NEWS

Serbian poet and writer Nina Zivancevic celebrating 40 years of literary career in Paris.

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2023

DISEASE 

‘Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you’  Carl Gustav Jung 

Carnaval Press is pleased to announce the recent publication of DISEASE, a compilation of poems and visual works on the topic of disease. The anthology was organized by poets and doctors Rushika Wick and Virna Teixeira, and Serbian poet Ana Seferovic, creator of sunseekers digital poetry project on Instagram. Around fifty collaborators from UK and abroad were selected by an open call on social media, and this project was made possible thanks to supporters on Kickstarter. 

THE QUEST FOR DISEASE 

‘The concept of disease is difficult to define precisely, as is the concept of health because there are so may types of disease, be they physical, mental, social, or spiritual. This is a vital moment to think about it and to write about disease with different, transformative views: this is the challenge we decided to take up and is the main motivation for this anthology, which is collaboration between Carnaval Press and sunseekers, a poetry/ art platform. Through an open call to poets living in the UK and abroad, we have selected works from a variety of traditions and methods which together make up a unique and interesting whole. The diversity of our own backgrounds, three female poets from different origins on three continents, has added cultural richness to this compilation, and distinct ways of seeing.’ 

Virna Teixeira 

COLLABORATORS 

Ágnes Lehóczky | Alice Merry | Ana Seferovic | Andrea Christofidou| Anna Ruback | Astra Papachristodoulou | bonnie hancell | Brit Parks | Charles A. Perrone | Charlotte Lunn | Chris Kerr | Chris Blewitt | Chris Gutkind | Claire Cox | Dani Salvadori |Davi de Lacerda |Domenico Salas| Dubravka Đurić | Eduardo Jorge | Ellen Jenkins | Fernando Naporano | Fran Lock | Francis H. Powell | Golnoosh Nour | Hannah Copley | Ilias Tsagas | Ivana Maksić | Johny Brown | Julia Rose Lewis & Nathan Hyland Walker | Kate Simpson | Kirsty Allison | K. P. Kavafis | Manoella Valadares | Matt Bates | Matthew Haigh | Max Henninger | Michael Horovitz | Natalie Stypa | Nina Zivancevic | Oliver Zarandi | Peter J. King | Renan Iha | Rushika Wick | Sascha A. Akhtar | SJ Fowler | Slana Detox | Sitron Panopoulos | |Stuart McKenzie | Svetlana Rakočević | Sylee Gore | Tamara Šuškić | Tom Rosas | Tracey Pearson | Vanessa Vie | Virna Teixeira 

EDITORIAL 
“The poems curated in this anthology attend to notions of disease from many angles. In the open call that had international reach, artists looked at the sort of symbiosis or duality they have been forced into, such as in Stuart McKenzie`s Qual, and were often secondarily attacked by the power of medicalised language, itself an anti-spell. 
‘Disorder often fortifies the system 
though love has been invaded 
against the action of remedies.’ 
Motifs of disease via insects arose such as in Max Henninger`s Stenosis where 
‘my dear mother these hospital 
visits are driving me crazy. there 
was a big beetle on your cellar 
floor this morning: six legs two 
knees each that makes twelve. 
what I mean to say is your house 
is a complete mess…’ 
resonant of Clarice Lispector and Kafka where there is another (grotesque) body to hold existential incongruities. The concept of natural pestilence recurs in other anthology works, perhaps seeking to make sense of the most recent pandemic, turning to archaic languages of infection to resurrect etymological horror in a time of experiential anodyne (via over-exposure to the image and simulacra).” 
(…) 

Rushika Wick and Ana Seferovic 


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Publications of female authors of Carnaval Press can be found at the Feminist Library, and are available for sale there.