Category: How Words Play

Recours au Poème: Poésies & Mondes Poétiques

November 15th, 2013
My thanks to Matthieu Baumier, editor at Recours au Poème, and to Elizabeth Brunazzi, who published and translated four poems from my collection, Cycles (Lapwing Publications, 2013).

I am adding here Elizabeth’s translation of i and the village (after Marc Chagall)
moi et le Village

(d’après Marc Chagall)

Version française, Elizabeth Brunazzi

La rosée découle en jade une lune aux trois quarts
L’Amour O l’amour! Ta fleur arrachée embaume

De son parfarm ma main, bientôt
bientôt me rappelant une certaine musique-

Mon destin a toujours été de quitter le lieu
où la lune dansait avec la subtile Neptune!

Tout se dissout-
sauf le souvenir de ton visage,
ton rire en pleine rue et ta danse pour la lune!

Tes bagues de jade et ta fleur sont mes bijoux,
nuançant toutes choses d’une teinte de vert, de pourpre, d’un bleu profond.

La rosée découle en jade une lune ornée comme un bijou,
Sa fleur blanche fond sous le bleu.

Je me souviens d’un visage, maintenant fixé en lumière,
maintenant un ton, une bague ornée de bijoux, une certaine nuance brillante.

de :

Christine Murray
(after Marc Chagall)

Dew drops into jade a three-quarter moon.
Love, love! Your uprooted flower dissipates

Its scentedness onto my hand, soon
soon recalling to me a certain music —

My fate was always to leave the place
where moon danced with subtle Neptune!

All dissolves –
save your remembered face,
your laughing in the street and your dancing for the moon!

Your jade rings and your flower are my jewel,
shading everything green, and purple, a rich blue.

Dew drops into jade a jewelled moon,
Her white flower dissolves under blue.

I remember a face, now caught into light,
now a tone, a jewelled ring, a certain bright hue –

Link
Recours au Poème: Poésies & Mondes Poétiques

A note from Olivia Guest at Jonathan Clowes Ltd.

November 12th, 2013

Doris Lessing died a matter of days after I had received permission to carry some of the poems from her Fourteen Poems on this site indefinitely. I had put up the following note and message and see no reason to remove it. I am happy that I have carried her work for a few years. I wrote a brief tribute to Lessing’s writing and her influence on my writing life here.

Dear Christine

We’d be delighted for you to host the poems for longer especially if you’re getting such good reactions. Doris Lessing was never very keen on her poetry and didn’t think it was any good so I doubt we will see a re-issue but at least this way, they are available in an alternative form.

Many thanks and best wishes

Olivia

‘Fragments from Noticing’ and ‘Edge/Untitled’ by Gillian Prew

October 19th, 2013

Fragments from Noticing

 
 i
  
 The wick, uprooted/ left of light –
 ice-shawl thawing to the leaf-ends
 dissolves to the rain/ the rain’s bloom.
  
 ii
  
 Wet-edge/wet-air
 lifts the birds dampening
 to the rim of cloud quietly.
  
 iii
  
 Not-evening/
 a dimming seam
 behind the treeline/rising
 a black whir of crows.
  
 iv
  
 Opposite/
    unfastened flowers
 mantling the stone/summer’s
 tumbled frock.
  
 v
  
 Mirror-firth/silver
 with sky, with gulls’ backs.
  
 vi
  
 A dug-in place/a shadow.
 A black edge/a knuckle/a grave.
  
 Fragments from Noticing is © Gillian Prew

Edge/Untitled

 
Waiting among ghosts on the bursting stone/
white of memory/the wild weeds moved-in.

White of the rushing sea/ the gull backs/the moon.

   Waiting/as if
a blue-lit eye/a voice of glass/a leaf-sway –
                                rain.

As if the rain a slow-motion dust.

The past –
     a field/a room.

Wearing the grasses/the books
letting go/not letting go.

These pieces corrupted by time.
Small-sound stories half-writ.

The past whittled to white/and 
it is ready a cut-through bone.

