“Sácale una foto; te gusta hacer fotos de cosas muertas.”
Sometimes I think people – even my closest friends and family – have entirely the wrong idea about me.
We were walking along the shores of the Embalse de Valdecañas in Extremadura, looking for flat stones to skim when we came across the poor creature desiccated by the sun. I’m not sure I’ll ever write a poem that I can use the photo to illustrate, but I took it anyway. **
Continue reading “high and dry”
As a vegetarian, I’m used to seeing things on Spanish menus that really don’t appeal to me. Yesterday, though, I was particularly taken – or not – by the top two items on the meat section:
Continue reading “what’s for dinner?”
En un lugar de La Mancha, driving
along an empty motorway, we see
giants on the horizon. Full tilt
we race towards them.
Long arms whirl and sharp blades
slice the air. We hear aeolian music
serenading Dulcinea.
While I was in the south, I managed to get an hour or so to walk along the marine parade at Alicante, which is as good an excuse as any to post this old piece, written in response to a challenge to write a favourite joke as a poem:
Continue reading “sea sounds”
I wrote recently about the automatic responses from WordPress when you publish a blog post, and how one of my posts was greeted with:
In the comments to that post, it was suggested that perhaps this was intended as an imperative, but I assure you I am not responsible for the story that prompted this blog post.
The original headline that is referred to comes from hoy.es and reads: Una poesía provoca una alerta por bomba – ‘poem causes bomb alert’ – a news story from Badajoz earlier this week. If your Spanish is up to it, please go and read the post on quadernodenotas, if not, you’ll have to make do with my hurried – and somewhat ‘creative’ – summary.
Continue reading “poems not bombs”
don't confuse the narrator 