The Left Luggage website has just been published

Left Luggage website

Left Luggage is available as a book

Left Luggage

The Journey of a Su…

By John Perivolaris

Book Preview

Trader, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, April 2008

Perhaps tomorrow

my children

will grow old

awaiting my return

From`I Still Have Time’, written in Peshawar City by Partaw Naderi and translated by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari (© The Poetry Translation Centre, 2000, 2008).

Long Distance

My conversations with Omar lead me to e-mail the poet Partaw Naderi with an invitation to collaborate in this project. He graciously accepts. Since distance currently prevents our meeting in person, at least his words and my photographs can bridge the distance between us in this space.

`Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,/ να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος …’, South Bank, London, 30 November, 2009

`Cuando salgas de viaje para Ítaca,/ desea que el camino sea largo…’, South Bank, London, 30 November, 2009

 

`As you set out for Ithaka/ hope the voyage is a long one…’, South Bank, London, 30 November, 2008

 

`Detenerse en el viaje es romper resistencia’, Omar García Obregón, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London, 30 November, 2008

Detenerse en el viaje es romper resistencia,
alistarse en campañas en nombre del olvido
y lanzarse al vacío sin terminar el sueño
en el que vagos muros se esfuman en tinieblas.

[To falter in the journey is to break off our resistance,
enlist on campaigns in the name of oblivion
and leap into the void before the dream's end
when errant walls dissolve into shadows.]

From Omar García Obregón, `Almidonados sueños de la vetusta historia’, in his Resistencia en la tierra (Madrid: Verbum, 2007).

Text © Omar García Obregón, 2004

Translation © John Perivolaris, 2009

`Para mí todo viaje es azar’, Omar García Obregón, South Bank, London, 30 November, 2008

Omar picked up this stone candle holder in Miami. It represents the orisha Elegguá. In Afrocuban beliefs, this deity is the personification of fate, luck, and death. He holds the keys of destiny, opening and closing the doors of happiness and unhappiness. For Omar, Elegguá represents the twists of our multiple destinies. For my restlessly travelling friend, each destination is multiple, in proportion to the number of discoveries we make there.

Leaves, 30 November 2008 – 4 January 2009

Every journey a return journey.

Every departure a homecoming.

A posthumous feast of star-apples.

 

Chrysophyllum Caimito leaves

chalk in the mouth, gold in the distance.

 

© John Perivolaris, 2008