</Experiments of the Body: Poetry and Art by Liza Neklessa>
author: Liza Neklessa
translation: Philippa Mullins
translation: Philippa Mullins
ODRA is honored to publish new English translations of poetry by contemporary artist Liza Neklessa, accompanied by illustrations she made exclusively for our platform.
Liza Neklessa is an artist and poet from Moscow, Russia. Her poems and prose have been published in magazines and literary projects in Germany, Kazakhstan and the UK. She is a 2024 Museum Quarter Vienna Artist-in Residence. Neklessa has participated in many exhibitions, including A Cup of Consonances: Approaching Rozanova (GES-2 House of Culture, 2023), Fanzineist Vienna: Mail art Book & Zine Exhibition (Semperdepot, Vienna, 2024), Exploding cinema (The cinema museum, London, 2024).
Those are part of her series exploring the blurring of boundaries — where lines of poetry merge with drawings within the confines of a single sheet, original texts with their translations, and human corporeality with the fabric of nature. For the artist, it is essential that image and text hold equal weight within a work, functioning as two distinct languages for describing reality. She is driven by a question whether it is possible to translate from the language of one art form into another.
Jorinde
The drawings were made on a thick, handmade Indian cotton paper. Liza first toned them with tea and afterwards she used mixed-media technique (watercolor, India ink, ink, and fineliners) to make the images.
My childhood was stolen,
A basket full of summer flowers and apples
Placed on the table.
One day someone carried it off into thickets of sunlit firs,
And the trees closed behind him.
I was afraid to follow,
And all I had left,
Sitting in the riot of berry bushes,
Was to examine the wood’s patterns,
Wearied by longing for other children,
Who almost never came.
All my life, I’ve felt an invisible glass wall
Dividing me from others.
I’m like a chick that rarely breaks out of its shell,
Flying out for an evening, a month, for long years.
I know there is a cage within me,
Away from the most beguiling situation, the cage calls me back home.
A gentle voice hails:
“Come back,
You’ve flown enough,
Come eat,
Give your little wings a rest.
We’ve tried so hard, and now we’re cosy here, nice and safe,
The nest decorated with clover and summer wheat,
With meadow, fescue, and bent grass,
Gentle cat’s-tail, too.”
This quiet ditty,
Sung by a vaguely familiar voice.
“My dear little bird,”
The internal cavern speaks,
“I will feed you from my palm with
Little golden pomegranate seeds.
Stay here,
In my green chamber.
I am Demeter and I’ve taken Hades’ part.
I’ve read many books, lived many lives within my own, and I know how this can end.
I drag my experience behind me, an inhumanly heavy sack
That makes my legs tremble,
Like Sisyphus.
People’s unhappy fates tumble into my consciousness, streams into a torrent,
Flooding it with an anxiety which breaks its banks,
When I was pregnant, I felt so whole that I would say, ‘Don’t come out.’
A basket full of summer flowers and apples
Placed on the table.
One day someone carried it off into thickets of sunlit firs,
And the trees closed behind him.
I was afraid to follow,
And all I had left,
Sitting in the riot of berry bushes,
Was to examine the wood’s patterns,
Wearied by longing for other children,
Who almost never came.
All my life, I’ve felt an invisible glass wall
Dividing me from others.
I’m like a chick that rarely breaks out of its shell,
Flying out for an evening, a month, for long years.
I know there is a cage within me,
Away from the most beguiling situation, the cage calls me back home.
A gentle voice hails:
“Come back,
You’ve flown enough,
Come eat,
Give your little wings a rest.
We’ve tried so hard, and now we’re cosy here, nice and safe,
The nest decorated with clover and summer wheat,
With meadow, fescue, and bent grass,
Gentle cat’s-tail, too.”
This quiet ditty,
Sung by a vaguely familiar voice.
“My dear little bird,”
The internal cavern speaks,
“I will feed you from my palm with
Little golden pomegranate seeds.
Stay here,
In my green chamber.
I am Demeter and I’ve taken Hades’ part.
I’ve read many books, lived many lives within my own, and I know how this can end.
I drag my experience behind me, an inhumanly heavy sack
That makes my legs tremble,
Like Sisyphus.
People’s unhappy fates tumble into my consciousness, streams into a torrent,
Flooding it with an anxiety which breaks its banks,
When I was pregnant, I felt so whole that I would say, ‘Don’t come out.’
I’ve been feeding you with little pomegranate seeds since you were born, my dear,
So that the four underground horses don’t scare you so much,
So that we always live on the sunny side of the earth and the year,
And are happy.
We eat, read, laugh, dance,
We are happy.
You peck small berry seeds from my love line
So you will never have to know the icy underground hand which seizes the heart.
You are a big, beautiful bird
In a truly comfortable and spacious cage,
You are the most exquisite rose in the brightest greenhouse,
I shield you with my palms from every single draught.”
My inner life passes in the most tightly kept secret,
So as not to be hurt by anyone.
The buds of happiness spouting in the flowerbed of my heart
I only show myself.
I whistle this song to myself,
From the top of my parents’ fir tree.
We grew up together,
On a single branch,
My brother, thrush
With spotted wing.
You learnt to fly before me,
And one day suddenly left our nest.
And now you come back rarely,
Sit down on the neighbouring branch, a little higher up, and squark your news.
We quieten down and listen.
Two big, colourful, sleepy birds, our necks intertwined,
Like cuckoos.
Sometimes I feel like a hostage,
Who you left behind so you could fly away unhindered.
Flying alone or with a mate up in the bright blue sky.
Sometimes we see you two up there, in the clouds.
Weaving a nest from reddish birch twigs and wisps of dog hair
Left behind on burdocks
Along the country road.
In my dreams – waking and sleeping,
I, too, always fly towards the sun.
Above the highest, the warmest firs,
Leaving them far below,
Like a frame for a dazzling summer lake.
Higher than all the birds,
Their whirling flocks.
I fly alone towards the sun
Above the sunset field,
Towards the light breeze.
I always fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
So that the four underground horses don’t scare you so much,
So that we always live on the sunny side of the earth and the year,
And are happy.
We eat, read, laugh, dance,
We are happy.
You peck small berry seeds from my love line
So you will never have to know the icy underground hand which seizes the heart.
You are a big, beautiful bird
In a truly comfortable and spacious cage,
You are the most exquisite rose in the brightest greenhouse,
I shield you with my palms from every single draught.”
My inner life passes in the most tightly kept secret,
So as not to be hurt by anyone.
The buds of happiness spouting in the flowerbed of my heart
I only show myself.
I whistle this song to myself,
From the top of my parents’ fir tree.
We grew up together,
On a single branch,
My brother, thrush
With spotted wing.
You learnt to fly before me,
And one day suddenly left our nest.
And now you come back rarely,
Sit down on the neighbouring branch, a little higher up, and squark your news.
We quieten down and listen.
Two big, colourful, sleepy birds, our necks intertwined,
Like cuckoos.
Sometimes I feel like a hostage,
Who you left behind so you could fly away unhindered.
Flying alone or with a mate up in the bright blue sky.
Sometimes we see you two up there, in the clouds.
Weaving a nest from reddish birch twigs and wisps of dog hair
Left behind on burdocks
Along the country road.
In my dreams – waking and sleeping,
I, too, always fly towards the sun.
Above the highest, the warmest firs,
Leaving them far below,
Like a frame for a dazzling summer lake.
Higher than all the birds,
Their whirling flocks.
I fly alone towards the sun
Above the sunset field,
Towards the light breeze.
I always fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
I fly towards the sun
From the poetry cycle Experiments of the Body
***
The stomach a huge berry, weighing down its owner.
A ray of sunshine knifes through the fruit like a caesarean,
Sticky sweet juices begin to flow.
Surrounded by them
I sit, overcome with nausea, in the garden.
The green silhouettes of the plants swim,
Blurring and doubling.
It’s as if the bushes are whispering to each other
Behind my back,
While I’m not looking…
Unripe apples
Lure you with promised sourness.
In the morning, I struggle down the front steps,
I smell the neighbour’s barbecue
Three plots away,
A somehow sweet smoke
On the hard fruit branches.
At last, I have reached a state
Where pregnancy is its own bodily experience
Continuing a sequence of sensual experiments,
No empty tribute to traditions and habits.
I stand in the middle of the garden and think,
How much I want to stuff junk into my mouth.
My taste buds are unhealthy, like
The stereotypical culture of parenthood.
A sweet feeling of already familiar nausea rolls in.
I look at the green,
Before it’s fogged grey in waves of low pressure,
I hear birds’ happy chirping.
I had never thought that while incubating her chicks
A mother could also be resting from the birth.
Last night, in a strange dream,
I understood that I want pregnancy to be a new bodily experience,
Like menstruation,
Or sex,
Slow touch of your hand to mine,
Torturous longing to take off your light blue shirt,
Spasms of embodied feelings.
That’s actually the only reason
I could wish
To complete this inexorable long journey across three-quarters of a year.
There’s no turning back,
There’s no turning back,
Whatever happens,
There’s no way now
To just turn back
And forget it all, like a dream,
Although they say there are false pregnancies.
Mine coincided with the garden blossoming.
I spent all summer with it in the countryside,
Supported by all the plants.
Before my eyes,
They went on the same journey as me,
Even more radically.
Their ontological status switched,
What was flower became berry,
And the flowers are gone,
Even if you scour the whole garden.
Autumn comes,
And now the berry must be eaten
By ravenous colour-blotched birds,
It must be carried far-far away in beaks hard as a blade.
So there,
It falls to the ground,
And next year sprouts new life,
While I, bent double, pack up my things among the naked trees.
The stomach a huge berry, weighing down its owner.
A ray of sunshine knifes through the fruit like a caesarean,
Sticky sweet juices begin to flow.
Surrounded by them
I sit, overcome with nausea, in the garden.
The green silhouettes of the plants swim,
Blurring and doubling.
It’s as if the bushes are whispering to each other
Behind my back,
While I’m not looking…
Unripe apples
Lure you with promised sourness.
In the morning, I struggle down the front steps,
I smell the neighbour’s barbecue
Three plots away,
A somehow sweet smoke
On the hard fruit branches.
At last, I have reached a state
Where pregnancy is its own bodily experience
Continuing a sequence of sensual experiments,
No empty tribute to traditions and habits.
I stand in the middle of the garden and think,
How much I want to stuff junk into my mouth.
My taste buds are unhealthy, like
The stereotypical culture of parenthood.
A sweet feeling of already familiar nausea rolls in.
I look at the green,
Before it’s fogged grey in waves of low pressure,
I hear birds’ happy chirping.
I had never thought that while incubating her chicks
A mother could also be resting from the birth.
Last night, in a strange dream,
I understood that I want pregnancy to be a new bodily experience,
Like menstruation,
Or sex,
Slow touch of your hand to mine,
Torturous longing to take off your light blue shirt,
Spasms of embodied feelings.
That’s actually the only reason
I could wish
To complete this inexorable long journey across three-quarters of a year.
There’s no turning back,
There’s no turning back,
Whatever happens,
There’s no way now
To just turn back
And forget it all, like a dream,
Although they say there are false pregnancies.
Mine coincided with the garden blossoming.
I spent all summer with it in the countryside,
Supported by all the plants.
Before my eyes,
They went on the same journey as me,
Even more radically.
Their ontological status switched,
What was flower became berry,
And the flowers are gone,
Even if you scour the whole garden.
Autumn comes,
And now the berry must be eaten
By ravenous colour-blotched birds,
It must be carried far-far away in beaks hard as a blade.
So there,
It falls to the ground,
And next year sprouts new life,
While I, bent double, pack up my things among the naked trees.
Philippa Mullins translates from Russian to English. Her translations have been published in The Denver Quarterly, Poetry London, n+1, and the Resistance and Opposition Art Review (ROAR), as well as by Calque Press. She lives in Brussels, Belgium.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holders.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holders.
Read more