5.08.2013

Walking around the rim

There is a volcano in the room with the red stripes on the wall.
I will meet you there but you won’t remember the details of our meeting
You are a man thinking aloud for a woman that loves your voices
If you were a fire you would have chosen to die in that volcano
Having dragged me there to applaud the performance of your death
And if I were a leaf I would have chosen to crack between your teeth
As you are spitting the heap of your truths in my gaping mouth


R.B

image: Picasso

4.23.2013

Interview in Stone Path Review (Minnesota, USA)

My Interview in Stone Path Review (Minnesota, USA), as the featured artist of the spring issue:





I first read some of  Regina’s work at Northography a couple of years ago before we started Stone Path Review.  I have always been struck by the fantastical world she creates, and the images, some startling, some raw and in your face, that are central to her poetry and short stories.
Below is an interview I conducted with Regina.
- William Ricci


SPR: Have you always been a writer? When did you know this was a part of you?
I was 7 years old. I wrote a short story that my teacher loved. He suggested I should become a writer and that was it. I had already been certain at the time that I was a writer. I liked it.
SPR: What did you like about writing then? Compare that to now.
I liked the fact that I was good at it and I had everyone admiring me. I was something like the «child pet» of teachers. The wonder child who could make up stories and write them in an adult-like way, in order to have grown-ups patting her head saying ‘’Oh this child is terrific! Look at that!’’. Later, when I was a university student, I realized that writing is not only a way of getting others to admire you but a way of fascinating them as well. I hate to say this but writing has always been something that helped me to express my narcissism, my need to allure others, and my self-hate. And this goes to other people. Sometimes you love people and you have to write about them. Some other times you hate people and you have to write about them again.
SPR: What writers have influenced you? What writers or poets are you reading now?
My most favorite ones are Witold Gombrovitch, Thomas Mann, Michael Bulgakov, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Each one for different reasons. However, all the four of them used to see people exactly as they are – magical and dark, striving to find their inner light.
SPR: Why poetry or short stories?
I usually write poetry when I have a strong visual stimulus that amused me or confused me so much that I need to do some magic on it! You know magic versus magic, something like homeopathy I suppose.
SPR: Could you explain a bit more about what you mean by “magic”?
“We all talk nonsense when the dream’s upon us”. This is a phrase I heard only a few days ago in the Mystery of Edwin Drood, a TV series on Charles Dicken’s book. When I heard the phrase above, I felt that I had found a key that could help me explain what I meant by using the word ‘’magic’’. Poetry is like talking ‘’nonsense’’ when we are deep into our dream, lost into its land. It is another kind of language, a spell for our dream. It reminds me of this English expression ‘’A penny for your thoughts’’. It could be ‘’A spell for your dream’’. Where the word ‘’spell’’ could be replaced by the word ‘’poem’’.
Short stories are something different. They need more time, more details, and more attention to their being shaped. And they are hard work. Sometimes even more than a novel, because you have to invent an end much sooner and you have to make yourself be detached from the characters and not let them do whatever they want. My favorite form of writing is the novel though. I enjoy so much writing a novel, do you know why? The heroes are stronger than me. They weave the story and not me.
SPR: What does poetry, as an art form, mean to you?
Poetry is the expression of those who want to destroy the world’s solidity and make it viewable as if it is liquidated by words. Words in poetry have the power to make everything around flow in a smoother way. Poetry is my broken glass. I see you through it after dipping it in a bucket of water and hold it in front of my eyes.
SPR: What role does location, such as the landscape, a city, where you are when you write, play in your work? How much does it influence?
I am not easily influenced by the landscape. In fact, I would really like to write locked in a room all day, a room without windows if possible. I like looking at walls when I write. Walls covered with black and white photos. Light distracts my attention, life outside a window can make me stop writing just to go out and have a walk. Landscapes are distracting, so I try not to be influenced.
SPR: What type of space do you need to write? Do you have a daily routine?
I usually write at nights because it’s when the house is quieter. But I can write in mornings as well, as long as I know that no one is going to interrupt me. The only routine that I have is that I like writing while listening to music. Classical pieces mostly. Any other kind of music during writing distracts my attention. I prefer Vivaldi, Chopin, and Sostacovich.
SPR: What advice do you have for aspiring writers and those seeking possible publication?
I don’t like giving advice but since you ask me all I could say is that they know better than me and better than anyone else. If someone advised me on how to work, concerning my writing, I would get mad at them. Or I would pretend that I am listening to them but then I would do as I would please. Who has certain answers for this kind of things?
SPR: I understand what you are saying, and the point you are making. Let me rephrase the question. If a student made the following statement, how would you respond?
“Everything I have submitted has been rejected. I should stop writing.”
I would definitely say to them “Then stop”. What do you think that they would do? If they stopped, then they never wanted to write. It’s quite simple.
SPR: What can we teach and do to get more children and teens involved with the arts and writing specifically?
I think that education and schooling should make children be more involved with the creative and artistic procedure, as well as philosophy. Today, schools are focused mainly on subjects that prepare children to integrate in a society of technocrats. Technology is something that we need, as long as its evolution and development is driven by questions that arise from a philosophical framework. Cultural and Humanitarian studies help this framework to be built.

BioRegina Bou is a writer. Some of her short stories have appeared in various literary magazines. She has also written two novels and a novella. One of her novels is under publication from the Australian publishing house LegumeMan Books. She has studied English and Greek literature and has a M.A. in Education. Her favorite subject is people’s passions. Big and small ones. She loves literature and art.