Edge/Untitled is © Gillian Prew

Previews of The Blind published in Ditch Poetry

October 15th, 2013

The following poem is an excerpt from a sequence published by Ditch Poetry. The sequence is from my forthcoming collection, The Blind (Oneiros Books 2013). Part of the Sequence is published here. The first poem in the sequence, hunger, appears throughout the collection and was first published in A New Ulster Magazine.

suspend I

from the mirror architrave
float down silken threads
they are not blackened yet

from the ceiling hooks
float down wisps of
red thread – almost

cobweb light she is
arched back unsure
whether to suspend

burnt orange silks
cover the shutters
there are children in the street

she is nonetheless
quite bound-up
in red ropes

from loop at nape
and length of torso
it is peaceful

being spider-rolled
webbed-in and arched
as if a –

a bird swoops down
behind the orange silks

….. shiftshape-in

Suspend I by C. Murray, is taken from The Blind (Oneiros Books 2013) and is published in part at Ditch Poetry.

Martyrdom by Kristina Marie Darling

September 7th, 2013

'Visitation' by Noah Saterstrom (2012) — ‘Visitation’ by Noah Saterstrom (2012)

Martyrdom

I never imagined love as a cause for suicide. But there we
were, surrounded by all of the tell-tale signs: a breadknife,
a withered corsage, a white dress with some ruffles along
the bottom.

The night before I sensed that something had gone
terribly wrong. He told her, brushing the hair from his
eyes, how her sonnets failed to turn at the Volta.

Now she’s gliding along the surface of the lake. Her hands
folded like the knot on a small bouquet.

So he tries and tries to wake her. He looks at her perfect
wrists, nearly submerged: cold skin, a silver watch, every
bracelet fastened in place.

Martyrdom is © Kristina Marie Darling, from Brushes With (Blazevox Books 2013)

‘leave this death alone’ by Candi V. Auchterlonie

August 30th, 2013

purple blue thistle

ghosts/ghosting mouths
they’re pulling purple blue thistle/our heads
prickle their grey thumbs.
the un-holdable bouquet/clamped
with their veil of see through teeth
blood is not blood it is
a shadow veining the natural light
that our eyes fail to adjust to
and our glossy mouths fail to lipsynch
the weeded purply hill
when we speak between that strained speech

purple blue thistle is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

lookers stone

looking glass/under glass eye stares they become lazy moons/but try to catch these petaled fliers with your hands,
just try, they’re slippery mints tonguing fate.
my house is plagued with the secret of mint moths and they’ve begun to eat the hearts out from all of my best coats.

lookers stone is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

tearing cotton from your breast

poems from grand static/stasis that hurts with its stained whiteness.

tearing cotton from your breast is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

the flood of man

the tall-tall creek/creeps into your backyard.
your very own backyard/and you flood
a river into the wild
your things/they trickle out of your life
the things you always meant to keep.

the flood of man is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

the long drive

you will always have
the right of way.

the long drive is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

into the day we dream/into the night we work

spines are bridges
for tomorrow
we hold every hope up
to the jagged shadows of our bindings
each and each colourless moth
of us dissolves within the window pane of day/flirting death
only separate as wings are.
we hold every hope/we might chance/ideas of forever
and stay with them.

into the day we dream/into the night we work is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

The above poems are from Candi V. Auchterlonie’s forthcoming collection , leave this death alone. I am linking here her previous collection , Impress (Published by Punk Hostage Press, 2012)

Impress

Candi’s Homepage

Ingeborg Bachmann’s Poetry in translation by Mary O’Donnell 1.

August 28th, 2013
FREIGHT

Summer’s great cargo is loaded,
the sun-freight lies ready in the dock,
even if a gull cries and plunges behind you.
Summer’s great cargo is loaded.

The sun-freight lies ready in the dock,
the smiles of lemurs are unveiled
on the lips of those on the galley.
The sun-freight lies ready in the dock.

Even if a gull cries and plunges behind you,
the command to go down comes from the West;
wide-eyed, you’ll drown in light nonetheless,
even if a gull cries and plunges behind you.

Freight is © Ingeborg Bachmann. This translation is © Mary O’Donnell

FOGLAND

In winter my lover thrives
among the forest creatures.
The laughing fox knows I must return
before morning.
How the clouds tremble! And a layer
of broken ice falls on me
from the snow craters.

In winter my lover
is a tree among trees inviting
the melancholic crows
to its lovely branches. She knows
that at dusk, the wind will raise
her stiff adorned evening gown
and chase me home.

In winter my lover
swims mute among the fish.
On the bank, I stand in thrall to waters,
caressed from within
by the stroke of her fins.
I watch as she dips and turns,
till banished by the floes.

