The Biblio File: Interview with Poet Michael Lista: Danger and James Joyce

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DATE : Tue, 4 Nov 2008 16:04:00 GMT
Entered in Database : 2008-11-04 16:04:00
length : 14243892
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Posted in AUDIO: Poets   I first heard about Michael Lista in a workshop conducted by Meeka Walsh, Editor of Border Crossings magazine. She raved about him: "Michael is a remarkably gifted young poet who lives in Montreal. He has a special interest in the points of intesection between science and poetics." These points live dramatically in the person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Listaâs desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21, 1946, Slotin conducted a dangerous experiment referred to by his fellow scientists as "tickling the dragonâs tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in the way that James Joyce used Homerâs Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagarized them in a collection which documents this May day.  The book will be entitled Bloom. Anansi will publish it. "Out of admiration for the virtuosity of Slotinâs achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those qualities in his own work, Listaâs poems do glitter, but more lastingly than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I donât mean to imply but the wit is so apparent. At the same time the tone is held and is exactly what the subject requires in this poetic construction." Revisiting my Salon des Refuses experience in the last post, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters great literary work. Poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin RobertsonâI knew immediately upon first reading their poems that something extraordinary was happening. Their words rubbed up against my experience and sensibilities in ways that satisfied like few others have. I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me (please find three in a future post) in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyceâs Ulysses, and the bookâs unapproachability; punning, the multiple meanings of bloom, epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and death. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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