ISSUE#5. Editor Philip Davenport. / "France", or... we are circles of cancelled stars.









Rimbaud hammered out his poetic program in 1871, just as the Paris Commune was being blown off the map. He wanted to be there. It’s all he talked about...

(Sean Bonney. Happiness, Poems After Rimbaud)


The transubstantiation of Stephen Mallarmé continues while there’s still juice in him. Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Apollinaire are often at the ceremony, take a pew.

This 2020 stopover with Mallarmé etc began with enthusiasm for two new things: first, the new translation of Mallarmé into wordless matter by Eric Zboya. And second, discovery of Henri Barzun, via karl kempton's essay The Enigma Of.

Alongside the algorithmic shapes that Zboya has produced is shrapnel of original text from Mallarmé; these lines determined our running order. Contributors’ work is titled with a line that seems to speak to it.

While we were compiling this feature for Synapse International, the poet Sean Bonney sadly died. He flew a black flag for Rimbaud, holding space in the head and heart against surveillance capitalism, against fascism, against the firmament. Tony Trehy picks up from where Sean left us, in an essay fragment at the end of this feature. 

Everything here is dedicated to Sean ( — and the red swans still swim on your canal, in Berlin.)

Philip Davenport, Co-Editor










Contributors


Sacha Archer 

derek beaulieu 

Sean Bonney

Volodymyr Bilyk 

Paula Claire

Liz Collini

Ellen Dillon

Marco Giovenale

Helen Hajnoczky

Alan Halsey

Jean-Pierre Hebert

Pierre Joris

karl kempton 

Mohammad Arif Khan

Peter Manson

Darren Marsh 

Nicole Peyrafitte 

Nat Raha

Petra Schulze-Wollgast

David Seaman

Kate Siklosi

Mahmoud Mawad Sokar

Miron Tee

Carolyn Thompson

Tony Trehy

Nico Vassilakis 

Yohanna Joseph Waliya

Eric Zboya




Above, top and bottom Eric Zoya's Translations; between them, Sean Bonney's Bohemians










But then again, THESE POEMS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RIMBAUD.

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