Tashi Aged Four

January 25, 2010April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

A little of me goes trotting off
    In a bright red swimsuit.
The ocean’s barely stirring.
    But a little of her is already
Slipping away without our knowing,
    Since – with me gone –
She will never have run
    So well for anyone else
Out to the sparkling pleat
    The sea folds over anew
Rising towards the spade and bucket
          That mark out our forgetting.

by Jacques Réda

Original poem © Jacques Réda, 2009. Translation © Jennie Feldman and Stephen Romer, 2009.

From Into the Deep Street: Seven Modern French Poets, 1938-2008, edited and translated by Jennie Feldman and Stephen Romer, Anvil Press, 2009.

Anvil Press Poetry writes:

‘Tashi Aged Four’ by Jacques Réda is almost my favourite piece from this anthology of French poetry. Poems about children by their parents or grandparents flirt with sentimentality – but it’s resolutely avoided here, as it is in Ted Hughes’s ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’, or Victor Hugo’s poems in L’art d’être grand-père (The Art of Being a Grandfather).

The poem is simply an elaboration of a fleeting incident: his reaction to seeing his grand-daughter “trotting off” on the beach. From this, with the device of “a little of me” linking with “a little of her”, he weaves a meditation on time and the human condition: one that is light and natural as his passing thoughts. It is done with such firm delicacy – and, I think, tenderness.

The poem is of course a translation, and it’s a testament to the translators’ skill in capturing the poet’s voice that one hardly notices this fact. Jennie Feldman’s translations of a selection of Jacques Réda’s poems, Treading Lightly, was published by Anvil in 2005. You can find out more about that book and Réda here.

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern. You can read more about Anvil here.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

In Xochicalco

January 18, 2010April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Cows grazing among the ruins.
The dry cornfield extends a yellow fence.
Walls of fog blur directions.
No flower opens.
Thorns catch in clothing
and the jaguar devours the heart.

Drizzle,
precarious offering.
Droplets draw fleeting signs in puddles—
no more fleeting than the day
when we saw what we loved most
fall apart between our hands
like an ancient urn.

We waded the fog like a river.
It surrounded the hills.
Only the peaks emerged like islands.

Purple,
ashy face of earth.
Voices like bats’ wings
through the stone notches
where the hills meet,
where the wind cuts
like an obsidian knife.

The black air widens.
The mist blinds us,
it closes around the temple.
The same mist wraps the heart.

Higher up,
deeper under the earth,
wherever she goes who gathers souls,
she who scatters ashes.

by Elsa Cross

Original poem © Elsa Cross, 1991. Translation © Luis Ingelmo & Michael Smith, 2009.

Note: Xochicalco is the site of an impressive Aztec temple, not far from Mexico City.

Elsa Cross was born in Mexico City in 1946. The majority of her work has been published in the volume Espirales. Poemas escogidos 1965-1999 (UNAM, 2000), but a new complete edition of her poetry will appear this year, published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica in Mexico City. ‘In Xochicalco’ is taken from the recent volume Selected Poems, published by Shearsman Books, edited by Tony Frazer, and translated by Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Ruth Fainlight, Luis Ingelmo & Michael Smith, and John Oliver Simon.

Cross’s poems have been translated into twelve languages and published in magazines and more than sixty anthologies in different countries. She has an MA and PhD in Philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she holds a professorship and teaches Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Mythology. In 2008 Elsa Cross was awarded the most prestigious poetry prize in Mexico, the Xavier Villurrutia Prize, an award that she shared with Pura López-Colomé. You can find out more about Elsa Cross here.

Shearsman Books is a very active publisher of new poetry, mostly from Britain and the USA, but also with an active translation list. You can learn more about the publisher here.

Please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Century-end Prayer

January 11, 2010April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Let the arctic birds,
friendly with polar winds,
have an easy time of it, Lord,
for the next hundred years.
I don’t even know
if there are any arctic birds.
I am as ignorant
about bird-life near the Poles
as birds are about good and evil.
I wish my ignorance could also be
equated with innocence.

But my prayers are not hooked
to some mariner’s compass;
and when I start walking down
with my back to the Pole Star,
I lead my prayers by the hand.
And here in warm-rain country
let the rhinoceros
trundle through mire
and the next millennium
and the next.
May the beaver and the porcupine
burrow their way
to their underground haven
and may the elephant shed his tusks
so that we don’t shed his blood.

