Category: poetry

madrid heat

I had to make a quick visit to Madrid yesterday to sign some papers, but fled back to the village as quickly as I could. A considerable amount of the time I was in the city was actually spent travelling on the metro.

This poem dates from at least six years ago, but I remembered it as the air-conditioning on the metro doesn’t seem to have improved at all.

Fat Woman on the Metro

Her fan is silk and lace – a butterfly
whose coloured wings flick
and furl coquettishly. Crimplene
caresses curves as tenderly
as any lover’s hand; she wears pearls
of sweat at wrist and neck.

results round-up

I made a concerted effort to send out some poetry competition entries earlier in the year. I haven’t had the success I’d have liked, but there have been a few short-listings and commendeds.

I received a copy of the adjudicator’s report for the Southport Writers’ Circle International Poetry Competition a few days ago and was delighted by the fact that my piece Neighbours (I) was commended for “its use of everyday language to express an horrific scene.” (The fact that it’s called Neighbours (I) might reasonably lead you to think there are other neighbours. There are, and they are mostly quite nasty, too.)
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‘a tower to the sun’

castle and palm trees

castillos en el aire – ilusiones lisonjeras con poco o ningún fundamento

I wonder how many Spaniards realise that as well as building castles in the air, English speakers also build castles in Spain.

Perhaps more to the point, I wonder why we do.

Brewer tells me that

[…] air-castles were called by the French Châteaux d’Espagne because Spain has no châteaux.

I wonder who told him that yarn.
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polish/spanish/english: a few thoughts on poetry & other writing

The revista literaria El Malpensante has an interesting article based on the column written in a Polish newspaper for 30 years by the Nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska.

In Cómo escribir and cómo no escribir poesía they have selected a few of the replies Szymborska made to readers who aspired to write poetry. Most of the article is interesting, but I have selected just two snippets.

The first, chosen because it ties in with my interest in translation:

Para H. O., de Poznan, un posible traductor
El traductor no está obligado a serle fiel al texto únicamente. Debe dejar ver la belleza de la poesía conservando su forma y reteniendo, en la medida de lo posible, el estilo y el espíritu de la época.

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situation critical

In the UK, I think people talk of the ‘recession’, but here in Spain we’re not mealy-mouthed – no tenemos pelos en la lengua – so it’s a full-blown ‘crisis’.

Despite the world’s financial problems, though, I’ve been fortunate to have a reasonable amount of work, and I’d begun to hope that things were getting better for other people, too. So I was a bit taken aback to receive this in an email from a translation agency this week (my emphasis): Continue reading “situation critical”