A bilingual assembly of poems—read in the Catalan by author Dolors Miquel, and in Peter Bush's English language translation by poet Nadia de Vries—to mark the Tenement Press publication of Miquel's El guant de plàstic rosa / The Pink Plastic Glove.

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Dolors Miquel is a leading Catalan poet. From an early age, her distinct and critical voice—as evidenced in her writing for the page and the stage—upset many in her provincial birthplace. Expelled from a school run by nuns, Miquel studied in Barcelona, where she founded the literary magazine La Higiènica and, in the mid-90s, began to publish poems in a variety of styles. In collaboration with other Catalan poets, Miquel would organise week-long tours of small towns (ever keen to perform her works) and her writings—sharp, clear-eyed and ever-political—distill her roving criticality in a poetry that desecrates everything: ‘the Church, politics, and, naturally, the male figure’ (María Eloy García). In Gitana Roc (Llibres Del Segle, 2000), Miquel would express the core of her work as follows: ‘I talk about the damage caused by social structures, such as the family or the police. Love is the most frightening contract of fear, also the most powerful safeguard of society, and sex is the carrot.’ This aura of critique defines Miquel’s extensive bibliography (with over twenty collections under her name to date), and she has received numerous awards, such as the Rosa Leveroni (1989), Ciutat de Barcelona (2005), Gabriel Ferrater (2006), and Ausiàs March de Gandia (2016). She has published numerous collections, among them La dona que mirava la tele / The woman who watched TV (Edicions 62, 2010) and La flor invisible / The invisible flower (Bromera, 2011). Her latest book, Sutura / Suture (Pagès, 2021) is her final work as a poet; Miquel lives and works in Torredembarra, and continues to publish theatrical texts and other writings.

Nadia de Vries is a writer from Amsterdam. She is the author of three poetry collections, including Know Thy Audience (Moist Books, 2023) and I Failed to Swoon (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021). She also writes fiction in Dutch.

Peter Bush is a translator. His first literary translation was Juan Goytisolo’s Forbidden Territory (North Point Press, 1989) and Bush has to date translated eleven other titles in Goytisolo’s bibliography, including The Marx Family Saga and Exiled from Almost Everywhere. He has translated many Catalan writers including Josep Pla, Mercè Rodoreda, Joan Sales, Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana. His most recent effort is A Film (3000 meters) by Víctor Català, the classic 1919 feminist novel set in Barcelona’s criminal underworld. Bush lives and works in Bristol.

Dolors Miquel & Nadia de Vries, 'A Pink Plastic Glove Arrives'

Majestic flights of fancy spun around ravaged landscapes and savage realities, these are remarkable prose poems for the 21st century.

(Chloe Aridjis) 

Reading Kyra Simone’s work is reminiscent of an archaeological excavation. We dig down, down, down until we have emerged on the other side of the earth, viewing a world turned upside down, both alien and familiar. We have just enough time to contemplate the madness and achievement of our endeavour before we are giddy with the blood rushing to our heads.

(Vanessa Onwuemezi)

Like traditional methods of salting, pickling, drying, and smoking, PALACE OF RUBBLE saves transitory substance from expiration. From the stuff we unfold in the morning and throw in the recycling bin at night, Simone coaxes the rhythms of cyclical life, the patterns and variations on patterns that define the sphere of the daily, that baseline on which extraordinary events and crises exert their pressure. 

(Alexandra Kleeman)

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An instalment in Tenement's rolling series, Railroad Flat Radio, TEMPORARY PALACES is a special triplicate of hour-long broadcasts for Resonance Extra wherein Simone reads her Tenement title PALACE OF RUBBLE in full, with her readings sunk deep in a tidal assembly of found sounds, borrowed noises, and appropriated musics.

Initially inspired by a photograph of one of Saddam Hussein’s demolished palaces, Simone’s PALACE OF RUBBLE is a collection of one-page stories composed primarily of single words culled each day from the front pages of the newspaper. Offering surreal glimpses of what might be identified as echoes of a post-Republic America, an imagined Middle East, and some other unnamed and unreachable world, Simone's PALACE chronicles a vivid landscape of crumbling towers and heart-broken animals, eclipses, comets, and lovers in abandoned rooms.

See tenementpress.com/Palace-of-Rubble.

