27.1.17

      祝大家好运在2017年
  Zhù dàjiā hǎo yùn zài 2017 nián
    Good fortune for all in 2017



15.1.17

Luis Alberto Arellano, Querétaro, Mexico 1976-2016

Mexican poet, academic and critic Luis Alberto Arellano
died on 17th December 2016. He was 40.

Luis' poetry publications included Fotogramas del Ocio : Clase B (Coleccion Literatura Portátil - Letras de Querétaro). He was the co-ordinator of creative writing at Centro Estatal de Formación Artística y Cultural (CEFAQ) in Querétaro.

In 2007 Luis and his friend and colleague Román Luján (UCLA) compiled a collection of Mexican poetry, El país del ruido. ('The noisy country') translated into French by Francoise Roy as Le pays sonore.

I met Luis at a poetry convention in Trois Riviéres, Québec in 2008. He was generous, clever and funny. We became firm poetry friends.

Eduardo Padilla's translation of two of Luis' poems into English can be found in Mexico City Lit here.

Luis Alberto Arellano translated many English language poems into Spanish, including Bob Flanagan & David Trinidad's A Taste of Honey (Cold Calm Press, 1990) - read a sample here.

Luis & I knew each other in our mostly present-tense French & English - our second & third languages.

At his own instigation Luis was working on translating poems from my book Home by Dark into Spanish. He published one of the poems on his blog Santo Remedio (Holy Remedy) here.

One of Luis' collections of poems was translated into French by Françoise Roy and published by Écrits des Forges, Québec in 2006 :


I took both photos of Luis Alberto Arellano in Trois Riviéres, Québec, Canada



14.1.17

Leonard French 1928-2017


Leonard French, Seven Days of Creation: Seventh Day, 1962-65, 365.8cm diam, enamel on hessian covered hardboard, Australian National University ____________________________________________________________

Obituaries can be found in the mainstream press. Two others -
from Arts Hub here & here on critic Sasha Grishin's Art Blog.



National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne -
Leonard French's stained-glass ceiling in the Great Hall