Month: January 2017

“It’s not your love I’m asking for…” – A. Akhmatova

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 41/?
 
I am not so satisfied with this one, but today was a day I felt I had to get something done, and didn’t have the energy to do anything else I had planned, so I finished the partial translation I had sitting in my drafts folder for months.
 
Anna Akhmatova being spiteful.
 
***
 
It’s not your love I’m asking for.
It’s now locked up for safekeeping.
Believe that letters jealous, weeping,
I do not send to your bride’s door.
 
But take some wise advice of mine:
Let her read all my poetry;
Let her preserve portraits of me —
New bridegrooms are all so kind!
 
While those fool girls would rather claim
A full victorious sensation,
Than friendship’s sunlit conversations
Or memory of first tender days.
 
Then when you spend the farthing’s worth
Of joy given with your little dear
And to a soul once filled with mirth
Suddenly all so dull appears —
 
Then don’t come to my festive night.
I know not you nor your appeal.
How could I help, in any right?
Of happiness, I do not heal.
 
Anna Akhmatova, 1914; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, 2016-January 2017.
Posted on by vardomskaya

2016 Award Eligibility Post

Apparently every writer these days does them, and I do find them convenient to check whether a story I liked is actually eligible for awards in a given year.

I have two works published in 2016, which word of mouth is telling me some people liked, and these are the categories they are eligible in:

Novelette by the Hugo/Nebula definition (Novella by the World Fantasy definition):

“Polyglossia” March 2016 issue of GigaNotoSaurus, edited by Rashida J. Smith. A man who has lost his birth language, a woman with many languages, and a song that neither of them understand.

Listed on the Nebula Recommended Reading List, thank you to whoever put in a voice for me there. Also reviewed with approval by the Language Hat blog as “one of the most remarkable linguistics-oriented stories I’ve read.”

Short Story:

“The Three Dancers of Gizari”. Issue #192 (February 2016) of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews. A poor financial manager longs for a mind-altering sculpture that her boss, the world’s richest woman, is buying — but the sculptor will not sell.

Listed on Tangent Online’s 2016 Recommended Reading List.

I am in my second year of eligibility for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. As a Canadian citizen, I am also eligible for the Prix Aurora Awards.

 

Posted on by vardomskaya