The spring issue of Stone Path Review here

3.10.2013

Prose poem with bikes


The old women were coming down, in flocks, from the sky, riding old rusty bikes. It was an awesome sight. It had just started getting dark and their massive descent was impressive as the joints of the their fingers were rattling and their white long hair was waving in the deep violet sky. They sneaked in every corner of the city and began to chaw its foundations. Chomp chomp , the city was shrinking and shrinking and losing its original size. My pavement could suddenly fit in my palm and their bikes were blooming like giant copper flowers. They had become a huge wave foam inside my chest till the morning came.


image: Tim Walker

Being dead smells like brown colour





She had died looking at the ceiling. Her left eye was full of frozen tears and it looked like a bad wizard's eye. A big beetle was running crazy up and down the ceiling riding a small old bicycle, as if it couldn't decide whether to have a free fall on the dead woman's mouth or to shrug in a quiet deserted wall corner.


''Oh my the dead woman thought ''I can't move! That's what death is about? Just not being able to move?''
And she wanted was to laugh but she couldn't. Her lips were cold and frigid and her right hand was lying in an eternal dancing pose over her head. The white creased pillow was hugging her neck tenderly as a devoted friend.



"But, I like this ruby red blanket more'' she said to herself and tried to remember the deep luscious colour of the bed cover because she was in such a position that it was impossible for her to turn her head and just have a look at it. However, she could see just a little piece of it, her eye was still able to capture some of the red colour.


"I will be buried under the soil''


The idea crossed her mind suddenly and if she weren't dead she would be so upset that she would get up and open all the house windows, as she always used to do when upset.


Nice soft wet soil? Or rough, rocky soil full of tiny little stones? Would the soil enter her nostrils? Would it cover her eyelids? Or it might even stuff the cavities of her ears. But she would be buried in a coffin and this was a comforting thought because definitely she didn't like the idea of soil covering her face and body.' 'Yes..a nice wooden coffin which can protect my sensitive body areas, I can think many of them. I am full of sensitive body areas''
Ignatio used to caress her eyelashes with his long fingers before sleeping, when they were younger. This was one of her sensitive body areas which made her shiver with delight. Her breath was gurgling with deep pleasure into his ear which was one of his own sensitive body areas.



What if her family decided to make her funeral on a rainy day? It would be better, because she liked mud. Heavy mud would cover the coffin lid and if she was lucky enough she would be able to smell the heavy brown color. Being dead, smells like brown color. She had always had the ability of sensing the smell of colours. The grey walls of her room had the smell of a wild Norwegian sea, the white sheets on her bed smelt like a burning fluorescent lamp and the crimson blankets were the steep cliffs of a smouldery canyon.
She sighed deeply but then she remembered that she wasn’t allowed to sigh so she only left herself fall deeper into the canyon. And the beetle was waiting there, she rode on the back of its bike. So all someone can guess, is that she is still riding along with the beetle in the valley of death, as poets say. Beetles riding rusty bikes, had been living in the darkest spot of her eyes’ pupils, since she was a little girl.

image: Christian Schloe

2.17.2013

The night pillow


My big secret has always been that
I have two tongues in my mouth
Two breasts on my chest
two snakes under my bed

Two is not a number
It’s rolling over my orange pillow
it cries it yells, it laughs like a hyena 

    Gods and devils  made these two worlds 
just for me
I found out that there are more.
veils upon veils, upon veils
I will spend my life here in this room
holding an apple, narrating my multiple lives
leaping in the abyss again and again


r.b

image: Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, photographed by Philippe Halsman

2.10.2013

Few seconds




There is a sea out of my window, just a sea, can’t you look at it?
The breeze must have taken your mind

The king empties the sand every morning
Carrying his bucket across the ocean
Frowning like a child with cheap rings

And I am sitting here, alone. 
Listening to all the giant birds over my head.
Brave I said and their beaks won’t scare you

Should I crawl to your legs and hug your thighs?

The water is teeming with weird orange fishes
Like the ones I have been dreaming of for many nights now

Regina Bou

image: 
Andrej Glusgold

7.03.2012

The kettle




 The kettle’s lid stayed unmoved to my voice 
More silent than an early morning
immortal gods and Chinese hares
fighting under it, drowning in keylan tea 

I have to bury the kettle deep into the soil
And dream about it only at nights




image: Helen Vacalo

2.21.2012

The song



The Augustean nights will come, bright and sad
like the blue of your eyes, like the lost tunes,
like all the past words of love that ran to hide.
After all, a thousand years, following the fight
nobody remembers the agony of closed lips.
Only the buttons of my shirt will be dripping wet 
and the copper clouds of your smooth voice



Princess Yvonne and Prince Alexander, by Princess Marianne Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn









*(written for Northography)












































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12.20.2011

Sleep




Sleep, sleep, sleep, because there is no waking up. Sleep to the end of death land and let the cats squirm on your shoulders. With the picture of your grandfathers hanging above your head. Like a sword in a tale. Like a cloud in your dream.





image: Roger Ballen

12.17.2011

Seeking


Nora was looking at the mirror,
Her two daughters sewing in the porch.

When the wind shook the house
and the roots of the apricot trees,
Bringing wild smells of the black silence
that used to exist under that roof,
Long before any man set his foot in,
Nora saw her animal eyes in the glass.

                                        
The sound of the dry leaves rushed her breath
like the lost god  of her deep darkness
in the room of  solid memories
“Lock the windows’’ she shouted
And her daughters ran, ran like jumping little spiders.


image: From the film La Petite (Louis Malle)