And a small skylight prayer, Lord:
may the sparrow know glass
from the crisp air outside.

by Keki N. Daruwalla

Keki N. Daruwalla is one of India’s leading English-language writers. Born in 1937 in Lahore, Daruwalla has published nine volumes of poetry. ‘Century-end Prayer’ comes from The Glass-Blower: Selected Poems, a book published by Arc in 2008 and which collects poems from all of the poet’s previous collections. Keki Daruwalla has won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia. His Collected Poems: 1970-2005 appeared from Penguin India in 2006. He is also the author of three volumes of short stories, a novella, two collections of poetry for children and, more recently, the travelogue Riding the Himalayas (2006). Daruwalla is also well-known as a writer on international affairs, having served in both the Indian Police Service and in a number of positions within the civil service, including Special Assistant to the Prime Minister. He was part of the Commonwealth Observer Group for the Zimbabwe elections in 1980, and at the time of his retirement was Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in India. For more information about Daruwalla, click here or here. You can listen to him reading his work here.

Arc Publications publishes contemporary poetry from new and established writers from the UK and abroad, specialising in the work of international poets writing in English, and the work of overseas poets in translation. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. To learn more about Arc and to see its range of titles, click here.

BC-AD

December 21, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

by U.A. Fanthorpe

Having been one of Britain’s most popular poets since publishing her first collection in 1978, U.A. Fanthorpe sadly passed away in April, 2009. Christmas Poems, first published in 2002, collects Christmas card messages sent by Fanthorpe to friends since 1974, and is a fitting tribute to her versatility and wit as a poet. ‘BC-AD’ offers an askance perspective on the Nativity story, striking with the quicksilver power of an epiphany. You can find out more about the collection here, and more about Fanthorpe here.

Enitharmon Press takes its name from a William Blake character who represents spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. Founded in 1967 with an emphasis on independence and quality, Enitharmon has been associated with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Kathleen Raine. Enitharmon also commissions internationally renowned collaborations between artists, including Gilbert & George, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, under the Enitharmon Editions imprint. Discover more about Enitharmon here.

The Weekly Poem service takes a Christmas break for the next two weeks, and returns on 11 January. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all readers, and thanks for your continued support of the Weekly Poem initiative.

Like the Ghost of a Carrier Pigeon

December 14, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

In a couple of hours darkness will throw its blanket

over the scene she will pretend to read a mystery
the mower and hammering will cease

The bees leave the andromeda and then

So much has been spent constructing a plausible life
she did not hear the engines of dissent run down

Some still attempt to cover the skull with the wire of their hair
others shave everything instead

A solitary relives the pleasure of releasing his bird

There is no sacrosanct version there is only time

Even now if someone yells Avalanche she has one
Thoughts shudder against the ribs and go still

Soon the son would be out running around in her car
with a sore throat soon the decibels commence killing off hair cells

She checks to see if the phone is charged and then

The ones responsible for slaying the dreamer are mostly in the ground
but the ones responsible for slaying the dream

suffer only metabolic syndrome

Even now now that her supply of contact lenses has dwindled
she was refusing to sing the Wal-Mart song

The bees would be back and then

All efforts at reconciliation aside even if everyone exchanged germs
happiness is only for amateurs

A dress worn only once before has been hung on the door
the mirror under the cloth receives its image

by C.D. Wright

Deeply personal and politically ferocious, Wright’s thirteenth collection Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) addresses, as Wright has said elsewhere, “the commonly felt crises of [our] times” — from illegal immigration and the specific consequences of empire to the challenges of parenting and the honesty required of human relationships.

C.D. Wright has published over a dozen works of poetry and prose. Among her honours are the Robert Creeley Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives near Providence, Rhode Island. To learn more about her work, click here.

Copper Canyon Press is a non-profit publisher that believes poetry is vital to language and living. For thirty-five years, the Press has fostered the work of emerging, established, and world-renowned poets for an expanding audience. To find out more about Copper Canyon and its publications, click here.

From ‘In the Face of History: In Time of War’

December 7, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

4. Doisneau: Underground Press

Were I to fall in love all over again, it would be
with this low ceiling, with the calm faces
of the two men going about their craft
and with her now twisting towards them
beautiful, defiant and free.

