The Tumbler — Tenement Press

_{^{Joan Brossa, ‘Homenatge al llibre’ / ‘Homage to the Book’ (1994)

© Mireia Miranda / Fundació Joan Brossa}}

_{El saltamartí / The Tumbler
Joan Brossa

Tenement #1
978-1-8380200-1-9
333 pp

£17.50

ORDER DIRECT FROM TENEMENT HERE

Designed and typeset by Traven T. Croves
Edited by Cameron Griffiths
& Dominic J. Jaeckle

Published 15th April 2021

Joan Brossa creates distilled excitement. He is both wise and wild. His poems are surreal and matter-of-fact, playful and minimalist and utterly original. In his ability to make it new, Brossa is an essential modern poet.

Colm Tóibín

In El saltamartí / The Tumbler, traditional poetic stanzas sit side-by-side with a more liberated poetic form—one Brossa referred to as a synthetic poetry—in which he employs a straightforward, everyday language (it is the language of the working classes with which he identifies). Always the innovator, Brossa reinvigorates this language so as to evince an accessible and archly political poetry that demands our critical and creative participation.

Challenging the very notion of an author’s hold over these texts, Brossa invites us to approach these works with a critical autonomy all of our own, and The Tumbler stands a critical study of freedom. The poet places himself as a critic of established power systems, accepted meanings and held conceptualizations of liberty. His movement towards an aesthetic autonomy (a journey we can charter from his early books on) arrived at its final destination in a complete break with language—his visual poetry—and in this collection we encounter this mixture of verse and visual poems for the first time. An examination of poetic license that proves as pertinent today as it did upon its first publication.

^{Joan Brossa, tr. Cameron Griffiths, ‘Preludi’ / ‘Prelude’}

Challenging the very notion of an author’s hold over these texts, Brossa invites us to approach these works with a critical autonomy all of our own, and The Tumbler stands a critical study of freedom. The poet places himself as a critic of established power systems, accepted meanings and held conceptualizations of liberty. His movement towards an aesthetic autonomy (a journey we can charter from his early books on) arrived at its final destination in a complete break with language—his visual poetry—and in this collection we encounter this mixture of verse and visual poems for the first time. An examination of poetic license that proves as pertinent today as it did upon its first publication.

For an excerpt in The London Magazine, see here.

For an excerpt on the Hotel Archive, see here.

Due to the book’s anti-Franco sentiments—and Brossa’s distinct support of the Catalan independence movement—both the first and second Catalan editions of The Tumbler suffered due to censorship. Publishers of the first Castilian translation released only a selection of works from the manuscript due to the political implications of this poetry (leaving out fifty poems in total), and the lion’s share of Brossa’s bibliography remains untranslated. Cameron Griffiths’ new translation is the most extensive English language publication of Brossa’s poetry to date.

^{Joan Brossa, Poema Objecte / Object Poem (1967)

MACBA Collection, Barcelona, © Fundació Joan Brossa}

For the attention of ‘brick & mortar’ bookshops,
order copies of Brossa’s El saltamartí via our distributor,

Asterism Books.}_{These gloriously acerbic, droll, at times political poems offer minimalist conundrums that refute solution anddissolution. Joan Brossa’s brilliantly oblique juxtapositions, micro-observations, and deadpan takes on the quotidian are enigmatic without being obscure. El saltamartí / The Tumbler is protoconceptual pantomime: ‘The words are here, whether you read them or not. And nothing on earth can change that.’

Charles Bernstein

Playful, sharp, unbelievably fresh, ironic and free, Brossa’s poetry translates wonderfully into English as an ode to irreverence, a work of art and a magician’s trick. As the curtain rises the words appear, the wordsmith is here, the wizard is here. Hold tight. Abracadabra.

Irene Solá}

Price Poetry
or The Left Ventricle
in Times of Trouble

_{A refraction of the first popular festival of Catalan poetry at the Gran Price Theatre (Barcelona, 1970) / A radio broadcast commissioned by the Institut Ramon Llull for the 2022 edition of the London Book Fair & the “Spotlight” programme on Catalan literatures.

Price Poetry features archival recordings,

readings & contributions from

(in order of appearance)...

Ona Balló Pedragosa,

Joan Brossa,

Jon Auman,

Lucy Mercer,

Joan Oliver / Pere Quart,

Stephen Watts,

Diamanda La Berge Dramm,

Dominic J. Jaeckle,

Salvador Espriu,

Agustí Bartra,

Aidan Moffat,

Francesc Vallverdú,

Harmony Holiday,

Gabriel Ferrater,

Stanley Schtinter

& Cameron Griffiths.}

_{^{Pere Portabella, Poetes Catalans (1970), courtesy of Films 59}

A collaboration between the Institut Ramon Llull, Films 59 and Tenement Press, Price Poetry is a work-for-the-radio curated and edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle in response to the London Book Fair’s “spotlight” on Catalan literatures in translation; a special broadcast—a work of collage and sonic assembly—to commemorate and respond to the first Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry, May 25, 1970.