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In which the author reads ...

‘Au Black’
‘Away on Business’
‘The Clouds that Pass’ 
‘The Avalanche’
‘Swept Up in the Wave’
‘The Bag Lady & La Fleurs du Mal’
‘The Winged’
‘The Oneironaut & La Novillera’
‘The Thing in the Road’
‘The Land is Dark’
‘The Last Man to Qualify’
‘Thank You, Bye’
‘A Walk By the River’
‘The People in the Hotel’
‘The Palace at Midnight’

First broadcast on Resonance Extra, July 1st 2023.

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Kyra Simone is a writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including The Baffler, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Conjunctions, Fence, The Anthology of Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and part of a two-woman team running the editorial office of Zone Books. Simone’s Tenement title, PALACE OF RUBBLE, is her first collection.

Kyra Simone, 'The Stranger' (Temporary Palaces, Pt. III Of III)

Majestic flights of fancy spun around ravaged landscapes and savage realities, these are remarkable prose poems for the 21st century.

(Chloe Aridjis) 

Reading Kyra Simone’s work is reminiscent of an archaeological excavation. We dig down, down, down until we have emerged on the other side of the earth, viewing a world turned upside down, both alien and familiar. We have just enough time to contemplate the madness and achievement of our endeavour before we are giddy with the blood rushing to our heads.

(Vanessa Onwuemezi)

Like traditional methods of salting, pickling, drying, and smoking, PALACE OF RUBBLE saves transitory substance from expiration. From the stuff we unfold in the morning and throw in the recycling bin at night, Simone coaxes the rhythms of cyclical life, the patterns and variations on patterns that define the sphere of the daily, that baseline on which extraordinary events and crises exert their pressure. 

(Alexandra Kleeman)

‡

An instalment in Tenement's rolling series, Railroad Flat Radio, TEMPORARY PALACES is a special triplicate of hour-long broadcasts for Resonance Extra wherein Simone reads her Tenement title PALACE OF RUBBLE in full, with her readings sunk deep in a tidal assembly of found sounds, borrowed noises, and appropriated musics.

Initially inspired by a photograph of one of Saddam Hussein’s demolished palaces, Simone’s PALACE OF RUBBLE is a collection of one-page stories composed primarily of single words culled each day from the front pages of the newspaper. Offering surreal glimpses of what might be identified as echoes of a post-Republic America, an imagined Middle East, and some other unnamed and unreachable world, Simone's PALACE chronicles a vivid landscape of crumbling towers and heart-broken animals, eclipses, comets, and lovers in abandoned rooms.

See tenementpress.com/Palace-of-Rubble.

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In which the author reads ...

‘The Great Escape’ 
‘The Revolving Door’
‘The Tunnel’
‘May’s End’ 
‘A Certain Music’ 
‘The Era is Over’ 
‘Obituary for Mrs. H’ 
‘Empty Chairs’ 
‘Somewhere Else’ 
‘The Prairie is on Fire’ 
‘The Lonely Pioneer’ 
‘The Last Days of Winter’ 
‘Rooms That Aren’t There’ 
‘The American Falls from Below’
‘You Promised me a Kingdom’ 

First broadcast on Resonance Extra, 27th May 2023.

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Kyra Simone is a writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including The Baffler, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Conjunctions, Fence, The Anthology of Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and part of a two-woman team running the editorial office of Zone Books. Simone’s Tenement title, PALACE OF RUBBLE, is her first collection.

Kyra Simone, 'The Wild One' (Temporary Palaces, Part II Of III)

Majestic flights of fancy spun around ravaged landscapes and savage realities, these are remarkable prose poems for the 21st century.

(Chloe Aridjis) 

Reading Kyra Simone’s work is reminiscent of an archaeological excavation. We dig down, down, down until we have emerged on the other side of the earth, viewing a world turned upside down, both alien and familiar. We have just enough time to contemplate the madness and achievement of our endeavour before we are giddy with the blood rushing to our heads.

(Vanessa Onwuemezi)

Like traditional methods of salting, pickling, drying, and smoking, PALACE OF RUBBLE saves transitory substance from expiration. From the stuff we unfold in the morning and throw in the recycling bin at night, Simone coaxes the rhythms of cyclical life, the patterns and variations on patterns that define the sphere of the daily, that baseline on which extraordinary events and crises exert their pressure. 