Because we forget how beauty was once itself
and nothing else, how it held its stellar
moment in attic and cellar.

Because that is what beauty is, this compact
with time and the silence of concentration
on one subversive operation,

that requires courage and sacrifice
and never comes without a price.

5. Sudek: Tree

The visionary moment comes
just as it is raining, just as bombs
are falling, just as atoms

burst like a sneeze in a city park
and enter the dark
as if it were the waiting ark.

You open your hand and blow
the dust. You pick and throw
the stone. You make the round O

of your mouth perfect as light
and the tree bends and stands upright
in the stolid night.

by George Szirtes

George Szirtes’ latest collection, The Burning of the Books and other poems, from which these two sections are taken, is a collection of narrative sequences by a writer who came to Britain as a child refugee after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The two poems above come from a sequence which was commissioned by the Barbican Art Gallery to accompany its exhibition ‘In the Face of History: European Photographers in the 20th Century’. There is more information about the exhibition here, and you can see the photographs which were the inspirations for Szirtes’ two poems here and here.*

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948. He was educated in England, trained as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, and co-edited Bloodaxe’s Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His poetry books published by Bloodaxe include The Budapest File (2000); Reel (2004), which won Szirtes the T.S. Eliot Prize; and New & Collected Poems (2008). The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009), has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009. Szirtes lives in Norfolk and teaches at the University of East Anglia. You can read more of the poems from the ‘In the Face of History’ sequence on the Poetry website here, and learn more about the poet here.

Founded in Newcastle in 1978, Bloodaxe Books is one of Britain’s leading independent poetry publishers. Internationally renowned for quality in literature and excellence in book design, its authors and books have won virtually every major literary award given to poetry. Details of all Bloodaxe’s publications, plus sample video and audio clips of poets reading their work, can be found here.

* Sudek took a number of similar photographs of this tree in his garden, and the photograph displayed at this link may not be identical to the one exhibited at the Barbican.

From ‘Stillness’

November 30, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

In darkness let your fan of fingers open,
imagine amethyst’s purple crystals
at a geode’s heart liquifying to honey
until your face muscles loosen, your shoulders,
which have borne so much, begin to unlock
and stillness is a quilt over your body,
a feather lining within. Now the tock
of pulse emerges and breath passes quietly
as a slippered friend. Beyond the house tyres
whirr on tarmac and geese call as they rush
the sky. The grief of the bereaved will push
into your room and nameless losses sustained
by the displaced. Hold silence and you may hear
rain on fruitless fields, grasses rising again.

by Myra Schneider

Circling the Core is the most recent collection of Myra Schneider‘s prolific writing career, which has encompassed children’s fiction as well as ten poetry collections. ‘Stillness’, the long poem from which this is a complete part, is indicative of her sensitive explorations – often situated within nature – which she performs through sympathetically inhabiting her subjects. The result is sensuous and intricate verse, aided by the technical brilliance which has made Schneider a poet loved by poets. You can find out more about Myra Schneider here.

The Three Cypress Trees

November 23, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Transparent and frail,
like the slumber of woodcutters,
serene, foreshadowing things to come,
the morning drizzle does not conceal
these three cypresses on the slope.

Their details belie their sameness,
their radiance confirms it.

I said:
I wouldn’t dare to keep looking at them,
there is a beauty that takes away our daring,
there are times when courage fades away.

The clouds rolling high above
change the form of the cypresses.

The birds flying towards other skies
change the resonance of the cypresses.

The tiled line behind them
fixes the greenness of the cypresses
and there are trees whose only fruit is greenness.

Yesterday, in my sudden cheerfulness,
I saw their immortality.

Today, in my sudden sorrow,
I saw the axe.

by Mourid Barghouti

Mourid Barghouti was born on 8 July 1944, in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah, Palestine. He has published twelve books of poetry, the most recent being Muntasaf al-Layl / Midnight (Arc, 2008), the collection from which this poem is taken. His autobiographical narrative, Ra’aytu Ramallah / I Saw Ramallah (1997), published in several editions in Arabic, won the Naguib Mahfouz Award for Literature (1997), and was translated into several languages, with the English translation being published by the American University in Cairo Press, Random House, and Bloomsbury. In the year 2000, he was given the Palestine Award for Poetry. Mourid Barghouti has participated in numerous conferences and poetry readings and festivals in almost all the Arab countries, and in several European cities, and his work frequently appears in journals and magazines in both Arabic and in English translations. He has been in exile from Palestine since 1967, and lives in Cairo. To read more about Barghouti, and to see further examples of his work, visit this page.

