Interview with Katerina Stoykova-Klemer: "A union of words and languages"



Katerina Stoykova-Klemer

I have the pleasure of interviewing Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,  a poet of great sensibility and talent who writes in both English and Bulgarian.  Katerina talks about her relationship with her native and her adopted language, about the necessary silence that preceeds the transition to another culture and about any writer's true competition...   
 
GABRIELA POPA: Katerina, what does it mean for you to be a bilingual writer? In particular, how is the tone and content of your work (poetry or prose) informed by the fact that you are fluent in two cultures?

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: I’ve been writing poetry since I was eight years old. I wrote in Bulgarian until the age of 24, when I immigrated to the U.S. and then didn’t write for eleven years. I believe this writing pause, this drought that I experienced, was due to the loss of the language, as well as the loss of the culture, the lack of books in Bulgarian at the time. Quite unexpectedly, one day I started writing again, in English. Whenever I wanted to share my new poems with my Bulgarian friends, I had to translate them back into my native language. The thing that was very interesting, however, was the reaction from readers who knew my earlier work. They all said: “These new poems are very much yours.” So they were able to recognize the tone as identical, regardless of the language in which the poems originated.

I do believe that once you are a poet in one language, you will be a poet in any other language you adopt. I feel fortunate that I have two countries that I call my own, and I can draw from a union of experiences, words and languages.

GABRIELA POPA: Tell us about your poetry volumes, “The Air around the Butterfly” and The Most.”

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: “The Air around the Butterfly” is a bilingual volume of poetry, each poem appearing with side-by-side versions in English and Bulgarian. The book is comprised of three sections: My Mother Was Going to War, E.T. and I Phone Home, and The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone. The first part pertains to my life in Bulgaria before I came to the United States. The second describes my experiences as an immigrant, and the internal journey that one needs to undergo after he or she has made the physical journey to a new place. The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone is the last section in the book. It contains poems about personal growth, a lot of them short and abstract. I’m fortunate to say that this book has been well-received by readers in both Bulgaria and the USA, although the Bulgarian readers think that the book is sad, while the American readers believe it’s funny. The Air Around the Butterfly was published in Bulgaria by the Bulgarian publisher Fakel Express in 2009.

The Most was published in 2010 by an American publisher, Finishing Line Press. This chapbook contains 26 poems about hope, which I needed when I quit my engineering job to pursue writing full time. This collection strives to reach a deeper understanding of objects, actions and words, and the reader can find many examples of personification of objects, ranging from worry dolls to commodes.

GABRIELA POPA: Tell us about your journey as a writer.

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: I see two distinct parts of my journey as a writer. The first one took place when I was a poet writing in Bulgaria, in Bulgarian, and the second, when I became a poet living in the U.S.A, writing predominantly in English. These two segments bookend a career as a software engineer, which I enjoyed tremendously. I believe programming taught me a lot about expressing myself precisely, about clarity, and about creative discipline. I also have a business degree, which I currently find very helpful in marketing not only my own work, but also the books that are produced by my independent press, Accents Publishing. I want to underscore, though, that the cornerstones of the two parts of my journey as a writer are remarkably similar – generous mentors, committed writing groups, dedicated alone time for writing and reading.

GABRIELA POPA: Could you share with us a humorous story from your days as a MFA student at Spalding?

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: I can’t think of a humorous story, but an inspirational one. Program director Sena Jeter Naslund opens every residency with the words, “Look around you. This is not the competition. The competition is in the library.” The Spalding MFA brief residency program cultivated in all it students the thought of cooperation and support of each other’s work. This, I believe is a valuable skill for every writer to adopt.

GABRIELA POPA: You find time to organize workshops, host a radio show, manage Accents Publishing AND write poetry. How do you do it all?

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: Writing centers me and gives me the energy to do everything else. If I write poetry that I like, there is no happier and more productive person than I. Also, there is a synergy in all these activities, which helps to build momentum and keep things going. Once you couple momentum with consistency, a lot can be accomplished.

GABRIELA POPA: Which language, do you feel, allows you more freedom, Bulgarian or English? Is that different for poetry versus prose?

