My Labour Day

Cool, sunny, Labour Day morning. I wanted to blog earlier but had to wait for blogspot's engineers to do something. I couldn't get access. Will go for a bike ride to keep my muscles flexible and in motion. This is the right type of Labour Day for me and my artist worklife.

Printed off and signed an author-participant agreement for my activities in Fredericton & Moncton, NB, in the fast approaching Side by Side Festival of Literary Translation / Festival Côte à Côte festival de traduction littéraire (29 Sept to 3 Oct).

Kellie, in her role as editor of Bread 'n Molasses, has requested a few photos I took of the Harley rally in Moncton to publish online.

Received an email from Vlad about his reading of the seriously marked-up dzoblejds-kazamatKONKON file—the final version of Dubravka's translation of Casemate Poems. We still striving for a better feeling translation of "sweet gig if you've got it" with suggestions of "super posao ako si ga dobio" or "super posao ako ga dobijes". Dubravka has now added Vlad to the list of people she thanks in the book. This will even more directly link me and my poetry book with Vlad. His novel, Kiša i hartija (Novi Sad: Svetovi, 2004), won the 2005 Vitalova nagrada and NINova nagrada awards. This may even be good for drawing attention to my Serbian books. I hope to read his reading comments to me about Vesna's translation of River Suite later today.

Half an hour before getting Vlad's email I received an emailed letter of invitation from Nebojsa Jovanović, Secretary General of the Students’ Cultural Centre (SKC) in Niš, Serbia and Crna Gora. They're the publisher of the three-in-one book project now titled (Three Poets: Canada). Serious amount of activites now coming together:
- Book launch and signing of the Serbian translation of River Suite at the Rectorate Building, Niš - October 24th
- Trip to Belgrade and visit to the Belgrade Book Fair – October 25th
- Promotion / book-signing of the Serbian translation of River Suite at the Canada Stand, Belgrade Book Fair - October 26th
- Press conference at the Belgrade Book Fair press centre organised by the Canadian Embassy for the Canadian participants - October 27th
- Interviews with journalists from the daily Blic and daily Danas papers. Cocktail reception for the participating Canadian authors and publishers and their hosts in the official Canadian Embassy residence – October 28th
- TV live interview by ART television - October 29th

Now, with this letter in hand, I can finalize a grant application to hopefully get $ towards the Fredericton-Belgrade return airfare currently estimated at $1600-$1900. Wish me luck. This is good work for me to do on Labour Day. I'm pretty certain that it's not Labour Day in Niš.

shirt: CCM long sleeve
loc: my space
temp: 14 C
Sound: Runrig, The Stamping Ground