And warned once more by the shriek
of the bird that arcs stiffly
above, I head for the open field: there
she plucks the hens bald,
throws me a white collarbone.
I wield it to my throat,
make my way through the scattered plumage.

A faithless lover, as well I know,
at times she sweeps into town
in her high-heels,
she parades herself in bars, the straw
from her glass deep in her mouth,
the mot juste tripping from her lips.
I do not understand this language.

I have seen fog-land,
I have eaten the smoke-screened heart.

from Anrufen des Großen Bären/Invoking the Great Bear by Ingeborg Bachmann ©. This translation is © Mary O’Donnell
- Mary O’Donnell’s Homepage
- PoemHunter for Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann’s Poetry in translation by Mary O’Donnell 2.

August 21st, 2013

VERILY

For Anna Akhmatova

He who has never been rendered speechless,
I’m telling you,
whoever merely feathers his own nest
and with words –

is beyond help.
Not by the shortcut
nor by way of the long.

To make a single sentence tenable,
to withstand the ding-dong of language.

Nobody writes this sentence,
without signing up.

Verily is © Ingeborg Bachmann, this translation is © Mary O’Donnell

NIGHT FLIGHT

Our land is the sky,
tilled by the sweat of engines,
in the face of night,
risking dreams—

dreamt from skullspots and pyres,
beneath the roof of the world, whose tiles
were carried off by the wind—and then rain, rain,
rain in our house and in the mills
the blind flights of bats.
Who lived there? Whose hands were pure?
Who lit the night,
haunted the spectres?

Concealed in feathers of steel, instruments,
timers and dials interrogate space,
the cloud-bushes, touch the body
of our hearts’ forgotten language:
short long long … For an hour
hailstones beat on the ear’s drum,
which, turned against us, listens and distorts.
The sun and Earth have not set,
merely wandered like unknown constellations.

We have risen from a harbour
where to return doesn’t count
not cargo not booty.
India’s spice and silks from Japan
belong to the handlers
as fish to the nets.

Yet there’s a smell,
forerunners of comets
and the wind’s web,
shredded by fallen comets.
Call it the status of the lonely,
for whom amazement happens.
Nothing further.

We have arisen, and the convents are empty,
since we endure, an order which does not cure
and does not instruct. To bargain is not
the pilots’ business. They have
set their sights and spread on their knees
the map of a world, to which nothing is added.

Who lives down there? Who weeps …
Who loses the key to the house?
Who can’t find his bed, who sleeps
on doorsteps? Who, when morning comes,
dares to point at the silver stripes: look, above me …
When the new water grips the millwheel,
who dares to remember the night?

Night Flight is © Ingeborg Bachmann, this translation is © Mary O’Donnell

220px-Klagenfurt_-_Musilhaus_-_Ingeborg_Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied philosophy, psychology, German philology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna. In 1949, she received her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna with her dissertation titled “The Critical Reception of the Existential Philosophy of Martin Heidegger,” her thesis adviser was Victor Kraft. After graduating, Bachmann worked as a scriptwriter and editor at the Allied radio station Rot-Weiss-Rot, a job that enabled her to obtain an overview of contemporary literature and also supplied her with a decent income, making possible proper literary work. Furthermore, her first radio dramas were published by the station. Her literary career was enhanced by contact with Hans Weigel (littérateur and sponsor of young post-war literature) and the legendary literary circle known as Gruppe 47, whose members also included Ilse Aichinger, Paul Celan, Heinrich Böll, Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Günter Grass.

(Wiki Extract )

Poemhunter for Ingeborg Bachmann

Mary O’Donnell is the author of eleven books, both poetry and fiction, and has also co-edited a book of translations from the Galician. Her titles include the best-selling literary novel The Light-Makers, Virgin and the Boy, and The Elysium Testament, as well as poetry such as The Place of Miracles, Unlegendary Heroes, and her most recent critically acclaimed sixth collection The Ark Builders (Arc Publications UK, 2009). She has been a teacher and has worked intermittently in journalism, especially theatre criticism. Her essays on contemporary literary issues are widely published. She also presented and scripted three series of poetry programmes for the national broadcaster RTE Radio, including a successful series on poetry in translation during 2005 and 2006 called Crossing the Lines. Today, she teaches creative writing in a part-time capacity at NUI Maynooth, and has worked on the faculty of Carlow University Pittsburgh’s MFA programme in creative writing, as well as on the faculty of the University of Iowa’s summer writing programme at Trinity College Dublin.

◾Mary O’Donnell

‘Through the blossom-gate’ by C. Murray

August 10th, 2013

Through the blossom-gate,

and quite before the acid leaf unfurls into its meaning—

we are subjected to the play of light
working on our necessity to speak out

into a flowering. It is not yet warm —
already the sun is playing at dragging up

and displaying those unwanted words
elucidatory and garish in their babblement

it is almost necessary to cut them at their source
that well-spring is a tree-wounded-gash,

the birds disagree in their illuminatory chatter
as they may—
casting their circumspections to the breeze.

Through the blossom-gate is © Christine Murray first published in Southword Journal (Munster Literature Centre). Through the blossom-gate was published in my first collection of poetry, Cycles. (Lapwing Publications, Belfast)

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

August 3rd, 2013

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

I have not been keeping a ledger or account book
Of double entries, for the cost and price
Is not reckoned in the way you look
Or what you said, in whatever form or guise
I’ll never know your motives or intentions
Whether you acted blindly or on trust
But your suspicion of all engines and inventions
Does not bury the lost meaning, or let rust

The iron will, the gold enamelling –
Byzantine portraits in detail are enthralling
And with the years there comes the mellowing
Of my survivor’s guilt, the clarity of my calling
It was not fair, but lust and beauty
Caused the raid, and not excise on love’s duty.

© Rosemarie Rowley 2012

A RING TINGLE OF FEAR IN GOLDENBRIDGE ORPHANAGE.

A ring tingle of fear ran around my belly
Deep in my secret folds a spark of anger flew
To where your ears had picked up jelly-
Fish stings that wanted to be blue
It raced back to the womb of your un-desiring
Self where, abandoned, you brindled in your edge
Of razor sharp innuendo which was firing
Your awestruck envy of a child’s winter knowledge
Your long arm bent my back, a spancel
Till it almost broke with the weight of zealous
Might that needs exorcism in a chancel
To make a penitent nun like you jealous

So clapped my eyes and ears that were burning
As you roasted me on the spit your ire was turning.

ALL THIS DOING GOOD IS VERY CATHOLIC

He said as he sat at the wrought-iron utility desk
Beside the window whose frame was too large
You’ll get over me, you will risk
The transfer of love from the office to the barge
Of the old canal of desiring in my Dutch hometown
For we knew little, who were the divine elect
But that the balance of justice He wore in his crown
Of thorns on his head hurt, yet He was not perfect
But jealous of the worship of other Gods
He admits Himself, he is staff and rod
Knew Eve’s peccadillo and Adam’s pelf.
Everything ordained, the elect will be saved
Some go to Hell on the path you have paved
With good intentions, but lacking in free will
I see your progress in my view from the hill.

Rosemarie Rowley has written extensively in form: Flight into Reality (1989) is the longest original work in terza rima in English, reprinted 2010 and now available on CD. She has also written in rhyme royal and rhyming couplets. She has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition. Her books in print are: The Sea of Affliction (1987,one of the first works in ecofeminism, reprinted 2010, and Hot Cinquefoil Star, (2002) (which contains The Puzzle Factory a crown of sonnets and Letter to Kathleen Raine in rhyming couplets). Her most recent book is In Memory of Her (2004, 2008) which includes Betrayal into Origin – Dancing & Revolution in the Sixties (an 80 stanza poem in decima rima (ten line rhyme) and The Wake of Wonder (a regular sonnet sequence) and many other sonnets; all books, except her first, The Broken Pledge (1985, Martello) published by Rowan Tree Ireland Press, Dublin.

In 2003, she co-edited, with town planner John Haughton, an anthology of tree poems, Seeing the Wood and the Trees (Rowan Tree Press with Cairde na Coille)

Rosemarie has given papers for academic conferences in the Universities of Galway and Limerick and the Clinton Institute (UCD) in Ireland, in Bath, Edinburgh, St. Andrews’ and Stirling, Louisville, Sarasota and Atlanta Universities in the USA. in the UK, and in Prague, Venice, Paris ,and Valladolid on the European mainland. She has been active in the green movement in Ireland and in the Irish Byron Society and worked for a time in the European institutions in Europe.

Rosemarie has degrees in Irish and English Literature, and philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, an M.Litt on the nature poet Patrick Kavanagh, and a diploma in psychology from NUI.

Chris Murray