The Hammer by Adelaide Ivánova
translated by Chris Daniels
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Winner of the prestigious Prêmio Rio de Literatura in Brazil, and now available in expert English translation, Adelaide Ivánova’s The Hammer nails its bold proclamations to the wall of a rape culture both literary and literal. Naming the names and disabling the victim-blaming machinery of the state, Ivánova offers us a battle cry for the #MeToo era. Beyond this and despite a universe of oppressions, she also manages to envision a space for real intimacy between lovers. A hammer is a weapon, she reminds us, but also a tool. You can tear it all down and then build something with it.
ADELAIDE IVÁNOVA is a poet, photographer, translator, journalist, publisher, political activist, and community organizer. She edits, publishes, and distributes the anarcho-feminist zine “MAIS PORNÔ, POR FAVOR!” and is a co-founder of RESPEITA!, a coalition of Brazilian female poets and slammers. Her first two books are autonomy (2014), and Polaróides (2014). In 2011, she moved to Germany, where she tries to earn a living as a baby-sitter, life model, and bartender, among other alienating jobs.
CHRIS DANIELS is a self-taught high school dropout, resolutely proletarian, resolutely anti-capitalist, and resolutely unconnected to any institution, with deep interest in radical politics and equally deep affinity for communalist anarchism. He is an occasional poet and prolific feral translator of global Lusophone poetry. His work has appeared in literary journals and online zines all over the world.
Excerpt (from “the testicles”)
in german door viewer
is spy in portuguese
magic eye peephole
is what they say in pakistan
whose official language is
english judas is the word
in france approximating
watchfulness over betrayal
which seems to me the fruit
of resigned wisdom
witnesses are not
moths they saw nothing like
moths yet they defend
hysterically the innocence of the
prince using me
as measure how can
witnesses be called
witnesses if they were never there
April 15, 2019
$18.00| ISBN: 9781934639276 |80 pages
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$18 (U.S., Canada, and Mexico)
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$36 (International)
Despite being doubly silenced—first by the gag of patriarchal socialization, then by the discourse of the law—Ivánova’s poetic subject takes great pleasure in licking the envelope containing her version of the facts, her testimony….With a deft and delicious twist she can turn from the language of testimony to the language of desire. — LOTTE THIESSEN
In these Kafkan times, when we all seem to live under a juridical curse, the fragmented poems of The Hammer are laid out like the cartography of a tribunal . . . However much is said, whatever accusations are made, whatever is proved, the proceedings never end. —SCHNEIDER CARPEGGIANI
