While many other people were busy celebrating ‘the wedding of the year’, I took a day off in Nottingham and revisited places that haven’t changed for centuries, although the areas around them have altered so much in 30 years that I had difficulty identifying any connection with the time I spent here in the Seventies.
At the castle I found this stone as part of a large display of inlaid decorated paving in the gallery forecourt: 
Visiting the Google page this morning, I discovered it was the anniverary of the birth of John James Audubon. Why Google had chosen to commemorate the 226th anniversary, I don’t know, but they had one of their doodles depicting a number of the birds drawn by Audubon.
(Incidentally, that link to the Google doodles page is worth a click – it appears to lead to an archive of the different logos they’ve used in all the different language and geographic versions of the Google page.)
Continue reading “for the birds”
And the date offers a number of reasons to celebrate:
It’s World Book and Copyright Day, it’s traditionally celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday and the day of his death, and it’s also the day Miguel de Cervantes died.
It’s St George’s Day, too, (San Jordi) and Castile Day – not to be confused with Bastille Day, of course – or, perhaps more accurately, El Día de Castile y León.
It seems to me quite apt to celebrate castles in Spain and the world of books on the same day, and it’s also appropriate that the picture accompanying this post is taken from Lance Tooks’ upcoming book Sketches from Spain, due out in May. (Thank you, Lance, for permission to use it!)
Continue reading “april 23rd”
Looking back through old notebooks at the weekend, I found some notes I must have made after talking to Joan Margarit back in 2002, I think. The conversation was in Spanish, and the notes (made later in English) are my personal interpretation of what he was trying to say.
There were two points about translation that I hadn’t remembered:
Form, metre, rhyme etc. are superficial elements of a poem. What gets translated is something more essential.
Wriggle-tailed and spindle-legged:
a lop-eared lamb, too young to know
which hoof moves next. He chooses
all four simultaneously.
(notes for a poem)
don't confuse the narrator 