What do you think?
Rate this book
Negative Space
*Shortlist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize*
“Language arrived fragmentary / split in syllables / spasmodic / like code in times of war,” writes Luljeta Lleshanaku in the title poem to her powerful new collection Negative Space. In these lines, personal biography disperses into the history of an entire generation that grew up under the oppressive dictatorship of the poet’s native Albania. For Lleshanaku, the “unsaid, gestures” make up the negative space that “gives form to the woods / and to the mad woman—the silhouette of goddess Athena / wearing a pair of flip-flops / and an owl on top of a shoulder.” It is the negative space “that sketched my onomatopoeic profile / of body and shadow in an accidental encounter.” Lleshanaku instills ordinary objects and places—gloves, used books, acupuncture needles, small-town train stations—with subtle humor and profound insight, as a child discovering a world in a grain of sand.
“Language arrived fragmentary / split in syllables / spasmodic / like code in times of war,” writes Luljeta Lleshanaku in the title poem to her powerful new collection Negative Space. In these lines, personal biography disperses into the history of an entire generation that grew up under the oppressive dictatorship of the poet’s native Albania. For Lleshanaku, the “unsaid, gestures” make up the negative space that “gives form to the woods / and to the mad woman—the silhouette of goddess Athena / wearing a pair of flip-flops / and an owl on top of a shoulder.” It is the negative space “that sketched my onomatopoeic profile / of body and shadow in an accidental encounter.” Lleshanaku instills ordinary objects and places—gloves, used books, acupuncture needles, small-town train stations—with subtle humor and profound insight, as a child discovering a world in a grain of sand.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2018
4 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 31, 2022
верлібри лульєти лешанаку складаються в дуже виразний, дуже намацальний простір: липкий запах у крамничці різника, листи, що затопили поштову скриньку, занадто важка валіза, із якої вже нічого викидати, і навпаки, переповнена шафа, звільнення якої від одягу означає звільнення себе від минулого.
в одному вірші навіть є трошки про те, чим ми всі тут займаємося:
to show someone your library is an intimate gesture,
like giving him a map, a tourist map of the self
marked with the museums, parks, bridges, galleries, hotels, churches, subway . . .
and the graveyards that appear regularly
at the edges of every town, at the beginning of every epoch.
в одному вірші навіть є трошки про те, чим ми всі тут займаємося:
to show someone your library is an intimate gesture,
like giving him a map, a tourist map of the self
marked with the museums, parks, bridges, galleries, hotels, churches, subway . . .
and the graveyards that appear regularly
at the edges of every town, at the beginning of every epoch.
April 25, 2018
This poet is from Albania, and some of the time, I felt the fact that I was reading translated poetry was overly evident, taking me out of the words. Subject matter wise, the poems are about places, people in relation to each other, memory, but very little politics except in vague references.
Most poems are short but some are longer in sections. I don't usually like longer poems but my favorite part of this collection, and to this poem I'd like to give 5 stars, is Homo Antarcticus, about the various expeditions to Antarctica. But the different perspectives and random thoughts she ties in form a brilliant whole. I think the collection is worth the read just for this poem!
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to an eARC through Edelweiss. It comes out 24 April 2018.
Most poems are short but some are longer in sections. I don't usually like longer poems but my favorite part of this collection, and to this poem I'd like to give 5 stars, is Homo Antarcticus, about the various expeditions to Antarctica. But the different perspectives and random thoughts she ties in form a brilliant whole. I think the collection is worth the read just for this poem!
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to an eARC through Edelweiss. It comes out 24 April 2018.
April 15, 2020
THIS GESTURE
Look what we have here:
some books bought with a little savings,
as if land purchased for a house
that you might never build. Plato, Hegel,
The Marxist Movement, heavy cloth covers. Sideways, behind Aristotle,
rests Art Nouveau,
like the head of a woman nodding off on the train, your shoulder still out of politeness.
Books in foreign languages, bought with the last
change
from shops you’ll never visit again:
Tarkovsky’s Techniques, exchanged for five food vouchers;
Bergman, Hitchcock, Louis Buñuel reveal only
part of the wall,
each the end of a misleading path inside a
pyramid.
African Masks, Aztec Culture, Egyptian Gods
all bought on a rainy day perhaps, as an excuse to
stay indoors.
And again the visual arts albums
labelled Ars in Latin like medicinal bottles
that camouflage a bitter taste.
Hugo, Turgenev, Stendhal . . .
relics of first love, second love, of . . .
A dark empty space
and further, Dostoyevsky’s White Nights
with its green irony on the cover that says,
“Throw a coat over your shoulders first . . .”
And lower, Gaudí and other architectural
books . . .
A smooth transition between what you wanted
and what you were able to attain.
Encyclopedias, temples without roofs.
Shakespeare exchanged for a noisy Soviet radio.
Poetry books: thin, sly, bought at discounted
prices,
breaking apart like crumbled bread thrown at swans in the park.
The only ones arranged horizontally
are The Erotic Art of the Middle Ages, The Ethical
Slut, and Tropic of Cancer—
easy to find when feeling around in the dark,
like slippers under the bed.
In a corner, the holy books, the Gospels.
They’ve arrived here by themselves—you didn’t
spend a cent to buy them.
Each volume almost never opened.
How can you
believe something
that doesn’t ask for anything in exchange?
And on the very bottom, The Barbarian Invasion, history, science . . .
Time to read with glasses. Linear reading.
Andropause
To show someone your library is an intimate
gesture,
like giving him a map, a tourist map of the self marked with the museums, parks, bridges,
galleries, hotels, churches, subway . . .
and the graveyards that appear regularly
at the edges of every town, at the beginning of
every epoch.
Look what we have here:
some books bought with a little savings,
as if land purchased for a house
that you might never build. Plato, Hegel,
The Marxist Movement, heavy cloth covers. Sideways, behind Aristotle,
rests Art Nouveau,
like the head of a woman nodding off on the train, your shoulder still out of politeness.
Books in foreign languages, bought with the last
change
from shops you’ll never visit again:
Tarkovsky’s Techniques, exchanged for five food vouchers;
Bergman, Hitchcock, Louis Buñuel reveal only
part of the wall,
each the end of a misleading path inside a
pyramid.
African Masks, Aztec Culture, Egyptian Gods
all bought on a rainy day perhaps, as an excuse to
stay indoors.
And again the visual arts albums
labelled Ars in Latin like medicinal bottles
that camouflage a bitter taste.
Hugo, Turgenev, Stendhal . . .
relics of first love, second love, of . . .
A dark empty space
and further, Dostoyevsky’s White Nights
with its green irony on the cover that says,
“Throw a coat over your shoulders first . . .”
And lower, Gaudí and other architectural
books . . .
A smooth transition between what you wanted
and what you were able to attain.
Encyclopedias, temples without roofs.
Shakespeare exchanged for a noisy Soviet radio.
Poetry books: thin, sly, bought at discounted
prices,
breaking apart like crumbled bread thrown at swans in the park.
The only ones arranged horizontally
are The Erotic Art of the Middle Ages, The Ethical
Slut, and Tropic of Cancer—
easy to find when feeling around in the dark,
like slippers under the bed.
In a corner, the holy books, the Gospels.
They’ve arrived here by themselves—you didn’t
spend a cent to buy them.
Each volume almost never opened.
How can you
believe something
that doesn’t ask for anything in exchange?
And on the very bottom, The Barbarian Invasion, history, science . . .
Time to read with glasses. Linear reading.
Andropause
To show someone your library is an intimate
gesture,
like giving him a map, a tourist map of the self marked with the museums, parks, bridges,
galleries, hotels, churches, subway . . .
and the graveyards that appear regularly
at the edges of every town, at the beginning of
every epoch.
April 17, 2018
I'm not a great critic of poetry, but this didn't grab me or give me a sense of the author as much as I wanted it to. I found many lines quite beautiful, but overall I wasn't captured.
March 30, 2021
A collection of poetry from Luljeta Lleshanaku examining the space between objects and people, how things balance together and the different human emotions.
I’m not someone who knows a lot about poetry, but I found a lot of Lleshanaku’s poems beautiful yet bleak. There’s a loneliness to a lot of them, when someone is the subject matter of a poem they often can’t connect with others and there’s a distance between the subject and what they’re doing. Many of the poems aren’t tied to one specific place or time, instead the “story” flows from different perspectives, almost always focusing on the mundane.
Most of the poems here were about a page long, but there were a few that almost played out like short stories – Homo Antarcticus and Water and Carbon are two examples of this. They are both sad, haunting poems about people who are at a distance from others, through they choice or not. I enjoyed the poems that were more like short stories rather than the page-long ones as they naturally had more depth to them.
The poems in this collection are quiet peculiar and haunting. Whether it’s because they have been translated into English or because they’re from an Albanian poet, they don’t quiet fit with what my preconceived notions of poetry are. It makes reading these poems an interesting experience and I could see myself going back and rereading some of them to see if they have a different affect on me.
I’m not someone who knows a lot about poetry, but I found a lot of Lleshanaku’s poems beautiful yet bleak. There’s a loneliness to a lot of them, when someone is the subject matter of a poem they often can’t connect with others and there’s a distance between the subject and what they’re doing. Many of the poems aren’t tied to one specific place or time, instead the “story” flows from different perspectives, almost always focusing on the mundane.
Most of the poems here were about a page long, but there were a few that almost played out like short stories – Homo Antarcticus and Water and Carbon are two examples of this. They are both sad, haunting poems about people who are at a distance from others, through they choice or not. I enjoyed the poems that were more like short stories rather than the page-long ones as they naturally had more depth to them.
The poems in this collection are quiet peculiar and haunting. Whether it’s because they have been translated into English or because they’re from an Albanian poet, they don’t quiet fit with what my preconceived notions of poetry are. It makes reading these poems an interesting experience and I could see myself going back and rereading some of them to see if they have a different affect on me.
October 21, 2021
I hadn’t read poetry in a while, and what I love most about this book is that every poem feels like a story. All these stories have told parts and clues to what is untold. I like to think of the untold parts as the negative space. I appreciated that despite not knowing Albania or the author, so much of the imagery created and the struggles that were shared resonated with me. It’s so magical when literature can describe universal feelings and experiences of humanity. I was deeply moved by a number of poems in this collection. Highly recommend it!
May 14, 2019
An English PEN Award winner, this substantial volume draws on Lleshanaku’s collections ‘Almost Yesterday’ and ‘Homo Antarcticus’, the long title poem of the latter proving a standout amidst a body of work that is never less than powerful and thought-provoking. ‘Water and Carbon’ achieves a similarly sustained effect. This is volume packs a real heft.
April 11, 2022
An astonishing collection. Elegant, smart, serious and deeply emotional without being sentimental at any time. Homo Antarcticus is a real masterpiece along with many others in the book. She's really, really good.
October 22, 2024
My Reading Around the World Journey.
Albania - Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku
In her latest collection, Lleshanaku's poems serve as a reflection on what was absent in both her own life and the collective experience of her generation in Albania. She explores themes of emptiness and the unspoken through the concept of negative space, where it is not the objects but the space surrounding them that holds the most meaning.
As a photographer, I love the concept of Negative Space, where the story is, or changes significantly, through what is invisible. This artistic technique allows to create a sense of balance between the reality and what is missing.
The poems of Luljeta Lleshanaku touch a deep core within the reader, because no matter our upbringing, we all had Negative Space in our lives. How much are we going to let it define who we are? A beautiful selection of fine poetry that are windows to one's own soul.