Held in Barcelona’s Gran Price Theatre—and in solidarity with political prisoners incarcerated under the Franco regime—the festival hosted readings by Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere Quart), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater to a packed auditorium. Documented by Pere Portabella in his short film Poetes Catalans (1970), these readings and performances as accommodated in this underground assembly are emblematic of the central seat that poetry stakes in a history of Catalan social and cultural movement; they essay a persistent reminder of the ways in which an autonomous poetry underpins the political, playful, and acute dynamics of a people set on articulating forms of freedom in moments of authoritarian rule; and act as a significant document of an engaged avant garde tradition that resonates in our present moment.

Price Poetry employed archival recordings of readings from Bartra, Oliver / Quart, Espriu, Brossa, Vallverdú, and Ferrater as catalysts, inviting contributions, correspondence, and reaction from contempoary poets and songwriters to materials delivered at the inaugural edition of this festival of poetry.}

_{^{© Fundació Joan Brossa}

Since 1969, El saltamartí has not lost even a crumb of its subversive gift and luminous capacity to surprise and arouse the unexpected in the hinge of silence and colloquy. The reader’s anxiety will arise precisely from the apparent obviousness; from the anti-poetic or a-poetic nature that, at first glance, Brossian texts appear to present. It is, in fact, a total rejection of the expressive conventions to which poetry is generally ascribed as a literary genre. The distribution of sentences or phrases in lines or stanzas seems arbitrary and arrhythmic; the poems can appear to lack construction, the themes and images can seem externally trivial or, simply to not exist: in short, the reader may experience some resistance to accepting them as poems.

Pere Gimferrer

In addition to being one of the most interesting and striking poets of his period, Brossa had a sensitivity and a receptive capacity that made him an extremely rigorous and acute reader-viewer. Painting, cinema, music ... all were present in his day-to-day literary activity. He fed voraciously off one or other of these mediums and, from the outset, his critical vision was decisive for many. Brossa has always been a solid reference point; and remains an endearing and comforting presence.

Pere Portabella

A breath of fresh (Catalan) air or a scream? This book, in the original & in this excellent English translation, is both at the same time. It is fresh in the plain openness and open plainness of the language, & a scream of pure delight when you discover that the tumbler of the title is the people, who, despite despotic abuse, will ever land on their feet. This is a poetry all in support of that tumbler, doing its best to help right itself—bluntly, without irony, and with the iron of conviction that freedom is a core value. As Brossa says elsewhere, there are some books that can’t be put down—this work is one of them.

Pierre Joris

Brossa asks us to look, then look again; to think, then think again. Like the flaneur carrying a small mirror through the streets, his glimpse becomes a view. We see the world for a moment—clear, extracted, never magnified and so, large as life. How wonderful that Tenement Press has brought Brossa’s wry, wise, and rueful gaze to new readers.

Anne Michaels

Brossa was one of the most important writers in post-war Europe and transformed the way we think about poetry. This collection is a testament to his continuing ability to move, tease and provoke.

John London

^{Joan Brossa au musée de Céret, 1990
J. Lahousse, © 1990}}

_{Joan Brossa (1919–1998) was born in Barcelona into a family of artisans. He began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish Civil War and, following an introduction to surrealism by way of the friendship and influence of Joan Miró and Joan Prats, would fuse political engagement and aesthetic experiment through sonnets, odes, theatre, sculpture and screenplay within a neo-surrealist framework. Brossa founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948 and, during the fifties and sixties, his poetry was increasingly informed by collectivist concerns. His collection El saltamartí (1963) presented a synthesis of themes both political and social, and the subsequent publication of Poesia Rasa (1970), Poemes de seny i cabell (1977), Rua de llibres (1980)—and the six volumes of Poesia escénica (published between 1973 and 1983)—saw Brossa stake his place as a central figure in contemporary Catalan literature.

Cameron Griffiths studied History and English Literature at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. His poetry has appeared in journals in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. He lives with his family in Spain.

^{Joan Brossa, ‘150 Homenatges’ / ‘150 Homages’ (1994)}

^{Brossa’s ‘Preludi’
was read and recorded by Ona Balló Pedragosa for use in an event titled Acció Santos—a Carles Santos tribute act—featuring Barcelona ’92 Olympian Derek Redmond, Daniel Blumberg, Winstanley Schtinter, Billy Steiger, Tom Wheatley, Magí Canyelles & Maria Mollol Moya. Acció Santos was performed at Café Oto, London, on December 17th, 2019 as a part of a complete retrospective of Pere Portabella’s film works, A Worm’s Tail View is Often the True One, organised and curated by Stanley Schtinter.}}