(Alexandra Kleeman)

‡

An instalment in Tenement's rolling series, Railroad Flat Radio, TEMPORARY PALACES is a special triplicate of hour-long broadcasts for Resonance Extra wherein Simone reads her Tenement title PALACE OF RUBBLE in full, with her readings sunk deep in a tidal assembly of found sounds, borrowed noises, and appropriated musics.

Initially inspired by a photograph of one of Saddam Hussein’s demolished palaces, Simone’s PALACE OF RUBBLE is a collection of one-page stories composed primarily of single words culled each day from the front pages of the newspaper. Offering surreal glimpses of what might be identified as echoes of a post-Republic America, an imagined Middle East, and some other unnamed and unreachable world, Simone's PALACE chronicles a vivid landscape of crumbling towers and heart-broken animals, eclipses, comets, and lovers in abandoned rooms.

See tenementpress.com/Palace-of-Rubble.

‡

In which the author reads ...

‘Palace of Rubble’ 
‘When Language is Gone from Bodies’
‘The Boys of Summer’
‘The View from the Tower’ 
‘World Business’ 
‘County Fair’
‘Still Life with Parrot’
‘Museum’
‘Today, Clouds’
‘Foreign Affairs’
‘The Empty Lot’
‘Dear Pauline’
‘Cadets No More’
‘The Wedding Exit’
‘The Nomad’
‘Blue Moon’
‘The Diver’s Song’
‘Pawns Talk of Scars’ 
‘Den of Millionaires’

First broadcast on Resonance Extra, April 24th 2023.

‡

Kyra Simone is a writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including The Baffler, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Conjunctions, Fence, The Anthology of Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and part of a two-woman team running the editorial office of Zone Books. Simone’s Tenement title, PALACE OF RUBBLE, is her first collection.

Kyra Simone, 'Tarzan The Apeman' (Temporary Palaces, Part I Of III)

A new entry in the occasional broadcast series from Tenement Press and Prototype Publishing, Railroad Flat Radio, Seven Hundred Horses is a suite of readings by eleven poets and makers to mark the publication of Seven Rooms, an anthology of works from across the Hotel series, 2016 to 2023, co-published by Tenement and Prototype, and edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle and Jess Chandler. 

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Featuring (in order of appearance)…

Hannah Regel, 
Nicolette Polek, 
Iain Sinclair, 
David Grubbs, 
Lucy Sante, 
Imogen Cassels, 
Jess Cotton, 
Joan Brossa, 
Stanley Schtinter, 
Edwina Attlee, 
& Wayne Koestenbaum.

Seven Hundred Horses assembles a select thread of live recordings and materials from the London launch of Seven Rooms at Presse Books / FormaHQ (Regel, Sante, Cassels, Cotton, Attlee and Koestenbaum) alongside choice cuts from the Hotel Archive (Polek, Sinclair, Grubbs, Brossa, and Schtinter).  

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(& in which ... Hannah Regel reads Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia,’ Nicolette Polek reads a short story called ‘The Rope Barrier,’ Iain Sinclair reads ‘Animal Drums,’ a cut-up impromptu to SJ Fowler’s motion-picture-poem of the same name (at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2019), David Grubbs reads a slice of his feature-length poem, ‘Good night the pleasure was ours,’ Lucy Sante reads a poem called ‘Call My Baby,’ Imogen Cassels reads a poem called ‘Two Types of the Same Return’ and ‘Moss’ (as in Kate), Jess Cotton reads a poem called ‘States of Bewilderment’ and a poem called ‘Aloof,’ Stanley Schtinter reads Joan Brossa’s ‘Astral Summary’ (Parts I and II of III), Edwina Attlee reads a poem called ‘Refrigeration’ and a poem called ‘Australia Day,’ and Wayne Koestenbaum reads a poem called ‘Stigma Pudding.’)

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A Suite for Seven Rooms (700 Horses) was co-produced for Resonance Extra by Dominic J. Jaeckle and Milo Thesiger-Meacham, and first broadcast at 14:30 (GMT), 03.03.24; the readings at Presse Books / Forma HQ were recorded on location by Caroline Heron.

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