Category: spanish

‘it gives us the other’

The abstracts have been published for the sessions at the It Gives Us the Other poetry and translation conference & workday to be held in Nottingham in April.

I suspect some people will wonder who on earth I am and what I’m doing leading a workshop there, so they’ll Google my name and some of them will end up here. (Although I don’t think there’s anything on this blog that explicitly says who I am, the Googlebots are cunning little spiders and have managed to make the connection.)

So, just so that things are made a little easier and a little clearer, I’m gathering together a few relevant posts here:
Continue reading “‘it gives us the other’”

pruning, ploughing and punning

plum blossom close up

For the last week, the skies have been almost solid grey and the drizzle has only been interrupted by intermittend torrential rain and the occasional thunder storm. This has all come while the plum trees have been in full bloom, so I imagine we may not get much fruit this year as there have been few insects around to pollinate.
Continue reading “pruning, ploughing and punning”

cosas de caza

Further to my last post here about the crooning that woke me in the middle of the night – which turned out to be a cat defending its prey, rather than one of the locals serenading me outside my window – I’ve been watching one of the semi-ferals play with a rat in the wet grass this afternoon. He was keen on bringing it up to the verandah for me to have my part, but I assured him I wasn’t hungry, so he shared it with one of his brothers instead.
Continue reading “cosas de caza”

a prowl of cats in the night

I was woken in the wee shall hours by cats growling on the verandah. It wasn’t the wailing and wauling of the queen calling the neighbours’ toms – no need, she’s already pregnant again – and it sounded quite unfriendly, so I got up to check there were no forasteros about.

cat with small rat

No one ran when I opened the door: the shadows were apparently all members of our own semi-feral tribe. But the growling continued.

Then I identified the sound as the possessive crooning they make when they have caught something and are warning the others away.

Continue reading “a prowl of cats in the night”

a woman’s work

I get very irritated about all the different ‘international day of this’ and ‘world day for that’ events. Particularly when there seems to be so little consensus about the celebrations. (I’ve commented before on how the UK celebrate an entirely different World Book Day from the rest of the planet and I always miss it – though I do remember the one on April 23rd. )


Be that as it may, Google has reminded me that today is International Women’s Day, and I find from clicking their commemorative logo that it’s the 100th anniversary of the event and that women around the world will be standing on bridges to celebrate. Continue reading “a woman’s work”