"She enters without knocking. No one knocks here. First of all, you need a door to knock on."
Albania - Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku
In her latest collection, Lleshanaku's poems serve as a reflection on what was absent in both her own life and the collective experience of her generation in Albania. She explores themes of emptiness and the unspoken through the concept of negative space, where it is not the objects but the space surrounding them that holds the most meaning.
As a photographer, I love the concept of Negative Space, where the story is, or changes significantly, through what is invisible. This artistic technique allows to create a sense of balance between the reality and what is missing.
The poems of Luljeta Lleshanaku touch a deep core within the reader, because no matter our upbringing, we all had Negative Space in our lives. How much are we going to let it define who we are? A beautiful selection of fine poetry that are windows to one's own soul.
"She enters without knocking. No one knocks here. First of all, you need a door to knock on."
November 27, 2020
2.5
This combination of author and translator didn’t work for me. The poems were often observations of the everyday, of facts and people and work, but while this kind of attention can sparkle, here it met with platitudes and wore itself down.
Some pieces I enjoyed nonetheless, for the subject more than the dry prosaic style. There’s an occasional wry cleverness in the writing, a quiet love of country living and meditations on war that I did appreciate.
Isolated sections and lines were lovely:
This time of day, light spills from window ledges
like wine from chins at a bacchanal
…the living cannot wait to leave and turn away,
Their backs a single starless fabric
like fishing nights,
or like a low cloud of gunpowder
in a temporary ceasefire zone.
Those I liked best on the whole were:
Small-Town Stations
The Unknown
The Deal
The Body’s Delay
Ramesses’s Last Journey
Anatomical Cut
Lost in Translation
This combination of author and translator didn’t work for me. The poems were often observations of the everyday, of facts and people and work, but while this kind of attention can sparkle, here it met with platitudes and wore itself down.
Some pieces I enjoyed nonetheless, for the subject more than the dry prosaic style. There’s an occasional wry cleverness in the writing, a quiet love of country living and meditations on war that I did appreciate.
Isolated sections and lines were lovely:
This time of day, light spills from window ledges
like wine from chins at a bacchanal
…the living cannot wait to leave and turn away,
Their backs a single starless fabric
like fishing nights,
or like a low cloud of gunpowder
in a temporary ceasefire zone.
Those I liked best on the whole were:
Small-Town Stations
The Unknown
The Deal
The Body’s Delay
Ramesses’s Last Journey
Anatomical Cut
Lost in Translation
July 5, 2024
Where did everyone go?
A door opened by accident.
Light broke through by force
and, as in a dark room,
erased their silver bromide portraits
which were once flesh and bone.
-- "Children of Morality"
Local legends have only two options:
they must either flee, or die,
so we'll have a clean past to talk about.
-- "Metallic"
A door opened by accident.
Light broke through by force
and, as in a dark room,
erased their silver bromide portraits
which were once flesh and bone.
-- "Children of Morality"
When asleep we're simply five limbs. Starfish.
If you cut one limb, it will grow back.
Even a single limb could recreate us from the beginning,
a single hope.
Negative space is always fertile.
-- "Negative Space"
Local legends have only two options:
they must either flee, or die,
so we'll have a clean past to talk about.
-- "Metallic"
To show someone your library is an intimate gesture,
like giving him a map, a tourist map of the self
marked with the museums, parks, bridges, galleries, hotels, churches, subway...
and the graveyard that appear regularly
at the edges of every town, at the beginning of every epoch.
-- "This Gesture"
July 25, 2023
I used to love reading poetry—for a few years, it was probably my most read genre/form, but I just don’t pick it up that much anymore. I loved poetry for the emotional connection I felt, but I guess I lost that somewhere along the way. Unfortunately, I didn’t really find that in this collection either. It’s a good collection—it has some well-written and interesting poems, but it just didn’t inspire any emotions for me. My favourite poem of the whole collection was one about Shackleton’s right-hand man, which was honestly just a really fascinating piece, but nothing else really stuck out to me. It’s definitely a quiet kind of collection, but it was still worth the read.
