Contemporary Verse from Albania

Thanks to Manos who drew my attention to the online literary journal, transcript. The latest issue is on Albanian poetry. Here, a sample from Parid Teferiçi.

In a Country as Small as This One

The Albanian Leviathan is a sardine. The sitting rooms where men gather are
tins of sardines. Truth, in order to find space there, has to be folded in two
and then folded again.

In a country as small as this, so small that you could easily
draw it on a one-to-one scale on this packet of cigarettes, you
don't know where and how to sit or support yourself: on the
throat of your neighbour, or on the buttocks of the other
fellow's wife.
Seated, huddled around the coffee table, how can you greet
anyone without jabbing someone else with your elbow? How
can you pay a compliment without deafening someone?
We can see one another in our spoons, and we are warped.

Comments

Anonymous said…

The theory of relativity.

5:21 pm

Anonymous said…

Any idea why the RSS feed stopped updating since the "A New and European Reality" post on October 4th?

3:29 pm

olli said…

Hi. I've checked the feed and it seems to be working normally.

1:34 pm

Dy Rame Per Tirane

I was watching Top Channel last night, first the news, then Fiks Fare. According to them Tirana's citizens now have a choice not only between Rama and Olldashi, but also between Rama and Rama. A minor right-wing faction, Parti 'Balli Kombetar' , submitted papers to the election authorities registering their candidate, Akile Rama. The people on Fiks Fare got hold of the papers and sent a reporter and camera team to the address listed for Mr A Rama. After much ringing of the bell the gate was reluctantly opened by a middle-aged woman who refused to speak to the reporter and tried to close the gate on her. Back in the studio Saimiri and Doctori - the two presenters of Fiks Fare - revealed that Mr Akile Rama was 73 years old, in hospital, and did not know he was now a candidate for mayor. They also compared two documents - the papers submitted on his behalf, and a genuine document he had signed. The signatures were not even remotely similar. There was an interview with the lea

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Guide Turistike

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council , the future is bright for Albania. The Council ranks Albania ninth out of 174 countries for tourism growth over the next ten years. A summary of the Council's report is available, as is the full report complete with many pages of graphs, charts and spreadsheets. This summer I have seen a number of tourists on the streets of Tirana. Some of them may well be Albanian expats, or people of Albanian descent returning home to visit family, but others are genuine 'foreigners'. Judging from their appearance, they are probably best described as 'independent travellers' - the kind of people who are not interested in luxury hotels or crowded beaches. This is a good start, but independent travellers are not the kind of big spenders that the tourist industry likes. In the longer term, if Albania wants to bring in the kind of free-spending tourists who currently holiday in Croatia or Slovenia, there will have to be a huge invest

Our Man in Tirana

Search This Blog