About Adam Donaldson Powell – Page 2

Adam Donaldson Powell — Author, Essayist and Literary Critic

9991C2F8-3FFA-4436-8775-E20BB823D218

My two latest published books:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

DED6F5F8-D4DB-4304-AD35-858C061F9D9B

SHORT AUTHOR BIO:

ADAM DONALDSON POWELL (Norway) is a multilingual author, literary critic, and art photography critic; and a professional visual artist. He has published several literary books (including collections of poetry, short stories, and novellas, two science fiction novels, a biography, and a collection of essays) in the USA, Norway and India; as well as numerous works in international literary publications on several continents. He writes in English, Spanish, French and Norwegian. He has previously authored theatrical works performed onstage, and he has read his poetry at venues in New York City (USA), Oslo (Norway), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Kathmandu (Nepal). His book “Gaytude” (co-authored with Albert Russo) won the 2009 National Indie Excellence Award in the category gay/lesbian non-fiction. Powell was also the winner of the Azsacra International Poetry Award in 2008, and the recipient of a Norwegian Foreign Ministry travel stipend for authors in 2005. Powell also took initiative to planning and organizing the “Words – one path to peace and understanding” international literary festival in Oslo, Norway in 2008. He has been an author under the Cyberwit label since 2005, and he has published 13 literary books since 1987.

GREAT QUOTE:

“There are some people who feel that fiction should be easy to read, that it’s a popular medium that should communicate on a somewhat conversational wavelength. On the other hand, there are those who feel that fiction can be challenging … that it’s okay if a person needs to work a bit while reading …

“Much in the way that would-be civilized debates are polarized by extreme thinkers on either side, this debate has been made to seem like an either/or proposition, that the world has room for only one kind of fiction, and that the other kind should be banned …

“But while the polarizers have been going at it, there has existed a silent legion of readers, perhaps the majority of readers of literary fiction, who don’t mind a little of both.”
— Dave Eggers, foreword to David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Dr. Santosh Kumar’s book on the poetry of Adam Donaldson Powell.

Read some excerpts from the book HERE!

ADAM DONALDSON POWELL – WIKIPEDIA NORGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Under the Shirttails of Albert Russo: an alternative biography, l’Aleph — Sweden, ISBN 978-91-7637-401-6, © Wisehouse 2017, Sweden.

Malerier og fotokunst, a short 38-page retrospective overview of some of Adam Donaldson Powell’s best known oil paintings and photographic art works”. Published by Cyberwit.net as a special limited and numbered full-color, soft cover edition (55 copies only), ISBN 978- 81-8253-154-3, India, © 2009.

GAYTUDE: a poetic journey around the world, co-authored together with Albert Russo 1[1], bilingual (French and English), gay poetry, 334 pages, Xlibris, ISBN 978-1-4363-6395-2, 2009, USA 6 [2].

2014: the life and adventures of an incarnated angel, 135 pages, Cyberwit.net, ISBN 978-81-8253-118-5, 2008, India.

Critical Essays, literary and photobook criticism by Adam Donaldson Powell and Dr. Santosh Kumar 2[3], 108 pages, Cyberwit.net, ISBN 978-81-8253-110-9, 2008, India.

Le Paradis (Paradise), 80 pages, Cyberwit.net, ISBN 978-81-8253-103-1, 2008, India. Inkluderer bilag med symboler fra Universelle Lysspråket, som opplevd av Laila Holand.

Rapture: endings of space and time (86 pages), Cyberwit,net, ISBN 978-81-8253-083-6, 2007, India.

Three-legged Waltz, (80 pages), Cyberwit.net, ISBN 81-8253-058-X, 2006, India.

Collected Poems and Stories, (175 pages), Cyberwit.net, ISBN 81-8253-028-8, 2005, India.

Arcana and other archetypes, (special limited edition – hardback collection of poetry), AIM Chapbooks ANS, 2001, Norway (now out-of-print).

Notes of a Madman, (hardback collection of poetry), Winston-Derek Publishers, Inc., 1987, ISBN 1-55523-054-7, USA (now out-of-print).

