Poetry Life and Times

Inutile. A Poem by Noni Benegas. Translated from Spanish by Noël Valis

September 23, 2019April 12, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Excerpt from Fragments of an Unknown Diary

Inutile Inútil

insolent insolente

insociable insociable

insecure filthy insegura sucia

cupriferous carbona soaked cuprífera carbona rehogada

lens lamina lente lámina

leavened levadiza

villain villana

vultiferous jerk vultífera fregada

insomniac insomne

maniac maníaca

criminoid désolée decisive criminante desolante decisiva

incisive incisiva

leeks mangled beef puerro ropa vieja

snitch soplona

salivating drooling dissolving salivada babeante borrosa

brute bruta

brutally brute abrutada brutal

malapertous malabuena

malapropous malhabida

beflavorous saborida

borealeous brisada

brumeous brumosa

lunar rapide lunar rápida

unmissed mal ida

unwelcome malvenida

seated seatless ensillada sin silla

second sally resalida

aligned ahilada

related recontada

recuperated recuperada

cured curtida

cooked cociente

crunched crujiente

stitched cosida

chosen elegida

papa loved papá amada

papa pretty papá linda

papa talk papá diálogo

papa love papá amor

papa always papá siempre

broken bashed bent rota estrujada revertida

exonerated exonerada

extracted extraída

launched lanzada

mama suppressed mamá elidida

mama scolded mamá reñida

mama twisted mamá torcida

mama out mamá fuera

mama far mamá lejos

mama hurry mamá prisas

mama hollow mamá hueco

mama never mamá nunca

mama old mamá vieja

mama death mamá muerte

mama space mamá espacio

mama freedom mamá libertad

mama voice mamá voz

mama laughing mamá riente

mama suffering mamá doliente

mama pardon mamá perdón

mama please mamá porfavor

mama plea mamá ruego

mama purchase mamá compra

mama vigilant mamá avizora

mama idea mamá idea

mama recuperate mamá recupera

mama leftover mamá sobras

mama rags mamá guiñapo

mama mummy mamá momia

mama whine mamá queja

mama fate mamá sino

mama loving mamá amante

mama late mamá tarde

garden gone jardín ido

gathered recogido

garden rigged jardín jarcias

never-ever jamases

garden grasped jardín asido

threads hilo

garden moon jardín luna

gleams riela

carp play lúdica carpa

sounds suena

pool star charco estrella

garden plot jardín tramo

peril trance

Works by Noni Benegas

Poetry

Argonáutica. Prologue José María Valverde. Barcelona: Laertes, 1984. (Platero Prize)

La balsa de la Medusa. Alicante: Caja de Ahorros Provincial de Alicante, 1987.

(Miguel Hernández National Prize for Poetry)

Cartografía ardiente: Madrid: Verbum, 1995.

Las entretelas sedosas: Montilla: Aula Poética Casa del Inca, 2002.

Fragmentos de un diario desconocido. Ferrol: Esquío, 2004. (Esquío de Poesía Prize)

De ese roce vivo: Madrid, Huerga&Fierro, 2009

Animales Sagrados: Barcelona, Igitur, 2012 ( Vila de Martorell Prize)

Lugar Vertical: Barcelona, Igitur, 2012 ( Ciutat de Palma, Rubén Darío Prize)

El ángel de lo súbito: A selection of poetry, whit an introduction by Benito del Pliego, Madrid, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013

Fragmentos de un diario desconocido. Reedition, Madrid, eMe, escritura de Mujeres en español, Ed. La Palma, 2017

Poetry in translation

Burning Cartography: A bilingüal selection spanish-english, introduced and translated by Noël Valis. Austin, TX, Host, 2007. Second edition with added poems in 2011

Animaux sacrés et autres poémes: A bilingüal selection spanish-french translated by Annie Salager, Sète, Al Manar, 2013 (Voix Vives, de Méditerranée en Méditerranée)

Criticism

Ellas tienen la palabra. Dos décadas de poesía española. (with Jesús Munárriz). Introduction by Noni Benegas. Madrid: Hiperión, 1997. 4th ed., 2008.

