poem – Page 73 – don't confuse the narrator

of kiwis and poetry

(Click here for a picture of male and female kiwi flowers)

We are gradually trying to replace our old grape vine with a kiwi vine. Our reasoning is mainly that the old vine is not very healthy and produces huge quantities of wasp-attracting fruit that gets mildew and moulders on a grand scale each year.

Since there’s some sixty square metres of trellis, it’s probably not surprising there’s more fruit than we can deal with. Kiwis seem as if they might be rather more controllable.

The photo shows a sucker on one of the kiwis we planted a couple of years ago. The vivid vermilion of these new shoots, and the furriness of the stalks and young leaves, never ceases to amaze me.
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fireworks

Silver dandelions bloom
on the moleskin waistcoat
of the night

(Thinking realistically, I know that they are a waste of money and that they frighten all the birds and animals, but I’m a sucker for fireworks. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a display – not even the patriotic red, white & blue of last Thursday’s royal wedding celebrations – without a broad smile on my face. One day I’ll dig out all the notes I’ve made over the years and write a proper poem on the subject.)
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for the birds

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.)
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april 23rd

Lance Tooks drawing from Sketches from Spain

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!)
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notes about poetry

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: