the ten poems featured in Ellerström’s essay are never to be included in Tranströmer’s Collected Poems, making this publication the only venue in English where one can read the Nobel Laureate’s juvenilia.


The second piece in this volume, Notes From the Land of Lap Fever, is a lyrically driven personal essay written and published by Tranströmer in 1953. Like much of the poet’s work, this essay showcases a man in search of meaning, a writer whose journey into Lapland begins: “So, I’ve listened long enough to this timid cry from the wilderness. I am going back there perhaps to retrieve a part of myself I might have left behind.”


We've also printed a broadside with an excerpt from Note's From the Land of Lap Fever. Here's a link.


Cheers!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Congrats to Tavern author Tomas Tranströmer!

The Swedish Academy announced today that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature has been given to Tomas Tranströmer! We have 3 Tranströmer books in the works here at Tavern Books, a reprint of Samuel Charters' translation of Baltics (which will include photographs by Ann Charters), and two books translated by Malena Mörling, Prison and Tomas Tranströmer's First Poems and Notes From the Land of Lap Fever. Stay tuned...these titles will be available in the next few months. Three cheers for Tomas Tranströmer!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Book Drive for Rural and Tribal Libraries Going Strong!

Dear Tavern fans,

Many heartfelt thanks to those of you who have sent us books for our book drive for rural and tribal Oregon Libraries. To date, we have received over 1,000 books of poetry from poetry lovers of every stripe: book dealers, book collectors, poets, professors, editors, students, novelists, community activists, literacy advocates...and the list goes on.

If you're not familiar with this project, then please read on. Here's the gist:

Please join Tavern Books in building and sustaining the poetry collections in Oregon’s rural and tribal libraries. Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s current Poet Laureate, has made our book drive a priority for her upcoming term as our state’s poet. The libraries benefiting from this program are those who serve communities of 5,000 or fewer. You can support this book drive by sending us your used or new poetry books, poetry anthologies, and books pertaining to poetry and poetics. No donation is too large or too small. Every book counts! We will acquire these books and redistribute them to participating rural and tribal libraries. Tavern Books is committed to making great works of poetry available to the reading public. Thank you for your support.

Feel free to send your book donations to:

Tavern Books
attn: Carl Adamshick
20 NE 30th Avenue
Portland, Oregon
97232