(Above photos of Adam taken in NYC when he was writing his first published book: “Notes of a Madman”)

CHECK IT OUT:

And here is a quick recap/overview of my published books. For more information, please see the next pages of this blog.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

MY AMAZON.COM AUTHOR PAGE: HERE!

2389ECFE-7F46-4E2D-BD0E-23B579D37284

MY CYBERWIT.NET AUTHOR PAGE: HERE!

adam01

“Death is creative, but not picky — she will claim us according to her time schedule and whims, regardless of cause of Death. Don’t obsess over Death. Live each moment as if it were your first and last.”
— Adam Donaldson Powell

jiseithumb_578007809

Listen to the children!

It is a challenge in our time to maintain a balance between dialogue and freedom of expression, so that different voices are allowed their right to expression. May those voices provoke thought and discussion, but not encourage blind hatred and violence. The problem is that on this planet we are so concerned with “who wins” a debate, a discussion, a fight, a war etc. Why not think less about “winning” and more about learning and sharing, which can result in consensus regarding solutions we can all live with for awhile?

But perhaps that is too « kindergarten » … ?
— Adam Donaldson Powell

“Entre Nous et Eux”, oil on canvas, 90×65 cm. is about keeping a frozen smile and trying to remain “politically correct” in a Western world that is literally under “cultural attack” by the sheer numbers of refugees and immigrants, and further complicated by European countries’ relative naivité and unpreparedness for multiculturism. It is therefore that the background resembles the Norwegian, Czech, Russian, French, Dutch, British, US etc. flags with the red, white and blue colours … but which are are increasingly inundated with falling leaves which eventually become lively foreign objects, cultures, traditions, religions etc. — and all the while with more and more persons competing for celebrity, money, resources, ideologies and power etc. It symbolises an irreversible shift in cultural and social values and traditions, and the tensions churning and burning underneath. It is about the new “n-word” which is socially and legally forbidden to express in public forums. The penalty is being stamped as “a racist”, and prosecution.

L’Être et le néant.

“Being = Nothingness”, 40×40 cm., oil on canvas, 2017.

My painting tribute to Sartre (Existentialism), and to Kazimir Malevich (Suprematism): “L’Être = le néant”, 40 x 40 cm., oil on canvas, 2017, Adam Donaldson Powell.

I was so proud after having finally struggled through the abstractions of Sartre’s «L’Être et le néant» as a young man. But alas I then shortly afterwards saw a news documentary on him where he dismissed much of the importance of the book. I was devastated — selfishly so, but still … I get it.

When Dr. Santosh Kumar published his amazing literary criticism of my own literary output I was shocked and embarrassed. It is easier to fight for recognition than to have that rebellious creative instinct squashed by general acceptance and praise. Since then, I have learned that many great innovative and free-thinking authors and artists were/are creative and reactive experimenters rather than geniuses who have discovered «truths embedded in historical stone for an Eternity.» We create as a means of survival in a world which we often are out of tempo with. We need the constant resistance that keeps our creative adrenalin going, as well as a flow of new ideas, new visions and new ways to re-create ourselves … Yes, almost as if our very survival is dependent upon it.

Authors and artists have the right to disassociate themselves even from our own publicly acclaimed “masterpieces”. Just think of how Beethoven cringed at hearing amateurs perform his popular ditties everywhere he went. “Fur Elise”, “Moonlight Sonata” … etc. Nonetheless, I still love the literature of Sartre, Camus, Leduc, Proust, Kafka, Genet etc. — even though I now see their “genius” in the perspective of the times in which they lived, thought and worked.

Verily, we are not primarily artists or authors, but rather Thinkers who use art and literature as a framework to temporarily frame and exhibit the sea of existentialism in which we all float, swim, drown and think. Embracing the concepts voiced by Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir etc. gives us all the treasured «condemnation to be free». Truly, we are mainly thought, consciousness and Spirit. The rest is meaningfully NON-existent.

— Adam Donaldson Powell

«In irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creatives a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness.»
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

«Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without “things” (that is, the “time-tested well-spring of life”).»
— Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism

«The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art. The square is a living, regal infant. The first step of pure creation in art.
— Kasimir Malevich