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: English has more words, so theoretically, English has more potential for nuance. The fact of the matter is, though, that my poems use simple words and expressions, so I haven’t been able to take full advantage of this quality. However, one feature that makes English a great language for writing poems is its composite idioms, which one can capitalize on in lineation to surprise the reader. While Bulgarian doesn’t offer this so readily, it does have other advantages. The words are longer and generally more musical. You can do exquisite things with sounds. Whenever I read in the USA, I try to read a little bit in Bulgarian, as well, so that the audience can experience the unique sound. Almost everyone closes his/her eyes to listen. A common comment that I hear is that the poems sound beautiful, and also last twice as long.

GABRIELA POPA: In “Author’s note” to “Image and other stories”, Bashevis Singer says: “A writer should never abandon his mother tongue and its treasure of idioms”. What is your take on that?

KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER: I agree – the idioms are irreplaceable and add unique color to anyone’s work. However, they also mark the places where many translators have to use footnotes. The more culturally specific a poem is, the more difficult it is to translate well. I wrote a poem about this once, and I’d be happy to share it with your readers (see below).

GABRIELA POPA: Would you like to offer readers an excerpt of your writing?


Two

Based on Bulgarian and American adages


Two sharp stones can’t

mill flour.


Two sharp bones can’t

make a joint.


Two stones can break

most bones.


You can kill two birds

with one stone


or the same bird twice

with words.


GABRIELA POPA: Many thanks, Katerina, it's been a pleasure talking with you.  Good luck in your many creative endeavors!

“The most agreeable of executioners” - Steve Silkin on Cioran

GP: Steve, it’s such a pleasure for me to interview someone who met and talked with Emil Cioran. Reading your book “The Forbidden Stories”, I was a little bit puzzled by the detachment with which you approach your younger life. Beautiful and intriguing, your literature seems a casual expedition in a past assigned to you, rather than the past that you lived. It is therefore quite fascinating to see that you find solace in someone like Emil Cioran, who lived so intimately close to abyss and despair every second of his life. Is it because, as they say, opposites attract?

STEVE SILKIN: Cioran was more of a challenge than a solace. He had studied Bergson, but gave up on him because he said that Bergson “hadn’t seen the tragic aspect of life.” That sentence was a big influence on my first book, “The Telescope Builder.” I could’ve posted it on the wall above my desk, but I didn’t need to – it was constantly in my mind. I think you can find his influence in “The Forbidden Stories” too, especially in “Green Parrot at My Window,” “Euro-Looting” and “Song for John.” I don’t see myself as the opposite of Cioran. More of an heir, although I’ve always opted for narrative instead of his preferred forms, aphorisms and essays. I hope he would’ve liked my books.

(I also should add, in response to your note on the book, that some of the “The Forbidden Stories” are memoirs, others are based on actual events but fictionalized, and others are experimental fiction.)

GP: In one of our previous chats you said that you were very young when you met Cioran, and he insisted that the interview be in English “because he did not want any translation mistakes.” Tell us about that visit. His proficiency in French is legendary. How was his English?

STEVE SILKIN: I interviewed Cioran for the International Herald Tribune where I worked as a news clerk in 1985; he was 74, I was 28. I had studied French political institutions and the history of French literature at La Sorbonne, so I thought my French was pretty good, but he was wary. We did flip back and forth a few times, if I remember correctly, between French and English. He was fluent in French and his English was excellent.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t sure what he meant by “wives” when he explained his disdain for literary prizes – which always meant having to attend a ceremony and thank the benefactors: “If someone wants to give me money, they must do it unofficially – the way they give it to their wives – without the cameras and the press.” I thought he might be mixing up the French word “femmes” – which can be translated as “women” or “wives,” depending on context, and I thought that what he really meant was “women,” but “women” as in “prostitutes,” so I changed it to say what I thought he meant. Maybe I should’ve had more faith in his English. Mea culpa.

GP: You told me that “He was quite the raconteur, and he loved to chat about this and that. He was dressed casually, very relaxed, did not struggle for words or thoughts.” Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, in her book “Searching for Cioran” mentions repeatedly Cioran’s reluctance to discuss “his Romanian past”, dismissing it as “de la prehistoire”. Did you approach this subject with him?

STEVE SILKIN: I knew that his father was an orthodox priest so I asked him what his parents thought of his writing. His second book was “On the Tears of the Saints,” which he acknowledged contained some anti-Christian statements. “My friends were flabbergasted, horrified. My mother – I should have published this book after the death of my parents. My father was disappointed. No, not disappointed. Amazed. Resigned.”

I regret that I did not ask him more about his youth. I have since learned that like many intellectuals of his generation in Romania, he was pro-fascist as a young man. I’d suggest that in later life he probably dismissed his early days as “de la pre-histoire” in order to avoid that issue. I wouldn’t have thought to ask. Nothing I encountered in his writing suggested any embrace of fascism or excuse for it.

I did ask him about whether he returned to Romania. I got the impression that he didn’t find it welcoming. “At the butcher shop, there are only the heads and the feet of the chicken,” he said. “So people ask what happened to the rest of the chicken. The butcher shrugs and tells them that it went abroad to finance the economy through exports.”

GP: Did you meet Simone? What did you think of her role in Cioran’s life?

STEVE SILKIN: I did meet Simone. She was charming and soft-spoken and I could tell she was very supportive. They had a very easy rapport. At one point I needed to use the facilities and she accompanied me down the hall – they shared the toilet with the other residents of the top floor. The reason she went with me: She brought a tissue and wiped off the light switch before I touched it. She seemed slightly apologetic and slightly embarrassed; I interpreted it as kindness and consideration. I suppose she thought the hygiene of her neighbors was less than ideal and didn’t want me to catch anything.

GP: Did you see his home office or his working place, his writing table?

STEVE SILKIN: I am so glad you asked about his work space! It was a small room, under the slope of the roof. His small desk was under the slope, where you would not have been able to stand up. We had been chatting about some of our favorite writers, and I mentioned Fitzgerald. He was delighted. “I am just now revising a study I wrote about Fitzgerald for a collection,” and he brought me in to show me the essay and his work on it. (I now have it in a collection called “Exercises d’Admiration.”) The room was about 10 feet by 10, and to say it was a chaos of books would be an understatement. They were on shelves and knee-high stacks on the floor. Some of the stacks had collapsed, others were on the verge. There wasn’t much room to move. I loved it!

GP: In one of your articles on Cioran, you mention: “He wasn't reading fiction anymore, only biography. ‘I'm no longer interested in problems, only their outcomes,' he [Cioran] told me”. But aren’t all biographies fictional, to a large extent?

STEVE SILKIN: Most biographies, I think, are researched, and, through whatever prism, at least attempt some documentary value regardless of how incomplete and unreliable they might actually be. I suppose he felt that he had learned what he could from fiction and was looking to learn what he could from “fact.”

GP: Tell us how his “History and Utopia” got Cioran a Parisian apartment, by Odeon.

STEVE SILKIN: One of the most intense moments of our visit was when we discussed the idea that a writer could not survive in modern times. He said that the end of the affordable weekly hotel room rate meant the death of modern literature. So a writer’s survival was a real issue for him. I had told him I was reading “Histoire et Utopie” and was finding it difficult to get through. He told me it wasn’t his best book, but his favorite because of this: When he was looking for an apartment, he told a real estate agent that he was a writer, and she expressed some interest. So at their next visit, he gave her his book, “Histoire et Utopie.” She seemed to like it and got him his small but comfortable flat on the top floor of a building in the heart of the Left Bank.

GP: He signed a book for you with these memorable words: “Aux plus agreables des bourreaux.” How do you interpret his words?

STEVE SILKIN: Yes, he signed my copy of “Ecartlement” (“Drawn and Quartered”) with the dedication: “To the most agreeable of executioners.” After I had asked his publisher if I could meet him in order to write an article about his life and work, I was told that normally he did not grant interviews, but he would meet me because he was intrigued that a young American was interested in his writing. So I imagined he didn’t like talking about himself too much. So instead of diving right in, I mentioned I had the same gas radiators at my place, and we quickly agreed that they were incredibly efficient heaters for their size. During the course of the interview, he asked me to stay for lunch, which Simone served us. We sat talking for a while after that, and I think we were having a pretty good time. Hence the inscription, which is perfect Cioran, isn’t it? It’s one of my treasured possessions.

GP: Tell us a bit about your own trajectory as a writer. What happened next to the young man that lives in the pages of your collection of “Forbidden Stories”? What are you working on?

STEVE SILKIN: I struggled for years trying to write the stories that would make up my first two collections, “The Telescope Builder” and “Too Lucky.” I would write first drafts and tear them up. Again and again. Then I spent years not writing because I knew I wasn’t ready. Then I went to a seminar with some writing coaches and learned some things about word choices and sentence construction. Finally, I think I was able to use the right tools to evoke the emotions I was trying to communicate. As I was finishing those two collections, I wrote the novel, “The Cemetery Vote.” As I mentioned above, some of the work in “Forbidden Stories” is experimental: I pushed myself to go new places in both style and content. I’m now working on a book based on the life of a high school classmate. I didn’t know him, but I later learned he led the most extreme, transgressive, self-destructive existence I’ve heard of, at least of my generation. It is a challenge. His widow came for a visit from Israel last summer and I interviewed her about his strange, sad life and death. I have a stack of notes and I’m still deciding how to give them a voice. That will be another challenge of seeing “the tragic aspect of life.”

STEVE SILKIN was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles, traveled across Europe and studied at La Sorbonne. He began his career in journalism at the International Herald Tribune in Paris, then returned to California, where he has been working as a reporter and editor since the late 1980s. He has stood at the edge of the Sahara and visited the Oracle at Delphi. But his finest moment was when he escaped arrest for trespassing in a skyscraper under construction by fleeing from the LAPD on his bicycle.

His books can be purchased in paperback format via amazon or lulu, and are also available for Kindle and other e-reading devices via Kindle store and smashwords.

A most creative review on Kafka's House

LK Riegel, author of  Space Junque posted a most creative review on Kafka's House on Kindle Boards's Book Bazaar here under a special Daypalooza.  LK's review on Kafka's House says:

"I have a love/hate relationship with this book, and I'll tell you straight: I haven't finished it yet either! The punctuation is atrocious. The spelling is at times creative. The stream-of-consciousness style loses me sometimes.

And yet...

I love this book! The punctuation serves its purpose. The creative spelling is actually appropriate and rare. The stream-of-consciousness style takes me to a world wholly unlike my own.

If you'd like something different, this is your book."
 
Thanks LK!

Kafka's House is at #5 in History/Eastern on amazon

Happy to see that Kafka's House is at #5 in History/Eastern on amazon:

#5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Europe > Eastern


#8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Parenting & Families > Parenting > Morals & Responsibility

#35 in Books > History > Europe > Eastern

Thank you, April!

I received a nice personal message today from a Nook owner, April, who says: "Hi, I just read about your book Kafka's House, and it looks really, really good, I know it's available for the Kindle, but it is also available on B&N? I only have a nook so I can't read Kindle books. For some reason the B&N website won't load up for me tonight otherwise I would search for it myself."

Yes, dear Nook owners, it is available on Nook here: "Kafka's House"

This is so wonderful. Thank you, April!
Gabriela

Vargas Llosa awarded the Nobel

A joy to see this happening.

INTERVIEW WITH AWARD WINNING AUTHOR RICK SKWIOT

I had the pleasure of talking with Rick Skwiot about his journey as a writer, about the recurring themes in his work and about his upcoming memoir "San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing."

GABRIELA POPA: What can you tell us about San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing.

RICK SKWIOT: It’s been described—aptly, I think—as “sexy, surreal and darkly comic.” In it I paint an intimate portrait of Mexico and Mexicans, a people who stole my heart over my years living among them. It’s also a story about how, with their help, I changed who I was—evolved from a man I had come not to like very much to someone with a healthy serving of Mexicano self-love. The book can be enjoyed by anyone planning on visiting Mexico, to help them better experience the nuances of the culture. Conversely, for those put off by swine flu epidemics, dysentery and narcotraficantes, it’s a good way to travel south of the border without leaving home.

GABRIELA POPA: When will it be published?

RICK SKWIOT: It should be out this month, September 2010, in both trade paperback ($14) and e-book ($9.95) versions. Available through Amazon.com and any other book retailer. More info and a free sample chapter are available at http://www.san-miguel-de-allende-mexico.net/.

GABRIELA POPA: What is your journey as a writer?

RICK SKWIOT: My journey as a writer is long and circuitous, all uphill, with numerous cul-de-sacs—but also with some spectacular scenery and stirring adventure along the way. The journey for a writer, or for any artist, is very different than that of, say, a scientist, lawyer or carpenter. For a writer, the best training, mentoring, and educational credentials guarantee you nothing. You have to be lucky as well as good—it’s that competitive and difficult. Like a lot of writers, I started out as a newspaper reporter, which helped me build discipline and practice concise writing. I still work as a freelance journalist. But my Mexican days were pivotal in my development as a writer. My sojourns there gave me some great material, which I’ve now mined in two novels and this memoir. But that experience also helped expand in me my human sympathy. All literature, I think, works to expand the bounds of human sympathy, by exposing us to the lives of others. A writer needs to find that sympathy within himself in order to ably convey it.

GABRIELA POPA: How did you arrive at writing a book about spirituality?

RICK SKWIOT: This book is as much about sensuality as spirituality—and how one can find spiritual delivery through the senses…Like a lot of gringos traveling south, I went to Mexico in part for the sensuality. But the Mexicans won’t let you let alone with your rigid Anglo-Saxon verities. They infect you with their ample humanity, religiosity and spirituality. Virtually all Mexicans I met, from all classes and backgrounds, assumed spiritual existence, the presence of God or some greater force in our daily lives, as a given. How could they not, what with all the supporting evidence all around them—all the miracles, supernatural occurrences, and grace that seem to seep from the haunting land there?

GABRIELA POPA: I enjoyed very much "Sleeping with Pancho Villa", your 1998 novel situated in Mexico. What drew you to that country and its culture?

RICK SKWIOT: When I first visited there I felt as if I was time-traveling. The simple lives that people lived in Mexico reminded me of my frugal childhood, which I wrote about in "Christmas at Long Lake." The people reminded me of my parents, first- and second-generation Americans who still carried with them European folkways, which you’ve written about so effectively in "Kafka’s House". The Mexican people were dignified, warm, whimsical, and soft-spoken—and, then, yet to be massified. It was like a homecoming for me. I kept going back until I found myself there.

GABRIELA POPA: It is not easy to introduce any public (American or otherwise) to foreign cultures, such as the Mexican one. How does one go about doing it successfully?

RICK SKWIOT: By telling stories that place the reader inside the culture. By layering in the sensory details and dialogue in scenes that work to transfer the emotion inherent in the lives of your characters—in both fiction and nonfiction, such as in a memoir. The trade secrets that the creative writer employs work to bring those people to life, so the reader gains an intimate acquaintance, so the reader can see them and their surroundings in his or her imagination. Fortunately, I kept an extensive journal when I lived in Mexico, which helped me immensely when, at a distance of some years, I sought to recreate that culture in words. In those volumes I had recorded incidents, dialogue and images from Mexico, which stimulated memories and my imagination.

GABRIELA POPA: What do you think are the recurring themes in your work?

RICK SKWIOT: I think that perhaps someone other than myself—someone with a little distance and perspective—might be better qualified to answer that. I have been told that loss and redemption seem to figure importantly. I like very much the idea of redemption or metamorphosis—perhaps influenced by my own life story as well as by the writings of Carl Jung and by great literature, such as Homer’s Odyssey, that recounts the hero’s quest. As readers, we are terribly moved by the story of anyone who struggles against great odds, against monsters and tyrants, and ultimately succeeds in some way, finding a boon or an answer that somehow brings order to chaos…Also, like most literature, my books, both fiction and nonfiction, involve a search for home—either in the larger world or within oneself.

GABRIELA POPA: Can you share with us your next project?

RICK SKWIOT: I have been at work preparing manuscripts for the re-issue of my previously published works, "Sleeping with Pancho Villa", "Death in Mexico" (formerly titled "Flesh") and "Christmas at Long Lake."  They are being re-released this fall by Antaeus Books® in both trade paperback and e-book versions…I’m also putting finishing touches on a new novel, "Key West Story", set here in the Conch Republic and in Cuba. It tells the story of a down-and-out writer/gigolo—though not autobiographical in the least!...I’ve also this year started a blog, http://www.newundergroundblog.com/ where I enjoy writing about literature, mostly, and recommending good books I’ve recently read. It’s a good place to find good reads—both fiction and nonfiction, new and old—without the dubious hype of book blurbers and promoters…And, as I mentioned, I continued to write feature articles. Links to many of those can be found on my website, http://www.rickskwiot.com/

GABRIELA POPA: Thank you, Rick.  It's been a fascinating conversation.  Looking forward to reading  "San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rick Skwiot has won the Hemingway First Novel Award for his first novel, "Flesh."  He is the author of two novels set in Mexico, "Flesh" and "Sleeping with Pancho Villa", and a critically praised childhood memoir, "Christmas at Long Lake." He has published numerous feature stories, short stories, essays and book reviews in magazines and newspapers.

Rick has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he served as the 2004 Distinguished Visiting Writer. He blogs at http://www.newundergroundblog.com/.

To read of chapter of "San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing", please visit: http://www.san-miguel-de-allende-mexico.net/read-a-chapter/

You can reach Rick via email at rskwiot@yahoo.com