August 2, 2021
I was a bit worried at first with this being a translated collection of poetry that it would greatly impact the tone of the work. However, I ended up highly enjoying this book anyways. I thought the poetry, translated or not, was fantastic. This is actually one of my favorite collections I've read in a while, maybe ever, and some of the pieces are truly stunning. My only complaint was that it felt a little stagnant in the middle but then it picked right back up. I really loved this and the overall concept of using negative space to describe a bigger picture.
Read
May 21, 2019'The sheets aren't wrinkled, the poetry didn't spend the night.' (Mandelstam, I believe, on poor translations). I was so looking forward to this but, ultimately, my first read has been something of a disappointment. I SUSPECT that the translation falls a little short - are any speakers/ readers of Albanian able to comment? I sense that Lleshanaku is the real thing but I'll need to re-read the collection(s) to learn why I think that.
March 25, 2024
”The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” -Oscar Wilde
The quote used at the beginning of this collection opens the mystery of the simple of things, everyday life at its finest. The poet’s Antarctica 🇦🇶 traveling journal pulls a chill to the visible surface. The rest of the collection warms the negative space in between.
Favorites:
Small-Town Stations
Children of Morality
Used Books
A Conversation with Charles Simic
Transit Terminal
Homo Antarcticus
Metamorphosis
Water and Carbon
The quote used at the beginning of this collection opens the mystery of the simple of things, everyday life at its finest. The poet’s Antarctica 🇦🇶 traveling journal pulls a chill to the visible surface. The rest of the collection warms the negative space in between.
Favorites:
Small-Town Stations
Children of Morality
Used Books
A Conversation with Charles Simic
Transit Terminal
Homo Antarcticus
Metamorphosis
Water and Carbon
Read
August 14, 2020I didn't read the whole thing. This poetry just wasn't for me and I feel silly saying that because poetry is for the poet themself but, ah, you know what I mean.
The copy I checked out from the library was signed. I've never seen that before.
The copy I checked out from the library was signed. I've never seen that before.
September 26, 2024
although there were some phrases and ideas that i liked overall this collection of poetry did not speak to me. perhaps something is lost in translation as i was reading it in english
i did like the poem on suicide
i did like the poem on suicide
December 28, 2024
The imagery and storytelling within these poems is amazing. There were quite a few that I read several times or had to digest over a little more time before moving on . It's a great, thought-provoking collection.
May 24, 2018
Amazing writing, unfortunately average translation
August 24, 2024
I was happy to read poetry from an author that wasn't just another US/UK/Canada author, but I wanted to love the poetry more than I did.
October 11, 2024
A great book of poetry!
read-25
September 5, 2025girl..
October 14, 2021
This poetry collection could best be described as one of the poems it contains: lost in translation. Personally I loved the poetry series „Homo Antarcticus“ best, I read it all in one go and found the perspective really refreshening and interesting. There were many beautiful sentences sprinkled throughout the poems, but I felt it lacking something, which I see in the translation‘s fault. Reading a translated poetry collection is always hit and miss, but this one definitely had a mix and stronger and weaker poems.
April 23, 2023
I chose this book of poetry from Albanian writer Lleshanaku for my reading around the world challenge. I liked it but it's not overly emotional or metaphorical it is more observational. I did really like the poem about Frank Write who was on Shackleton's expedition.
Read
November 7, 2018These poems were filled with a lot of beautiful imagery, but sometimes it felt like there was something missing, some element of mystery. I admire the translator's skill and voice, but I do wonder what it would be like to read them in Albanian. I really enjoyed the longest poem in the book, "Homo Antarcticus," about explorer Frank Wild. I brought this book on a train trip, so poems like "Small-Town Stations" and "The Body's Delay" were especially poignant in that setting.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews