Except I am too shy to speak that quietly
Confusion of our skins
Publish on:
a book of poetry by Michael Brennan
translated into Vietnamese by Lưu Diệu Vân

From the translator:
On every expedition, language lugs around the embosses of its creator’s attempts at interrogating his dreams, negotiating with his refusal to conform his skin to the confusions of this discombobulated world, and making peace with himself, all through his verbal time-travel machine powered by creative phraseology. This heavily engraved “guy Brennan,” a lover of paramnesia, communicates in a universally-interlocked dialect that can grip everyone, from biblical figures to mythological creatures, to apes & eels, to hopeless dreamers, biochemist & clowns, to drug enthusiasts & conned intellectuals. He travels with ease and frequently between past, present and future, speaking the very same dialect with his phantasmagorias, congregating beliefs, questioning philosophies, while collecting precious seconds along the way. Sometimes, he takes his translators along - one of which happens to be seriously stricken with wanderlust - on impromptu sensory voyages. As she travels his paths, through man-built stairways leading up to the sky, wooden door frames extending beyond the coastline, through roughly-cut pages containing youth, she realizes he most definitely needs no interpretations. Though often unsure where she’ll end up, she is enchanted by his exploring destinations and unexpected break stops, ready and eager to shift through the perplexities with him. And with confusions on her skin for courage, she boldly charts her multi-linguistic course towards becoming more human.  
 
Michael Brennan was born in Sydney in 1973 and currently lives in Tokyo. His books include The Imageless World (Salt, 2003), Unanimous Night (Salt, 2008) and Autoethnographic (Giramondo, 2012). His work has been translated and published in Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Italian, and appeared in various anthologies including The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. 
 
Lưu Diệu Vân, born December 1979, is a poet, literary translator, and co-editor of the bilingual literary Da Màu. She received her Master’s Degree from the University of Massachusetts in 2009. Her bilingual works and translations have been published and appeared in numerous print literary journals and online magazines. Her publications include a book of poetry 47 Minutes After 7 (Van Nghe Publisher, 2010), a co-authored flash fiction The Transparent Greenness of Grass (Tre Publishing House, 2012), and Poems of Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan, Nhã Thuyên (Vagabond Press, 2013). 
 

Fish Eyes 3
Confusion of our skins | Sự rối loạn của lớp da
Poetry by Michael Brennan
Translation by Lưu Diệu Vân
English versions first published as Autoethnographic in 2012 by Giramondo Press  
http://www.giramondopublishing.com
Translation first published by ww.ajarpress.com
Cover & Book design: Trần Thu Ngân
© 2015 Michael Brennan & Lưu Diệu Vân
Cover image © Nguyễn Hưng Trinh. Cuộc chiến bản ngã | The Ego’s battle, 120 cm x 120 cm. Oil on canvas, 2014.
Frontispiece image © Kay Orchison, 2012.
This bi-lingual edition is not for sale or distribution in Australia and limited to 100 copies.
ISBN 978-1-5175-9703-0



available for purchase here
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