Ellas tienen la palabra. Las mujeres y la escritura. Collects the introduction to the anthology of the same name, a new prologue, articles, interviews and an epilogue. Madrid,Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2017

Ellas resisten. Mujeres poetas y artistas. Textos 1994-2019: Madrid, Huerga&Fierro, 2019

Bio: Translator. Noël Valis (born 24 December 1945) is a writer, scholar and translator. She is a Professor of Spanish at Yale University. She received her B.A. from Douglass College and earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and French at Bryn Mawr College. An Hon. Woodrow Wilson Fellow, she is a recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Valis is a Full Member of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (an affiliate of the Real Academia Española) and a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Española. In 2017 she won the Victoria Urbano Academic Achievement Prize (Premio Victoria Urbano de Reconocimiento Académico), given by the International Association of Hispanic Women’s Literature and Culture (Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica), for her work in Hispanic women’s and gender studies. Her translation of Noni Benegas’s poetry, Burning Cartography, was awarded the New England Council of Latin American Studies’ Best Book Translation Prize.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Dream: The Old Dude with Big Side-Whiskers – On Being Called Honey by a Waitress Named Kitty. Poems by RW Haynes.

September 23, 2019February 11, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Dream: The Old Dude with Big Side-Whiskers                     On Being Called Honey by a Waitress Named Kitty
                                                                                                  
Yes, Old Ibsen was indeed a sight,                                            I’ll have the Boot Hill burger, I believe, 
Appearing in a dim-lit dream where I                                       As the young cowboy said, and some fries…
Lay, probably snoring, on an anxious night,                             Where does a man end up when he dies?
His whispery voice, a dagger-scraping sigh,                             When I used to keep a card up my sleeve
Disdainful but intent, urgent to be heard,                                   I knew it was safe with my back to the door
Said, “Listen, cracker, once I had it all                                      And a cup of hot coffee, my hair slicked back,
From my Muses, and then onstage my word                             And pieces of silver in a small leather sack,
Was their law as surely as avalanches fall.                                But now you can’t trust nothing any more.
At dinner my fellow Norwegians would rise                            There used to be a train that ran each day
When I appeared, and the Queen gave to me                            Through here, and then you could get away  
As Royal Playwright a Royal Garden key,                                From everything. You could go or stay,
And I prospered mightily in all men’s eyes.                              As the spirit rolled the dice and smiled,
But I tell you now, and listen well to me,                                  Time to go, sometimes time to play,
Your work is diminished by prosperity.                                     Happy as a hog and careless as a child.


The wisdom we seek in optimistic dreams                                You don’t want to hear an old man’s lies,
Moves through life, when captured, delusive,                           But everything else he has has dried,
Though the silence biding Mrs. Alving’s screams                     And his friends and all of his dogs have died,
Defies the mutable, the shifty and elusive.                                And there’s not much fire burning in his eyes,
Old age calls for a mature intensity                                           And you’ll never know how hard the man has lied
Reaching always toward ghostly shades                                    Or how many shots he took long ago                  
Hovering maliciously in dark immensity,                                  That no one remembers or ever will know.
Clutching their rust-rotten, blood-rusted blades.                       Hell, it don’t matter now what all he tried,
Wake up, forget the clowns and their clamor,                            But when you call him honey, honey, just try
Turn to my Muses, the grim inspiration                                     To give him a hard look straight in the eye                                  
Of rough-edged insight, of ax and of hammer,                          To stir up them ashes he’s cherishing inside,
The poet’s kind of living, the deadly vocation.                          And the angels will sing for you, loud and sweet,
If I had my work to do again, it’s true,                                       And heaven’s gates will shake and open wide
I’d write my work in blood, and so should you.”                       When you bring sacrifice for him to eat.

R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M International University since 1992. His recent interests include the early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009). In his poetry, Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to. In fiction, he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on his generation. He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary Renaissance in South Texas.

RESURRECTION. A Poem by John Grey

September 23, 2019January 27, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

In sleep, my brain
devours all cancer-causing agents,
delivers to the world
this woman
whole and fully functional.

And yet I wake to
tubes zig-zagging out of limp arms,
liquid pumped through her body
but doing nothing for that
sad, deserted face.

The morning is
a Jesus in a white coat
failing to replicate
whatever worked with Lazarus.

Yes, there are times when dreams
have it all over religion.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Amparo Arróspide Reviews Goddess Summons the Nation Collected Poems by Tony Martin Woods

September 23, 2019December 31, 2018 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Goddess Summons the Nation Paperback
Goddess Summons the Nation Kindle Edition

Goddess summons the Nation

a book of poems written with the vocation of songs and minstrelsy, articulated in four chapters with revealing titles, Substructure, Superstructure, Demolition and Flowers. Full of irony, the poetic voice, which is an ethical, indignant voice, wants the written script to transcend in spoken writing (The grapes / don’t die / in the vineyard / with the harvest / in the summer. // They transcend / and translive / victorious / in the wine, // like the poem in the song … ). This book talks to the reader in short, concise verses, with lexicon of the perspective of one who stands on the brink of historical abyss (The West bleeds to death /…). To paraphrase Ezra Pound, this book has style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rethoric; where the poet in dealing with his own time, sees that language does not petrify in his hands; he has prepared for new advances along the lines of true metaphor, that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as diametrically opposed to untrue or ornamental metaphor. These poems daringly address Brexit and Trump, the policy of closing borders and xenophobia, and a nation that appears personified in female allegories – I am the matriot / the highest patriot / I serve my shares / I sooth my country /…, and cyborgs who leave a planet in ruins ( his brain compressed in a zip folder / stored in a private cloud // No memories / just data / …), our own planet from which figs also flee (with millions of figs like me, like you / away from a supernova / of stupid national greed / … ). In one poem, Time to leave Brexit, we can also read the condensed intention of the book: I’ve never been an island, / Nor a chunk of it. / I could never be one / Cause I’m a social being / made of flesh / And emotions. Images of flesh and bone, and emotions that readers will share.

Editor’s Note: see also Artvilla.com Goddess Summons the Nation. By Tony Martin Woods.

Goddess summons the Nation

un poemario escrito con vocación de cancionero y de mester de juglaría, articulado en cuatro capítulos con títulos reveladores, Substructure, Superstructure, Demolition y Flowers. Pleno de ironía, la voz poética, que es una voz ética, indignada, y que pretende que la escritura escrita trascienda en la escritura hablada (The grapes/don´t die/in the vineyard/with the harvest/in the summer.// They transcend/and translive/victorious/in the wine,// like the poem in the song/…). Se interpela al lector en versos breves, concisos, con léxico de nuestro tiempo y una temática actual de quien se sitúa al borde del abismo histórico (The West bleeds to death/…). Parafraseando a Ezra Pound, este es un libro con “style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rethoric”, donde el poeta “in dealing with his own time, sees to it that language does not petrify in his hands; he has prepared for new advances along the lines of true metaphor that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as diametrically opposed to untrue or ornamental metaphor”. Los poemas se atreven con el Brexit, con Trump, con la política de cierre de fronteras y xenofobia, con una nación que aparece personificada en alegorías femeninas – I am the matriot/ the highest patriot/ I serve my shares/ I sooth my country/, y con cíborgs que abandonan un planeta en ruinas (his brain compressed in a zip folder/stored in a private cloud// No memories/just data/…), planeta del que también huyen los higos ( with millions of figs like me, like you/ away from a supernova/of stupid national greed/…). En uno de sus poemas, Time to leave Brexit, también podemos leer la intención condensada del libro: I´ve never been an island,/Nor a chunk of it./ I could never be one/Cause I´m a social being/made of flesh/And emotions… Imágenes de carne y hueso, y emociones que compartirán lectores y lectoras.

Antonio Martínez Arboleda:
Antonio (Tony Martin-Woods) started to write poetry for the public in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada, an online publication of political poetry. He runs the poetry evening Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, in Leeds, and collaborates with 100 Thousands Poets for Change100tpc.org/. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda at the University of Leeds. His project of digitisation of poetry, Ártemis, compiles more than 100 high quality videos of Spanish poets and other Open Educational Resources. http://www.artemispoesia.com/ . He is the delegate in the UK of Crátera Revista de Crítica y Poesía Contemporánea , where he also publishes his work as translator from English into Spanish. He published his first volume of poetry in Spanish, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), in 2015, as a response to the Great Recession, particularly in Spain. His second book, Goddess Summons The Nation, is a critique of the ideas of nation and capitalism, mainly in the British Brexit context. It incorporates voices of culprits, victims and heroes with mordacity and rhythm. It consists of 21 poems, 18 of which are originally written in English. It is available in print and kindle in Amazon and other platforms. Editor’s note: further information bio & academic activities can be found at this link: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/91/antonio-martinez-arboleda

Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio, En el Oido del Viento, Hormigas en Diáspora and Jaccuzzi, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines.
She has received numerous awards. Editor’s Note: see also Poetry, National Literature Prize 2018, Francisca Aguirre, Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

The Morning Spasm. A Poem by Christiana Sasa

August 24, 2019December 24, 2018 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Eyes sweat out softness
In the corner
Clouds can’t but break
But the school bus has arrived
A slip of the fingers
And bread spread smeared
All Over
The frail beats shudder
In the core of heart
In the face of the morning
Breeze sweeping her cheek
With the fresh essence of after-shave

She turned around
Leaves her spasm
In the freezer alongside the frozen lasagne

Christiana Sasa loves to write. Through writing she finds a vent for her strangled feelings and emotions. She believes in love, peace and humanity.
Her poems have been, with great pleasure, published on the magazine The Pangolin Review.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Of Gaddi(s) and Goats. A Poem by Sukrita Paul Kumar.

August 24, 2019December 24, 2018 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Cackling goats and jostling sheep
Wiggle through woolly tracks
Reaching the edges of their skin
Rolling like pebbles down the Himalayan slopes
In herds

With several bleating little lambs
Peeping from the kukh of his apparel
The Gaddi’s heavy feet
Drag many steps behind,
Hollering and bellowing, harking and heeding,
One arm waiving the threatening oak stick
At the sheep on the brink of cliffs,
The other cuddling the twitchy babies

My friend, doesn’t the pashmina of your shawl
Whisper to you, tell you of the gentle strands of love
woven into the pashm fabric many times finer
than your fine hair
In its heat you may not cook eggs
Nor will its lightness give you wings
But what you wrap around yourself
Are the dense clouds trapped in the Arctic
Ready to rain on separation
Or melt into sprightly rivers in its warmth.

Sukrita

Born and brought up in Kenya, Sukrita Paul Kumar is a well-known poet and critic, who held the Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at the University of Delhi till recently. Formerly, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, she is an Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa (USA), as also of Hong Kong Baptist University and Cambridge Seminars. She is honorary faculty at the Durrell Centre at Corfu (Greece).

She has published several collections of poems including Dream Catcher, Untitled, Without Margins, Folds of Silence. Her critical books amongst others include Narrating Partition, The New Story, Man, Woman and Androgyny and Ismat, Her Life, Her Times. As Director of a UNESCO project, she edited Mapping Memories, a volume of Urdu short stories from India and Pakistan translated in English. In 2006, she published, as its Chief Editor, Cultural Diversity in India (MacMillan India) prescribed at Delhi University. She has also published Poems Come Home (HarperCollins) & Rowing Together (Rajkamal), bilingual books of poems with well-known poet and lyricist Gulzar and a fellow Hindi poet, Savita Singh. Her translations of fiction and poetry have been published by HarperCollins, Katha and National Book Trust, including Nude by Vishal Bhardwaj and Blind by Joginder Paul. Her poems have been translated into many languages such as French, Chinese, Swahili, Italian, Bengali, Punjabi etc. A recipient of many prestigious fellowships, she has lectured in many universities in India and abroad. Her paintings have been exhibited and published in several journals. Many of her poems emerged from her engagement with homeless people and tsunami victims.

She has been the Guest Editor of several journals in India and abroad, including “Manoa: Crossing Over” (University of Hawaii), “Muse India” (Indian Literatures) and “Margaret”

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Roadside Dreams. A Poem by Ananya S Guha

August 24, 2019December 24, 2018 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

There is the arena of hope
a bit of mist, shrouded
into unbecoming land
and it pours, the rains
on these hill tops and caves
brush against my body,
the starched shirt, with the
ominous smell of ‘ something
goes on’
something is going on everyday
with the moon wearing whiskers
and the sun nestling on hill slopes
and in the midst, the arena of hope
dreams, dreaming, continues to over pour
till a vast tide of the river enters a hill town
and the floods besmirch the hills, the pines
I light candles surrounded by promontories
of vision.
Flicker of argument.
A ray of light
the last bus in town, now trundles
alongside my roadside dreams.

Ananya S Guha
Shillong
INDIA

Ananya S Guha has been born and brought up in Shillong, India and works in India’s National Open University, the Indira Gandhi National Open University. His poems in English have been published world wide. He also writes for newspapers and magazines/ web zines on matters ranging from society and politics to education. He holds a doctoral degree on the novels of William Golding. He edits the poetry column of The Thumb Print Magazine, and has published seven collections of poetry.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Blue Soul. A Poetry E Book by Gabriella Garofalo

August 24, 2019December 18, 2018 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

‘The guests from the heavenly vault: stars, moon, sun, comets, feed my words and provide them with a relentless lymph. So do the many spots, and people whom I happen to stumble upon. So do fragments from conversations I happen to have overheard. My irrepressible longing for reshaping all of them in a new different life, so as to give them a fresh soul, is the drive enabling my words to be invaded by that green fuse we might think of as the very life and soul of poetry.’ (Gabriella Garofalo)

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Blue Soul

(P.1)
A bit of advice, blue works best if you need
To creep in on the sly, it’s the latest fad,
Peeking at the stunning shows of some wannabe star,
Nobody cares about oceans or skies –
‘Course you’re right, no bloody reason
To wake up and listen to a breathing night,
Her lips mumbling in fractured whispers
‘Please God, don’t play dirty’,
But mind, you might chance on a runner in the blue,
A soul clad to the nines who scatters across the sky
Some bright twinkling lights,
A warning sign of a blessed hour that atones for naked souls,
Buildings rising up and wild, dark curtains blocking us
From talking to hidden stars who foster no desire
For stony blindness or witty repartees –
Head to him, fear not the ashes,
The glimpse of perfection, the shades of missing time,
For he’ll shape demise into a sunny spot
Where the candles we thought snuffed out
Run back to life in silence –
And no more shades of yellow, mind,
The fire that wound words thrown to the sea –
Can’t you hear those winged voices, the blaze of memory
Inside your time when the clock strikes one
And your night pleads innocent before her looming exile:
Trust me, no help from flesh or pleas,
Teardrops of white quartz and scraps from the sea
Lie on the stones waiting for you, some gifts for you?
Stop that rubbish, girl, they’ll give you only
Infinite rooms, revolving doors, what’s autumn but a witch
Who’s shedding blood and life away?
So, does it work? I mean, the light blue fragrance
Scenting the playful writing of my pen?
Oh so sorry, I dunno and can’t even hope so.

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Blue branches”, “ A Blue Soul”.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

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