{"id":293866,"date":"2013-04-23T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/04\/23\/why-this-book-should-win-ph-neutral-history-by-lidija-dimkovska-btba-2013\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:28","slug":"why-this-book-should-win-ph-neutral-history-by-lidija-dimkovska-btba-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/04\/23\/why-this-book-should-win-ph-neutral-history-by-lidija-dimkovska-btba-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Why This Book Should Win: "pH Neutral History" by Lidija Dimkovska [BTBA 2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the course of this week, we will be highlighting all 6 BTBA<\/span> Poetry Finalists one by one, building up to next Friday’s announcement of the winners. All of these are written by the BTBA<\/span> poetry judges under the rubric of “Why This Book Should Win.” You can find the whole series by clicking here.<\/a> Stay tuned for more information about the May 3rd ceremony.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

pH Neutral History<\/em><\/a> by Lidija Dimkovska, translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid, and published by Copper Canyon Press.<\/b><\/p>\n

Idra Novey is the author of Exit, Civilian<\/em>, a 2011 National Poetry Series Winner, and The Next Country<\/em>. She is also the translator of The Passion According to G.H.<\/em> by Clarice Lispector, On Elegance While Sleeping<\/em> by Viscount Lascano Tegui, and The Clean Shirt of It<\/em>, for which she was awarded a 2007 PEN<\/span> Translation Fund Grant.<\/i><\/p>\n

Born in Macedonia but long a resident of Slovenia, Lidija Dimkovska is a post-national writer. Her exuberant poems, vividly translated by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid, are international in scope and intimately so. In pH Neutral History<\/em>, her second collection to appear in English, one poem opens with a \u201cPeter Pan bus from New York to Amherst\u201d and another in cold Schlo\u00dfberg with stoves full \u201cof our nails and hair.\u201d Dimkovska\u2019s radical mix of old world\/ new world references make for a poetry that feels necessary to the future of poetry, and compellingly so. In the excellent long poem \u201cRecognition,\u201d she writes:<\/p>\n

\n

You have a sense of direction even in worlds
\nyou\u2019ve never visited, A.
\nYou can tell what personal misery will give birth to a work of art
\nthat will travel the world like the mind of an imbecile.
\nAnd which imbecile will return from no-man\u2019s land, and which won\u2019t.
\nThat\u2019s why in Christian bookshops
\nyou pause with the Bible open in your hands
\nto listen to the singer simulating orgasm on the radio.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The leap from misery to art to imbeciles and Christian bookshops is funny and smart and darkly so. Like A., Dimkovska also has a sense of direction in worlds she hasn\u2019t visited, or has witnessed only briefly. Her poems are equally lived and imagined, rooted and drifting. In her hands, an assassination attempt on the president is the work of Scheherazade. In her Collected Prose<\/em>, Rae Armentrout says that \u201cdoubleness is the essence of consciousness.\u201d In Dimkovska\u2019s post-national poetry, the consciousness is more of a tripleness or quadrupleness. With these superb translations from Arsovska and Reid, pH Neutral History<\/em> is a serious contender for this year\u2019s Best Translated Book Award in poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the course of this week, we will be highlighting all 6 BTBA Poetry Finalists one by one, building up to next Friday’s announcement of the winners. All of these are written by the BTBA poetry judges under the rubric of “Why This Book Should Win.” You can find the whole series by clicking here. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[48756,50266,51146,28926,51186,51196,51176,51206,51216],"class_list":["post-293866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2013","tag-btba-2013-why-this-book-should-win","tag-copper-canyon-press","tag-idra-novey","tag-lidija-dimkovska","tag-ljubica-arsovska","tag-macedonian-literature","tag-peggy-reid","tag-ph-neutral-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333896,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293866\/revisions\/333896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}