poem – Page 41 – don't confuse the narrator

drafts and re-drafts

scarlet seeds of iris foetidissima — all alike; all unique

Years ago, after talking to the Catalán poet Joan Margarit, I wrote down in my notebook:

Form, metre, rhyme etc. are superficial elements of a poem. What gets translated is something more essential.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry translation, and I’m trying to work out what that “more essential” something is.

It’s clear – to me at least – that the complexity of poetry, its inherent weaving of different linguistic techniques, makes it impossible to translate everything: the only way to get an exactly equivalent poem would be to repeat the original. (At which point, it is probably relevant to mention the Borges short story Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote.)
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past, present, future

remember, remember

Bonfire night:
the wide-eyed moon looks down
on multi-coloured stars

of things past

flower arrangement of pink/red roses in old church

All Hallows Anniversary

A heavy storm has made the flat roof leak
and in the small hours, memories drip
from the bedroom ceiling.

Unlike the rain they cannot be absorbed
by piles of folded towels, or mopped into a bucket, so
I paddle through them, barefoot, towards dawn.

Flower stalls sprout on street corners and blossom
with chrysanthemums and wreaths
for loved ones’ graves.

I skirt the queues and wonder, should I buy
for the ghost of a relationship
long dead?

The poem is from the collection Around the Corner from Hope Street.

Read sequentially, the poems reveal a narrative thread, covering a period of 15 months in the life of the female narrator; they deal with themes of alienation and isolation, recovery and renewal, and, of course, love. The book is illustrated in black and white by graphic artist Lance Tooks and available in various digital formats from the Tantamount bookstore.

(A draft of the poem was posted on the blog a few years ago.)

some squirrels and a Wren

The squirrels in the previous post were photographed in St Paul’s churchyard, London. Like the ones I remember from the parks of my childhood, they were very friendly and keen to be fed by the tourists.

Nearer to home there are wild squirrels who visit and use the flower pots on the patio as storage jars for their winter supplies; they are not at all tame – which is why I couldn’t get closer for the next picture – but they do seem to have learned their kerb drill:

grey squirrel sitting on kerbside as if waiting to cross road — Tufty would be proud

October 20th was the anniversary of the birth of Christopher Wren, so it seems appropriate to make another post connected to his great work, St Paul’s. I made a brief visit there on a recent trip to London and sat in the churchyard, where I watched the squirrels and began planning a poem.
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