Michelle Slater
New York City
Michelle's Profile
Birth and Karma: Arrived one cold winter evening in a city along the banks of the Hudson River to second-generation Irish Catholics who married a little late for the fashion and strove for middle-class stability, until they were separated by a fatal heart attack. My mother, left with a four-year-old boy, the ten-year-old girl who was me, and no resources, recovered, found work, and sustained full-time employment all the rest of her days in public service jobs, surviving eight heart attacks, till the last one brought her down at the age of 65.
Childhood and adolescence: Kindergarten (Dick and Jane), grade school (Grimms Fairy Tales), death in the family (James Agee) two high schools (Shakespeare to Kaufman and Hart), theatre training (Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht), amateur theatre work (Hermann Hesse) summer theatre and on the road (Williams to Simon), varieties of survival jobs (Chekhov and Colette), off-off-off Broadway (Thomas Mann, Dylan Thomas), auditions and more auditions.
The Sixties: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, historic and personal upheaval, war, civil rights, assassinations, moon landings, marches, demonstrations, progressive politics, peace activism, odd jobs, feminist studies, consciousness-raising groups, tenant committee labors, tree plantings, animal rescues, important personal relationships.
The Seventies: BA in Film-Video-Photography from the School of Visual Arts, independent film and photography projects (exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York University, The Women Make Movies Collective), participant in media events for Life Magazine, Global Village Video, AIR Gallery, The June 12th Disarmament Coalition, The War Resisters League, and the New York Anthropology Center. Taught media workshops in the South Bronx. Employed for eleven years coordinating an audio/visual department for New York University, union member.
The Eighties: Downsized, post-traumatic stress (unemployment, welfare), independent studies over many healing disciplines (Homeopathic Materia Medica, Bach Flower Remedies, Herbal Therapeutics, Medicinal Plants,Yoga and Buddhist practices), painting and drawing, poetry and journals. With the help of state aid, earned a Gardening Certificate from the New York Botanical Gardens, where I also completed all the required classes for a certificate in Botanical Art and assisted at the Plant and Garden shop. Volunteer maintenance for the roof garden at GMHC, NY. A brief part-time job in commercial gardening work.
The Nineties: More yoga (Jivamukti and Dharma Mittra) and Buddhist practices, (part time resident of Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York, for several years) less gardening (private clients), more writing (journals, poetry, correspondence), artwork, exhibitions. My art and photography are in private collections nationwide.
2000 to Date: Official retirement, all of the above, plus performances on the New York poetry circuit, legal battles (landlord/tenant). The rehabilitation of my crumbling rent-controlled home of forty years, thanks to one lawyer and several generous, talented, friends from the yoga community illuminated a more relaxed state of mind, a bright sense of humor, and renewed creative vigor.
MOST RECENT BLOG POST [View All Posts]
Sunday, May 3, 2009 9:21AM
THE TIME OF THE DOVES
DEATH IN SPRINGTIME & TIME OF THE DOVES
LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION - FRIENDSHIP
Tonight I attended another PEN International Festival event (my 8th since Tuesday) at the beautiful Baryshnikov Arts Center on West 37th Street. Jessica Lange performed, with her usual depth of feeling, and wielding that accomplished craft with deceptive ease, a reading from The Time of The Doves by the major Catalan author of the 20th Century, Merce Rodoreda. I can do Little but point to references since this is my first encounter with her, but I purchased a copy of Death In Springtime from the two year old press Open Letter, which has dedicated itself to publishing high quality world literature in translation (more at www.openletterbooks.org and, for the multilingual reviewers amongst you, contact chad.post@rochester.edu, also have a look at their blog and review site called Three Percent with blog posts about International literature and publishing, and a spreadsheet detailing all translations published in the U.S. since January 2008. www.rochester.edu/threepercent).
"Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona, 1908 - Girona, 1983) is the most important Catalan post-war novelist for the density and lyricism of her work. She is the author of the most acclaimed ever Catalan novel, La plaça del Diamant (The Time of the Doves) (1962), which may be read in more than twenty languages. She began her career writing stories for reviews, as a refuge from her unhappy marriage, and these were followed by four novels, which she subsequently refused to recognise apart from Aloma (1938) for which she received the Crexells prize. In the early days of the Spanish civil war, she worked in the Propaganda Commissariat of the Generalitat (Autonomous Government) of Catalonia, and in the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (Institute of Catalan Letters). She went into exile, living in different parts of France, and then, in Geneva, she broke her twenty years' silence with Vint-i-dos contes (Twenty-two Stories) (1958) for which she obtained the Víctor Català prize. With the novel El carrer de les Camèlies (Camellia Street) (1966) she won the Sant Jordi, the Critics' and the Ramon Llull prizes. In the mid-1960s, she returned to Catalonia, to live in the village of Romanyà de la Selva, where she completed her novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) (1974), and also published amongst other works, Viatges i flors (Travels and Flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (So Much War) in 1980, the year she was conceded the Award of Honour in Catalan letters. She was a member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers.
The Time of The Doves-The novel, with the background of the Republic and the Spanish Civil War, tells Natalia's story, an ordinary girl that accepts, without any complaint, all that her husband and life impose on her. She even accepts the change of her name, Natalia ("Natalie" in Catalan) to Colometa ("little pigeon" in Catalan). This resignation finishes as the war is ending. Natalia rebels against all that she considers unfair. At the novel's ending she becomes "Ms. Natalia" instead of "Colometa" - a name change that means a personality change too. The novel is a faithful chronicle of Barcelona in the postwar period too and how it marked this historical period for the inhabitants. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_of_the_Doves)."
Oh, It has all been too nourishing. Everything from this past week has accumulated in various piles around my house, and in my mind; a literary glut of over-feasting. I am full to bursting. My new blue marble notebook is overflowing. Six drafts are still in the works.
One more event which I am looking forward to, partly because it is the last one, but more because it is the Capstone Finale, and an amazing woman I much admire is the presenter. Nawal Saadawi was first introduced to me by my dear friend Nayra Atiya through the gift of her own copy of The Fall of The Imam. Nayra was the one who introduced me to Pen while she was living in New York and we took many a lovely walk by the lake at 110th Street, watching for the resident egrets evening fly by, and also through the English, Roman and French formal Conservatory Gardens, talking of this and that, telling each other the stories of our own lives in the intimacy of our gentle bonding being formed. Treasured friends like that, the ones who make the deep connection, are often the ones who shed light into corners, showing the way towards parts of the world we might never have encountered. Onward to The Fourth Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture in the Great Hall of Cooper Union 5.3.09
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