Heaven
Published on 30. January 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
112 pages
978-1-78410-886-1 (ISBN)
Description
A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death.
Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also resolutely Spanish in how they speak - bluntly, humorously - always alert for the fantastic.
This is the first translation of Vilas's two major collections Heaven (El cielo, 2000) and Heat (Calor, 2008) into English. Thematically fuelled with alcohol, death and sex, they go off into free-wheeling megalomaniacal flights of fantasy. The translator, James Womack, has won prizes for his versions of Vilas and of the Russian poet Mayakovsky.
Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also resolutely Spanish in how they speak - bluntly, humorously - always alert for the fantastic.
This is the first translation of Vilas's two major collections Heaven (El cielo, 2000) and Heat (Calor, 2008) into English. Thematically fuelled with alcohol, death and sex, they go off into free-wheeling megalomaniacal flights of fantasy. The translator, James Womack, has won prizes for his versions of Vilas and of the Russian poet Mayakovsky.
Reviews / Votes
'witty, nuanced, urbane'Clark Allison, Stride Magazine 'Vilas is an accomplished, freewheeling storyteller, forever leading his readers into unexpected byways...James Womack's translations of these beguiling narrative poems, selected from two of Vilas' collections published in 2000 and 2008, are so vivid, natural-seeming and alert to every nuance and shade of feeling that they scarcely register as translations at all.'
Paul Bailey, Literary Review 'Vilas is an accomplished, freewheeling storyteller, forever leading his readers into unexpected byways...James Womack's translations of these beguiling narrative poems, selected from two of Vilas' collections published in 2000 and 2008, are so vivid, natural-seeming and alert to every nuance and shade of feeling that they scarcely register as translations at all.'
Paul Bailey, Literary Review 'James Womack's translations are immaculate distillations of Vilas... Vilas' poems are long and decadent affairs, euphoric tales of drunken debauchery told through a first person narrative.'
Charlie Baylis, Stride Magazine 'wild, exuberant lines that strain against convention'
David Starkey, Santa Barbara Independent 'With an ear finely tuned to colloquial speech and a knack for deadpan delivery, Womack gives Vilas' poems a thoroughly convincing new life in English'
Jennifer Barber, The Critical Flame 'For those up for high octane, X-rated journeys around the western Mediterranean, without leaving the house, those wanting sun, sea, sex, souvenirs and junk food from the comfort of their armchair, Manuel Vilas is your man.'
Paul Stephenson, The North 66 'The poems of Spanish writer Manuel Vilas invite you into his hotel room. You sit on the edge of his bed while he tells you about his drinking, his despondency, his sexual escapades. He tells you what he's been pondering lately: tourism, Catholicism, Nietzsche, money, Spain, favorite song lyrics, his car, his dog, his brand-new switchblade. He is by turns tongue-in-cheek, hyperbolic, comical, rueful, outrageous, ironic, melancholic, and soul-baring. And you realize something: you want to hear it all.Thanks to British poet and translator James Womack, you can. With an ear finely tuned to colloquial speech and a knack for deadpan delivery, Womack gives Vilas' poems a thoroughly convincing new life in English.[...] The irresistible energy in so many of his poems carries the reader along, as does his willingness to hold a mirror to himself, or to a third-person persona called Manuel Vilas.'
Jennifer Barber, Critical Flame
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 134 mm
Width: 216 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
158 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78410-886-1 (9781784108861)
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Persons
Manuel Vilas is a Spanish writer, the author of several books, including fourteen collections of poetry, seven books of essays, and seven novels. His most recent novel, Alegria, was the 2019 Premio Planeta Finalista, and its predecessor, Ordesa, was a bestseller in Spain, won the French Prix Femina Etranger in 2019, and is forthcoming in a number of languages, including French, German and English. Vilas currently divides his time between Spain and the United States, where he teaches at the University of Iowa.; James Womack was born in Cambridge in 1979. He studied Russian, English and translation at university, and received his doctorate, on W.H. Auden's translations, in 2006. After ten years in Madrid, he has recently returned to the UK, where he teaches Spanish and translation at Cambridge University. He is a freelance translator from Russian and Spanish, and helps run Calque Press, which concentrates on poetry, translation and the environment. His debut collection of poems, Misprint, was published by Carcanet in 2012, and On Trust: A Book of Lies came out in December 2017. A third collection, Homunculus, is due out in August 2020.