Libya and Haiku
Last night heard André Naffis-Sahely lecture on Alessandro Spina’s life and work at SF Vanni, the oldest Italian-language bookshop in the US. I got in touch with André after reading and enjoying the selection of his poetry in Oxford Poets 2013 , published by Carcanet Press. At the lecture André read from his translation of Spina’s "The Confines of the Shadow," a cycle of historical novels charting the history of Libya from 1911 to the 1960s, which won Spina, a Syrian Maronite born in Benghazi, the Bagutta Prize. The first volume of three projected volumes will hit the bookshops in two weeks' time. * an old man asleep in a foldable wheelchair disappearing sun