A stalk of grain and light

"Stalk of Grain and Light" is an excerpt from O Resplandor (Toronto: Anansi, forthcoming 2010), a book of poetry that explodes notions of authorship and translation. In it, the heteronymic character Elisa Sampedrín translates from Nichita St nescu, though she knows no Romanian, and the orthonymic character Erín Moure translates Paul Celan, using not Celan but English transcreations from the language of Celan by Oana Avasilichioaei which she appropriates and reorganizes to create the true translation of a poem by Paul Celan, which exists only in her mind. In this world where corporations copyright human cells, where academics and libraries appropriate works of writers, and where writing itself - moreso than visual art - is limited by expanded notions of plagiarism and ownership, of continuity of copyright for decades that prevents works from influencing art's future, Moure refutes the idea that writing is inspired out of nowhere. Here it is rooted to human interaction, to love and loss, to the art of others, and is dedicated to creating a world where the free irruption of thought is possible, and lineages are acknowledged.