Serge Segay translation project, from Alex Cigale
Alex Cigale (poet, editor, translator)
https://auca.academia.edu/AlexanderCigale, http://theconversant.org/?p=6963 (interview with me)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1325430255/serge-segays-exodickering-compositions-1963-1985
On the centennial of Russian Futurism (see manifesto "Slap in the Face of Public Taste,") I appeal for your support in helping me complete my book of translations of the foremost Neo-Futurist Russian poet, Serge Segay’s exoDICKERING: Compositions 1963-1985, a bilingual edition with facing pages of Russian and English texts and a Foreword by the foremost scholar of Russian Futurism, Gerald Janecek (Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky). "There is perhaps no contemporary poet whose connection to Russian Futurism is so overt" (from the Foreword).
You can read a short selection from the book online at MAYDAY magazine (Okla Elliott, Raul Clement et al., eds.) and a larger one included in my 50-page tribute to Russian Futurism available as a free PDF from EM-review (Daniele Pantano, ed.) It is an immensely complicated work replete with neologisms which I have worked on for over two years. The first 120 contributing $30 or more receive a signed copies of the book, due out from Miekal And's Xexoxial Editions (see the first volume, of Segay's visual poetry). For the past several years, I have been working to make a significant portion of Russian poetry available (much of it free online) to the English readership. While I have received substantial recognition, I now appeal to you for help in continuing this work.
From my intro: "What does a revival of Russian Futurism mean in a post-modern context? Generally speaking, a similar ironic, whimsical, self-referential and deprecating tone, poured into a conceptual, parodic mold. From the earliest, Segay was announcing and telegraphing his program."
ANARCHISM-FUTURISM MANIFESTO
I am inspired by the smell of chicken
shit and am unable to compose poems
without the aroma of outhouses
1963
X-TREMISTS SCHOOL MANIFESTO
We depict exclusively red
squares only
1963
DIRECTIVE
To write poems
that cannot be read
1963
***
made a decision to become a young naturalist
and am raising pea pods from seed in a bowl
containing a little water.
my poems turning out entirely unsatisfactory.
1963
From my introduction: "In two strains of Segay's work, both a continuation of Russian Futurism, he may be viewed as an early representative of poetry as performance (theater) and conceptual art."
***
humanity will likely reach a point
at which every type of activity
will be just as useless as
now is typical of the arts.
meanwhile possible are
experiments establishing
the prototypes of useless activities
1977
***
our first exhibit
took place in darkness.
our last will be
in a puddle.
1964
And another selection from Segay's neologistic zaniness (in my translation).
from Serge Segay's r e c i p e s o f m e t a m t e x t o s i s
4. sour fluxage
water (warm) ……………….....500 c
hyperspermic dessicate………100 u
........or pharphallic…....……….150 n
menstruarchic feelup………..…..12 t
<< Home