Olympic Mentality and other poems

by Jack Little

Olympic Mentality

 

The Olympic Football Final – I don’t watch it, preferring

to observe Mexico City life where I pass vital moments,

a semi-welcomed guest among the bars, bordels of insecurity

(mine or someone else’s) and a sense of belonging

gotten lost, unworldly.

 

Auxiliary guards carry guns and watch on nonchalantly,

I catch a glimpse of the score and there’s been an early goal:

It has been a disappointing year. I rob red bricks

painted white from the high walls of surburbia, floating,

wishing for a glimpse of the old world I once knew

 

the dangerous and inviting. My favourite bookshops

are closed on Sundays and the nightclub got shut

down until the fine will be paid to a shadow. Drunken

buses pass, with huge unkempt flags, faster, faster, faster

 

with no where in particular to go, swaying and surfing

on the rotten wooden floor of a packed out combi heading

for war. Mexico won gold today and nothing will

stand in her way for now she has a “winning mentality”

 

quite unseen before. Dancing people at the station, cars honking

loudly and there is no water in the taps tonight and the light shall

most likely falter for these are difficult times, the nights ringing bells

of an uncertainty that befell this city not less than half a millenia ago

 

reassuring yet taxing to the senses, the winners declare

this day to be “a base upon which to build for the future”

 

 

On Finding Myself to be Rather Similar to a Cabbage

 

I read a book on hormones today

and it’s really quite remarkable

just how our bodies work

at attaching new atoms, and breaking them down,

signals passing too -and-fro millions of millimeters

from toe to head and back again.

 

And then, that got me thinking,

(which can be very dangerous)

where do I fit in, in this body of mine?

am I just the sum of this not quite so tall machine

and unfathomable passing of bodily fluids and electricity

between tubes and organs… A silly percentage made of water

and 47% the same DNA as a cabbage.

 

So, dear sir. Please do cut me open and find a Victoria sponge,

Placed meticulously in thin layers of cream, cake and jam.

 

 

Fourth Birthday

 

A photo from my back pocket,

a boy in his best black waist coat

like a 1990s snooker player – Don’t pot

the black too early lad – I whisper,

his forehead hasn’t been grown into yet

 

My best party outfit, my best friends

of turning four fill the foreground

of life passing in cycles, the passing of parcels

the stopping of music. Unpack these moments

and write them down – my teddy bear wears

that waistcoat now

 

 

Late August, 2012

 

the evening denies her promise

of rainfall, a day off

and the excitement of entrapment.

 

a man blames expectation as his cage

and asks for directions to somewhere beautiful.

 

the citizen smiles politely in silence,

the ripples of a thousand “I”, ‘I”, “I”s merge into one,

another year now over halfway done.

 

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Jack Little (b. 1987) is a British poet living in Mexico City where he runs The Ofi Press, a bilingual online poetry magazine and publishing company which organises regular poetry events. His work has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Warwick Unbound, Calliope Nerve, The Bubble, Eunoia Review, Blue Pepper Poetry, Kerouac’s Dog,  and mostly recently in Bakwa Magazine (Cameroon). Forthcoming publications will appear soon in Drey, Wasafiri and Ink, Sweat and Tears. In March 2012, Jack read at the Linares International Literary Festival in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. As well as his literary related activities, he also manages the Mexico national cricket team.www.theofipress.webs.com

 

Photo by Eleanor Bennett

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Two and a half blocks

by Carlos Bortoni

translated by Toshiya Kamei

 

One morning he found a hole.

Every day he strolled around the building where he lived. Wandering aimlessly, he never repeated the previous day’s route. He walked for the sake of it whenever he liked. When he got tired, he went home to his apartment. After breakfast, he sat in the living room to watch TV and fell asleep without fail. When he woke up, he had something to eat and watched TV again to lull himself to sleep. If for some reason he woke up in the middle of the night, he would go to his room and lie down on the bed, taking up only one side, even though he now slept alone. Every day he followed the same routine – it made no difference whether it was Sunday or Thursday, Tuesday or Friday.

The hole was exactly two and a half blocks from his building. Going to the right, he reached the manhole cover, broken at one corner, which left the grille exposed. Your foot can get caught in there, he thought.

Interrupting his stroll, he turned around right away and went back to his apartment. After looking for a plastic bag in vain, he ended up calling his daughter. Where do you keep grocery bags? he asked as soon as she picked up the phone. After his retirement, she did his shopping for him, and after all, she took care of what needed to be done in his apartment. She would tell him, in a tone that sounded like a complaint, his retirement had affected him more than her mother’s death. And he would answer that her mother never made herself indispensable. This bothered her greatly. And when he didn’t make her cry, he made her storm out of the apartment, leaving things halfway and slamming the door shut. Where do you keep grocery bags? he asked again. Papá? You don’t throw them away, do you? he insisted. Papá, what do you need? I’ll buy it and bring it with me this afternoon. After your grandchildren’s English class, she answered. No, Victoria. No. I just want a plastic bag. Maybe two, he added. What do you need, Pápa? I’ll bring it. For God’s sake, Victoria, you’re just like your mother. If I miss her someday, I’ll just need to call you and forget that she’s been dead for fifteen years. Look under the sink. Under the sink? he repeated, annoyed that he hadn’t thought of it before. But instead of an answer he heard a busy signal.

He took out a plastic bag, undid the triangle his daughter made when she put it away, and blew some air into the bag to make sure it had no holes. After doing the same with another bag, he left his apartment.

Before reaching the hole, he placed one bag inside the other to reinforce it. In a garden he picked up a few large lumps of dirt and a couple of stones and put them in the bags. When he stood again before the broken manhole cover, he took out the stones and placed them in the hole, holding them with rods that had been exposed. He threw dirt over them and then stepped on it to flatten the ground and cover the hole completely. A temporary fix, he thought. But I’m not the one who should be doing this.

The following morning, he decided to break the habit of not walking the same walk two days in a row, suspecting his plaster dirt had not survived overnight. He grabbed plastic bags and went out to look for the hole. On his way there he filled the bags with dirt and stones, and when he reached the manhole, he filled the hole. He stuffed the empty bags into his pants pocket and resumed his stroll. On his way back, he stopped at the café on the first floor of his building. He went inside, asked for café americano and a chocolate muffin, and sat down to read the newspaper a waiter handed him. When he finished skimming the classified ads, he left there and went up to his apartment.

Every day he did the same – it didn’t matter if it was Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday. He left the building, filled his bags in the garden, and covered the hole, always complaining he had to do it – if you don’t do it, nobody else will. And he always stopped at the café before going home.

Some mornings his plaster contained more dirt than stones. Other mornings he needed many small stones because he couldn’t find large ones. And at other times he had to walk back to the garden to get more stones and dirt after he threw all of them into the hole. But he never missed the date with the manhole cover until he found it fixed, or rather, replaced by a new one. During the first hours of the morning, a team of workers from the Department of Public Works had replaced the broken cover. The clean cement and the new logo on it showed the age difference between the new cover and the rest of the sidewalk. Damn sons of bitches, he mumbled, holding his bags in his clenched fist. He went to another garden, emptied the bags, shoved them into his pocket, and kept walking.

At the end of the block he turned left, shaking his head and mumbling nonsense, and then made a right turn two streets away. At the corner he found a city utility truck and three men working on the sidewalk, cleaning sewers. Without a doubt, those three had replaced the manhole cover. He walked up to them and said, fucking assholes. You old son of a bitch. What’s your problem? answered one of them, looking up without stopping his work. Your mother’s a whore, he said and left without checking to see if they had heard him.

He turned right at the corner and then took the second turning on the left. He walked on the new manhole cover and went back to his building. Passing in front of the door of the café, he went up to his apartment. After a breakfast of fruit, he sat in front of the TV, turned it on, and soon fell asleep.

 

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Carlos Bortoni was born in Mexico City in 1979 and still lives there today. He studied history at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. His books include El imperio soy yo (2007) and Perro viejo y cansado(2007). English translations of his fiction have appeared in The 22 Magazine and Johnny America.

 

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas. His translations include Liliana Blum’s The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008), Naoko Awa’s The Fox’s Window and Other Stories(2010), Espido Freire’s Irlanda (2011), and Selfa Chew’s Silent Herons (2012).

photo by Angela M Campbell

 

An Englishman in Mexico City: an interview with Jack Little

By Julia Stewart

 

Jack Little has worn more hats in the first two decades of his life than most do in ten. He is an intriguing mix of sportsman and poet, social activist and school teacher.

Jack came to the attention of the editor of In Other Words: Merida, Cher Bibler, because he is likewise editor of an online literary magazine functioning out of Mexico City called The Ofi Press.

Jack’s poetry has been published in 3:AM Magazine (UK), In Other Words: Merida (Mexico), Scissors and Spackle (USA), Bakwa Magazine (Cameroon), Ink, Sweat and Tears (UK) The Barehands Anthology (Ireland) and Wasafiri (UK), among others. His poems have featured on the Young Poets Network website and he writes a regular column for The Bubble online magazine.

Here we take a look inside the life of a young man rising.

 

 

Q: Let’s start with what drew you from your home in England to Mexico at such an early age?

A: I graduated from university in 2009 with a Political Science degree and I was looking for work and a new adventure. I always wanted to live abroad, and on a trip to Cuba in 2009 for the 50^th anniversary of the revolution, I met several new friends from Latin America. One was Mexican and he invited me to visit, which prompted me to quit my teaching job in the north east of England and a few months later I arrived in Mexico with only £300 and a bag of clothes. I haven’t looked back since! I’ve worked as a textbook proof reader, as a translator, and now I am a primary school teacher. I’ve learnt Spanish and had many wonderful opportunities…I’ve worked hard, but no doubt I’ve been lucky too.

 

Q: You manage the Mexican cricket team. Tell us more about the team and how you landed this job.

A: It’s all about timing. I had never even played cricket in the UK, but when I arrived in Mexico, I befriended a young British cricketer and teacher called Yasir Patel who, at the time, was the captain of the Mexico team. I was also friends with Jon Bonfiglio, a poet, dramatist and explorer with the Clipperton Project who also happened to be the national cricket association’s chairman at the time. When the then manager resigned, Yasir asked me to step in as manager for Mexico at the ICC Division 4 Tournament in San José, Costa Rica where Mexico played against Belize, the Falkland Islands, Chile, and Peru, as well as the host country. Despite Mexico being a strong team, we finished fourth in the tournament.

We at the Mexican Cricket Association are pushing to get more Mexicans interested in the sport. I conduct cricket training sessions twice a week at the school where I work. In May I’ll host a cricket camp for kids in Mexico City and from Queretaro State and I’m really excited about that. In August, I’ll step down as secretary at the Mexican Cricket Association, but will continue in my role as a club captain of the Mexico City Cricket Club 2^nd team and also as a youth coach.

 

Q: In Mexican cricket, do they maintain the traditional tea-breaks, and how do they differ from in England?

A: Here in Mexico, the focus is less on tea drinking and more on beer. There is a bar close to the pitch, so many players enjoy a beer or two before the game starts. I guess that has something to do with the blazing heat! Each team has a real mix of nationalities – British, Australians, South Africans, Argentinians, Mexicans, Indians and others. Each brings their own little bit of culture with them to the cricket ground.

 

Q: Cricket is said to have inspired much poetry: i.e. Francis Thompson’s ‘At Lord’s’ (“the field is full of shades”). Does cricket make an appearance in your poetry?

A: Cricket hasn’t been a theme in my poetry yet, but why not in the future! I am very interested in how we as people use our space around us, in the British colonial past, and the use of dialects and accents.

 

Q: Are cricket-playing poets very common where you come from, or are you a rare bird?

A: There is one excellent poet called S.J. Litherland who comes from the north east of England and she wrote an excellent collection of poetry as an homage to the ex-captain of the English team, Nasser Hussain. She travels all over the world to see England play!

 

Q: Are there other sports you are involved in?

A: I am developing the Mexico Darts Association – of which I’m one of the founders – and am organising a Mexico team for the 2014 Darts World Cup, as well as formal leagues here in Mexico City.

 

Q: Mexico City, with 20 million people in the metropolitan area, is one of the world’s largest cities. Does this have any effect on your creativity, your poetry and your state of mind?

A: I love Mexico City; the chaos, the bustle, the beauty of the place and it impacts heavily on my work. The sounds, smells and sites are very different indeed to the north of England and I often compare and contrast these two markers of my own identity. I think that for any poet or writer, the area they occupy in place and time will always have a vital impact upon one’s work.

 

Q: What is your role in the 2013 collaborative poetry project Enemigos and why is it titled so?

A: The Enemigos project reflects the possibilities of poetry in collaboration. Enemigos is a special link between London-based and Mexico City-based poets, all of which are of an extremely high caliber. I had collaborated with organsiers Rocío Cerón and SJ Fowler in the past through The Ofi Press. My role, as a London-born poet now living in Mexico City, was initially to place the poets together by reading their work and looking for signs that they would be able to work together. Collaborative writing can be quite a conflictive process at times!

Once the book is ready, I shall write a short foreword for the book which will be published in May of this year by EBL Cielo Abierto.

 

Q: Your regular columns in Bubble magazine offer up slices of Mexican culture. What type of feedback have you received on these stories?

A:  To be quite honest, I’m not really quite sure if anyone at all reads my column! It does provide me with a good excuse to research my new home country though and I have written several pieces on the Day of the Dead, environmental degradation, narco corridos, Mexican food, pulque and many other topics. I love to write and discover new things so I find the process to be really quite rewarding, even if not many people read the articles.

 

Q: In one of your bios, you mention that you enjoy “sleeping on park benches”; does that mean you hit the bars too hard or that you can’t pay rent at times?

A: Haha! Not quite. I rarely drink to be honest and I have never had too much trouble with paying the rent. My nickname is “The Granddad” because of my old soul.

Having said that, when I first arrived in Mexico, I used to enjoy finding new parks in the city, watching people pass by, doing some writing and then falling asleep for an hour or so in the sun. Now with a full time job as a primary school teacher as well as my other projects, I find that I have a lot less time to indulge my hobby of park bench sleeping. The Easter holidays are coming up though, so I’ll probably take an afternoon off for this.

 

Q: Are you by any chance related to the famous British-born American composer and singer “Little” Jack Little?

A: No, but my mum is an established poet in the UK and my father has just finished his fourth in a series of detective novels based in the north east of England. Before you know it, the Littles might just have made a reputation for themselves!

 

Q: If a poet or writer had 24 hours in Mexico City and wanted to be inspired, where would you send them?

A: I would send them for a long walk in order to get lost in the city. You only really get to know a place by getting lost there. You also find out a lot about yourself too! On my first morning in Mexico, I woke up at 6 am and walked through the small villages on the outskirts of DF where I was staying. I passed pig skins hanging in shop windows, loud music playing, brightly coloured market stalls and exotic fruits…I have to say, I was hooked.

 

Q: You originally came to Mexico for a finite period of time (six months), but have stayed well beyond that. Do you see your future here? Are there other countries in the world that you would like live in as well, and why?

A: I’ve been lucky to have visited many countries so far in my life, like Tanzania, China, Cuba, Thailand and many European countries. I have never felt quite so at home in any of those places as I have done here. I will be getting married in July to a lovely lady whom I met here three years ago and I plan to take dual Mexican-UK nationality. Mexico is home for me now but I would never say never to leaving for another country. The world is a very big place with much to offer.

 

For more information:

 

www.theofipress.webs.com

www.mexicocricketassociation.com

www.mexicodartsassociation.webs.com

www.thebubble.org.uk/authors/jack-little

 

An Interview with Grant Cogswell

A life fit for the big screen

by Julia Stewart

Grant Cogswell lives life large. So large, so outrageously at times, that a movie was made about him. Released last year, the movie recounts Grant’s underdog run for city council in Seattle, Washington, where he remains a folk hero. Grant has been at turns a cab driver, civic crusader, music reviewer, poet, novelist, journalist, movie writer, movie subject, and now small business owner.

These days, we find Grant quietly running a bookstore upstairs in the American Legion building in the hip Condesa district of Mexico City. However, things may start heating up a bit again for Grant. Last year saw the release of his book The Dream of the Cold War: Poems 1998-2008. This year, his bookstore has been listed in the 2013 edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide. And an interview with Grant just appeared in the June issue of Forbes Mexico.

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Q: You are quite well known in Seattle, Washington, first for co-spearheading a successful monorail referendum in 1997 (which later was defeated) and then running for City Council in 2001 (and losing by a respectably small margin). Does this fame translate at all to Mexico City?
Customers from Seattle remember me. Nobody else knows or cares or even have context for what happened in Seattle, which is a blessing of the highest order.

Q: In the recent Forbes Mexico article, it says that Mexico saved your life. In what way?
The great vibe of people here, the climate, the healthier lifestyle (if you stay away from panques and refrescos*). So generous and open and engaged in living. When you’ve had childhood trauma, and ‘issues’ and come from a relatively ‘cold’ country, these things are completely necessary.

[*pound cake and soft drinks.]

Q: It’s not very often that Hollywood makes a movie with A-list actors about a part of a person’s
life. The 2012 film Grassroots was made about part of your life. How was it received? What did your family think about someone making a movie about you? Do you think you’ll ever do anything again that someone would make into a film?
The movie sank like a stone. I don’t exactly have family in the States, per se; my brother and my partner and her folks kind of just stared, openmouthed. Like my best friend, they know me, and they weren’t overly impressed, which is the appropriate reaction, I think.

What I’m doing now isn’t exactly dramatic. I think if 9/11 hadn’t happened right before the election I lost, there’d be no movie, I’d still be in Seattle politics and wondering what the hell happened to my life. All is for the best.

Q: In one interview you stated that you felt like you “trashed your youth” and that time spent as an activist in Seattle “wasn’t any fun at all.” The campaign manager for your Seattle city council race and the author of the book on which the movie was made, Phil Campbell, said nothing was accomplished by the campaign. With such an outcome, what would you advise other young activists to do differently?
I should just shut up in front of young activists, because the cynicism and false progressive stance of Seattle burnt out my hope for that place. Young activists need to have hope to do what they can do. Nothing was accomplished by the campaign except it ended up putting about a hundred grand in publishing and movie rights in Phil Campbell’s pocket, so you’d think he’d be the last to say nothing came of it! The real winner here is him.

Q: Your city council campaign was underscored by the belief that public transport could “set a city apart.” You were driven by the belief that Seattle had a chance to avert some of the more unattractive configurations and growth patterns of many other large American cities. On the public transport and livability scale, how do you see Mexico City faring? What makes it work (if you think it does)?
Mexico City is a splendid place to live. The public transit is overcrowded, but incredibly efficient. It seems higher density would help eliminate some of the horrifically long commutes many people have to endure, but this is a city still understandably nervous in tall buildings.

Q: If you could make a set of five rules for all cities to live by, what would they be?
1. Build for people, not cars. 2. Don’t make hoops to jump through for small businesses. If someone wants to sell sandwiches they made on a blanket, don’t shut that down with a bunch of paperwork. Let it thrive or fail. 3. Ban liability. You break your neck on a step, it was your fault for not looking where you put your feet. The city can’t be built to make your life perfectly safe. 4. Plant trees everywhere possible. 5. Don’t sell naming rights to corporations. That’s really the death of the connection between place and culture.

Q: There is a great mini-clip about the movie Grassroots with you and the real-life city council incumbent Richard McIver in which you say: “I’m here to make art, make friends, make love, and let other people handle policy.” (To which McIver laughs and replies: “All right!”) What are you in Mexico for?
All of the above.

Q: One magazine article on you is titled “The Man Who Loved Seattle Too Much.” Do you have any such feelings for Mexico City, or any other place in the world for that matter?
I think I love Mexico City far more deeply than I ever did Seattle, because I love it for what it really is instead of a dream of what I can make it into.

Q: Did you really ever run around Seattle in a polar bear costume, as seen in the movie? Have you ever considered a costume for Mexico, like a big taco or something, and what would make you threaten to wear it?
A big taco? I would never dress up as a big taco. I woolgathered out loud at meetings of the transportation committee about wearing a polar bear costume if I won until they stopped making policy that advanced climate change. I should make shit up out loud more often, I guess, because that polar bear ended up on a movie poster.

Q: You co-wrote the screenplay for a 2007 horror film Cthulhu, based on the 1926 short story “The Call of Cthulhu” by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Do you have plans to write more screenplays, and if yes, what about?
I actually have two more completed screenplays I’d love to see made. One about Ukrainian internet brides, the other about the last year of John Keats’ life, set in the contemporary U.S. I love screenwriting; it’s just so hard to ‘finish’, that is, to get the movie made. If one of those got produced or if I had the chance to work with my brother on something – he’s a way better screenwriter than I ever was – I might get back into it. Right now I’m surprising myself by writing fiction for the first time in almost twenty years.

Q: Tori Spelling was in Cthulhu, Jason Biggs (American Pie) was in Grassroots, as was Joel David Moore (Avatar), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Cedric the Entertainer, Tom Arnold, and others. Did you get to meet any of these actors?
I met them all, but got to know Tori best. She’s an amazing woman, extremely intelligent and funny with a great heart, and completely in on the joke that is her fame.

Q: You were a populist activist two decades prior to the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Do you still believe that one person can change the system? Can you point to any good examples of this in Mexico (or America)?
One person, if they are visionary enough, and ready for – or forced into – total self-sacrifice, can do a lot. I think Julian Assange and Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have really done some things we won’t see the end of soon, and been great heroes for truth against power. I’m pretty impressed with ex-Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard and the way he just pushed forward environmental initiatives without putting his finger to the wind. That guy will be president someday. I met him at a party, actually. Unfortunately the party had an open tequila bar and I was falling-down drunk.

Q: In several photos, you are wearing a white or black cowboy hat. What is the significance behind this?
I started wearing a hat with a brim because I was extremely sensitive to sun – because I was living in Seattle and Portland and wasn’t getting enough of it. I also kind of had to dress up to deal with the shame of hustling for money to make my silly, silly movie (Cthulhu, not Grassroots). I kind of look at that fat, coked-up fool with the goatee now and shake my head. Not my best period.

Q: Your bookstore is called Under the Volcano Books after a twentieth-century literary masterpiece of the same name by Malcolm Lowry. You have the pleasure of living within miles of the two volcanos featured in that book – Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl. Have you climbed either of these, and do you feel they are part of your present life?
Have I climbed them? Popo is erupting multiple times a day right now. The city is high and cold enough for me. I lack any desire to be at a higher altitude, so, no. They are pretty. Popo, from where I live, uncannily looks exactly like Rainier from downtown Seattle. A coincidence as meaningless and perfect as the world itself.

Q: You currently are the owner of the only all English-language bookstore in Mexico City, a metropolis creeping up on 20 million people, and the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world. What’s a day like at the Under the Volcano Books in DF?
Kind of quiet, with people coming in and out throughout the day. I don’t sell a lot of books, but enough to keep us going and get by. My mission is twofold, to give the city the resource of the books, and to open up writing time for myself. Sometimes, even, the second of these happens.

Q: You have noted that one of your goals with the bookstore is for Mexicans and Americans to learn about each other’s cultures beyond stereotypes; you have also found that the majority of your clients are Mexicans who want to read in English. If you were to recommend three books to these clients that you think would best help them to comprehend the modern American psyche , what would they be?
Hoo! Now we’re talking. Well, I think Cormac McCarthy’s recent work is nearly without parallel. My friend Daniel Gildark said he really considers Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men and The Road a trilogy about the past, present and future of violence. Are they about Americans more than anyone else? A little, so I’ll throw those up there. I think Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is a good map of where the American psyche is right now, the part that doesn’t make the sad headlines. I gave that to my partner’s dad, and told him if he didn’t like the people in it, then he could rest assured that he really did not like gringos. I don’t think you can even talk about America without talking about the legacy of slavery, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved is probably the best book on that topic, as well as one of the very best books by anyone in English, ever.

Q: Do you still have the seal of Seattle tattooed on your arm? Do you have any other tattoos?
I’m not going to get a tattoo the size of my hand removed just because Seattle is full of idiots. That would hurt like hell. I have no other tattoos that I can talk about.

Q: Mexico Review, your international literary journal is reportedly being launching this year. When can we expect it? What will the format be, and will we be competing with you for magazine submissions?!
Mexico Review has been cancelled. This isn’t yet the capital of American literature in exile. I think it will be. I think in a decade you won’t be able to walk a half a block without hearing an American accent. But it’s still being discovered, for gringos. I find that writing – and reading – are solitary acts and that I do not enjoy attempts at ‘community’ in the context of a literary community that are other than the very most casual. Writers are difficult people, and of course they always want you to tell them you like their work. Most of what is written is bad. I don’t have any interest anymore in being the filter who has to pass that judgment to people. Self-published books are terrible, too. Have you ever read a good one? Leave me out of it, grumble, grumble. Life is short and I have too many books to read, and write.

To learn more about Grant’s store, check out: http://www.underthevolcanobooks.com

 

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Photo by: Diane Grondin