Notebook Hokku

November 16, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Low grey cloud. Against
the wind, the melancholy weight
of one last heron.

Invisible across the field
the echo of an axe
among the cricket willows.

Cold summer wind. And
unripe apples, tossed up, thump
the light green under foliage.

Immobile and clotted, black
fly submit to red ants’ traffic
on the runner bean stalk.

Inside the ruins of this fallen
willow: damp earth, fungus
and dry white fruit stones.

As the flycatcher
pirouettes,
the globe revolves with it.

Silence huge. A solitude without limit.
What moves through these spaces?
Not I but a function.

Picking through a bowl of damsons.
Fame, success, enlightenment.
These are well-construed notions.

Damsons in handfuls echo
in the basin. Quiet between
mouth and a dark blue flavour.

10.

Bird song was scrolled
tightly, as I walked beside
the elder, between umbels.

by Tom Lowenstein

Author’s Note: These shorter forms were suggested and inspired by Japanese and Chinese poetry, but I have not attempted to write haiku. The title of this sequence is the nearest I’ve come to admitting that some of the poems, in this section particularly, represent haiku echoes. All of the above are to be read as separate individual poems, notwithstanding the common title.

These poems are drawn from Conversation with Murasaki by Tom Lowenstein (Shearsman Books, 2009).

Tom Lowenstein was born near London in 1941. After completing his education at Cambridge University, he taught for six years in English secondary schools. He has also taught English and creative writing at Northwestern University, worked for the Alaska State Museum and spent a year, in the mid-1970s, in an Alaskan Eskimo village, recording and translating its legends and histories. This work was later to bear fruit in a number of publications: Eskimo poems from Canada and Greenland; The Things That Were Said of Them: Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikigaq People (University of California Press, 1992); Ancient Land: Sacred Whale (Bloomsbury, 1993; Harvill, 2000). He has also written on Buddhism.

Tom Lowenstein’s own poetry has been collected in The Death of Mrs Owl (Anvil, 1977), Filibustering in Samsara (Many Press, 1987), in the Ancient Land: Sacred Whale volume, and in the Shearsman Books publications Ancestors and Species: New & Selected Ethnographic Poetry (2005) and Conversation with Murasaki (2009). You can discover more about Tom Lowenstein and his poetry here.

Shearsman Books is a very active publisher of new poetry, mostly from Britain and the USA, but also with an active translation list. You can learn more about the publisher here.

“Could it be true…”

November 2, 2009April 18, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Could it be true we live on earth?
On earth forever?

Just one brief instant here.

Even the finest stones begin to split,
even gold is tarnished,
even precious bird-plumes
shrivel like a cough.

Just one brief instant here.

by Nezahualcoyotl

From Flower and Song: Aztec Poems, translated and introduced by Edward Kissam and Michael Schmidt.

This book has recently been published by Anvil Press to coincide with the British Museum’s exhibition Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler (September 2009–January 2010).

Two young poets who grew up in Mexico became fascinated in the 1960s by the fabled Aztec poems composed before and during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521. They encountered these extraordinary poems largely in Spanish translations, made from the texts recorded by the early friars who followed in Cortés’s wake.

Nezahualcoyotl, the original author of this poem, was King of Texcoco. He lived from 1402–1472. He is the most famous of the Nahuatl-language poets, considered by his contemporaries to be the best master of the classical style. Many tales are told of his wisdom as judge, public servant, philosopher, and teacher.

Nahuatl is unlike any European language – so different that Michael Schmidt doubts whether meaningful translations can be made, the cultural context of the poems being so alien and having, in any case, been destroyed. But all we can know of Aztec poetry is what these two gifted poet-translators have given us. It may be inadequate of course, but the poems are fascinating and often quite beautiful. Schmidt and Kissam’s introduction to Flower and Song is also a superb, distilled account of the background to the Aztec empire: from its way of life and its fall, to the role of poetry in Aztec life, and how the poems were preserved. It is an ideal introduction to the British Museum exhibition.

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern. You can read more about Anvil here.