poem – Page 84 – don't confuse the narrator

old chestnuts

Horse chestnuts hold pale torches high
in green spread fingers and old wisteria
writhes around wrought iron
in a blue-teared cascade.
Throughout the city,
elm trees sway, scattering
indifferent confetti.

These lines have been retrieved and re-vamped from a poem called Flowers for an Easter wedding.

It was written some years ago – in Spain, which accounts for the elms, and for why it’s so out of synch with the English flowering season – and I think it was published as a three stanza piece with 15 lines.
Continue reading “old chestnuts”

spring cleaning

Outside open windows
blossom clouds the orchard;
my dustpan is full of pollen.

Alternatively, and more in keeping with the haiku spirit:

through open windows
apple blossom;
yellow dust on the floor

april

While others bundle and bunch
 under umbrellas, shrug
 into pak-a-macs and hunch deep 
into their collars, their faces
 scrunched, gurning
 against the elements, she 
pokes tongues 
at raindrops and laughs 
glitter from her hair. 

In the UK we are used to hearing that “April showers bring May flowers”, an expression that apparently can be traced to its earliest known form – Continue reading “april”

vicarious fame

Ellen Datlow, the editor of the Best Horror of the Year anthology, has posted a list of “Honorable Mentions” – the unpublished runners up for the 2009 anthology – on her blog.

My name isn’t on the list, but in third place (it’s alphabetical by author) is Poe a poem by Alfredo Álamo that won Spain’s Ignotus Award for poetry in 2007. It was published in The Magazine of Speculative Poetry in spring 2009, along with a translation into English by Sue Burke and me.

I don’t recognise many names on the list, but the second part (again, alphabetical), is headed by “King, Stephen” for his story Morality, published in Esquire magazine in July 2009.

I’d like to thank Sue for inviting me to assist her with a translation that has led me, albeit vicariously, into such august company.

light and hope

Now that the weather’s improved and the council workers have managed to get out to do some jobs around the village, they’ve finally put in new lamp posts down by the river. Proper wrought iron ones that cast soft yellow light quite unlike the unnaturally white blare from the UFO-type double-headed farolas they put along by the polideportivo during a lull in the storms a month or so back.

Set against the snow-pocked backdrop of the Sierra de Gredos, the new Narnia-style lamp posts make me think of the Pevensie children helping Aslan banish the White Witch and release Narnia from the long winter.

They’ve also brought to mind a poem from a few years back:
Continue reading “light and hope”