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Judith Beveridge: Video translation by Prometeo

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

 

Featured poet, Judith Beveridge has published four books of poetry: The Domesticity of Giraffes (Black Lightning Press, 1987), Accidental Grace (UQP, 1996), Wolf Notes (Giramondo Publishing 2003), Storm and Honey (Giramondo Publishing 2009). She has won many awards for her poetry including the NSW Premier’s Award, The Victorian Premier’s Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. In 2005 she was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for excellence in literature. She is currently the poetry editor for Meanjin and teaches poetry writing at postgraduate level at the University of Sydney.

This poem was video translated at the  Memoria del Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, Colombia. The International Poetry Festival at Medellin was founded by Feranando Rendón “to oppose terror with beauty, to bring poetry face to face with violent death. We interpreted the love of poetry and the will to live of thousands of people, at the right moment.” (Poetry International Web, July 2007) In 2006 the festival was awarded the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.

La poeta australiana Judith Beveridge interviene en el curso del IX Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, leyendo un poema que contiene una dura metáfora sobre la melancolía y la hecatombe. Judith Beveridge nació en Londres, en 1956. Vive en Australia. Ha publicado los libros de poemas: La domesticidad de las jirafas (1987); Un paracaídas de azul (1995) y La gracia accidental (1996). Ha ganado diversos premios de Poesía en Australia. Se ha desempeñado como docente de Literatura y como colaboradora habitual de revistas y periódicos en su país. Fue incluida en la Antología de Poesía Contemporánea de Australia, editada por Trilce Editores, Bogotá, 1997.

 

 

Gurcharan Rampuri translated by Amritjit Singh and Judy Ray

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

Gurcharan Rampuri  (born 1929) has been writing poetry in Punjabi for six decades. Author of ten volumes of poetry, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1964. He has won many awards, and his poems have been translated into many languages, including Russian, Hindi, Gujarati, and English. His Collected Poems appeared in India in 2001. Many of his lyrical poems have been set to music and sung by well-known singers such as Surinder Kaur and Jagjit Zirvi.  He has won numerous awards in both India and Canada, including the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Punjabi Writers Forum of Vancouver, as well as the 2009 Achievement Award for Contributions to Punjabi Literature from the University of British Columbia.

Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English at Ohio University, is a freelance writer, editor, translator, and book reviewer. He has authored and co-edited well over a dozen books, including The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance; Indian Literature in English, 1827-1979: An Information Guide; India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing; Conversations with Ralph Ellison; Postcolonial Theory and the United States; The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman; and Interviews with Edward W. Said

 


Judy Ray grew up on a farm in Sussex, England, and has lived in Uganda, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Currently she lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is a volunteer ESL teacher. Her books and chapbooks include Pebble Rings, Pigeons in the Chandeliers, The Jaipur Sketchbook, Tokens, Tangents, Fishing in Green Waters, and To Fly without Wings.  With poet David Ray, she has edited Fathers: A Collection of Poems (St. Martin’s, 1997).

 

 

Ghazal

 

Love smiles when it stumbles.
A star shines throughout its fall.

It takes an age to numb just one pain.
The next moment awakens another hundred.

How can one sleep when longing for the absent one,
And who will sleep on the night of love?

Sadness is my only companion.
Who would befriend me in my melancholy?

The peacocks cry even as they dance.
The swan sings even as it dies.

Beauty yearns for love
as surely as the moon goes around the earth.

One thought contains the universe.
The moon illumines a dewdrop.


Ghazal

 

I have just burned your letters.
Look, I have bathed in the fire!

Through this pilgrimage to the grave of love
I have revived forgotten pains.

The smooth dark night of your hair –
my fingers have caressed its lush shadows.

I have spent a tearful night
and the dawn is red-eyed.

I have consoled my weeping heart
by imagining scenes of intimacy.

The stars want an encore
though I am done telling my tale.

Life is both sorrow and music,
and I just sang your song.

To light up a glimpse of you in my dreams
I extinguish my own lamp.

Songs, Promises, Tears, Hopes
have won over my estranged lover. 

 

Pet Lies

 

Lies, lies, lies all the time, repeated
until they become today’s truth.

A lie sits in the seat of power,
lies are armed with daggers,
lies have many followers.

The platform sure is crowded, in thick fog,
with the confused old holy man in command at the center.
A deafening racket blasts all around
and dark clouds of ruthless death
overshadow the skies.

Brutality, rage, fear and helplessness prevail,
but we cannot escape the need for food.
The terrifying abyss of need has deepened.
Death lies in ambush at every corner.

There is someone walking toward me,
but I don’t know if he is friend or foe.
Should I trust his smile, or is it poison?
I will not make eye contact with him,
weighed down as I am by guilt
of sins I didn’t commit.

These cheats and cowardly braggarts
keep on throwing dust in the people’s eyes,
leading them on with deceitful, well-rehearsed lies.

Professional politicians on the one hand
and the ruling elite on the other,
together they have built their empire of lies.

 

Opportunists

 

Yesterday’s friends are today’s foes.

Even a brother has a sinister look about him. 

Now he accuses with stinging words.

Blood relationships are meaningless. 

Today, venomous arrows, daggers, poniards, lances

are plunged into the hearts of one’s own.

 

Yesterday’s enemies are in close embrace today.

With wounds from the sword healed,

these sycophants ignore the poison of hate in their hearts

as they dance to the pipes of self-interest,

kiss and lick each other.

 

Labels pinned on one person yesterday

are now used for another.

Those who were called corrupt

are now held to be virtuous. 

It is easy to line up arguments

to justify any good or bad deeds.

 

Since the dead will not return,

who will want to lose today’s profit for their sake?

In pursuing a dream of ideals,

who will ignore the weight of power?

Who will sacrifice national interests

and ignore the lines that divide communities?

 

Who can beat these sharp villains in glib debate?

So what if they commit awful deeds?


Today

Yesterday was bearing

a dream called Today.

 

Revolutionary fervor for the dream

powered a restless sleep.

 

The enchanting dream

smiled like a golden dawn.

 

The cursed mother committed

a horrendous crime, killed the newborn dream.

Then with a wild laugh

she went alone and buried the baby.

 

Yesterday bore Today,

but Today also had a dream which the mother killed.

Now the stunned, murderous soul

stares at the empty space.

Nathanael O’Reilly

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

A dual Australian-Irish citizen, Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool and raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton. He has lived in England, Ireland, Germany, Ukraine and the United States, where he currently resides. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Antipodes, Harvest, Windmills, LiNQ, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, and Blackmail Press. He is the author of the chapbook Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010).

 

 

 

Driving in Texas

I.

A woman pushes a baby
In a stroller down the centre
Of a busy four-lane highway
As traffic speeds by on either side.

II.

A black pick-up truck overloaded
With tools, bricks and buckets
Weaves in and out of its lane
On a narrow county road.

III.

Three African-Americans kneel
In the grass facing away from the road,
Their hands cuffed behind their backs
As cops search their Cadillac.

IV.

A helmetless motorcyclist wearing
Shorts and t-shirt hurtles down
The freeway at ninety miles per hour
Zigzagging through heavy traffic.

V.

Five white flower-adorned crosses
Ranging in descending order
From daddy-sized to baby-sized
Testify in the grass beside the highway.

VI.

A roadside canvas marquee bears
A hand painted sign proclaiming
Holy Spirit Revival
7:30 nightly            24/7 prayer

 

Too Young

We killed time at the empty skate park
In Matamata, where I pretended I had
A board, running up the quarterpipe
Chucking one-eighties, sliding along
Steel rails, simulating ollies and kickflips
While your mum toured hobbit holes.
Too young to be embarrassed,
You thought I was hilarious.

Worn out, we retired to a main street café
Where we drank chocolate milk and a latte
While sharing an Anzac biscuit,
Then drove until we found a playground.
You joined in with the Maori kids,
Too young to know or care about race
Or nationality, rolling down an embankment
Into a pile of crunchy June leaves
While I exchanged nods with the other dads.

When your mum returned from the tour
We took the narrow backroads in the rain
To Te Awamutu, hoping in vain to find
A monument to the Finns. We had to settle
For Waikato Draught at the Commercial Hotel.
You sipped lemonade, too young to understand
Why we cared about music from New Zealand.

 

 

Dean Gui

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Dean Gui is first generation Hong Kong born, having left when he was fifteen from King George V School to finish high school in Saint John’s School of Alberta, Canada, an all-boys’ Anglican boarding school. He spent the next twenty years living in the USA, the first sixteen of those in Chicago, and the last four in California. Getting back into academia was the last thing on his list of things to do after a BA in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing to follow from the University of Illinois… but through the guidance and wisdom of one friend in particular, he taught his first high school English class in 2000. Since then, Dean has made a career of teaching. His poetry has been published in small press around North America, in magazines such as Arizona State Poetry, Innisfree, and Worm Feast.

 

 

King

 

the perfect princess

took off her tiara this morning

after a fierce night

bumping with celeda and the queens

peeling off a cat suit

claws and lashes

she plopped down onto her loo

a darling cigarette between dry lips

bent-over churning inside 

exhaling into a black and white

photo album cracked open on the floor

full of black and blue memories

of a little boy

with little girl dreams

pink wallpaper

golden lips

skin like powdered lilies

wishing everyone away

and when the wigless, crownless

princess scratched her balls

clicked her heels three times

and whispered

“there’s no place…”

“there’s no place…”

“there’s no place…”

the sun suddenly disappeared

shadows laid out another line

and with three snorts, starlight, and stardom in her eyes

quasi life had begun again

 

Eurasian

 

dragon eyes

durians

guavas

sister you are missed

 

sinigang

feijoada

lang mein

mother you are missed

 

peppered gizzard

boiled pig’s blood

fried fermented tofu

grandmother you are missed

 

hamburger helper

ramen noodles

uncle ben’s

dinners are just not the same

anymore

 

Michael Farrell

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Michael Farrell’s most recent books are a raiders guide (Giramondo), and as coeditor (with Jill Jones) Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann). ‘word seen from a bus’ and ‘country from a mans neck’ were written during an Asialink residency in Nagoya.

 

word seen from a bus

 

Maybe a word i know. But the mountains are covered-in,

different examples-of forest different water reflects. A bittern rises

from the page like a stick &s gone, it was a vision, white

word of childhood myth. Read unread.

 

Its context, framed Perfectly, the single word was there room or time for another?

 

a word in the river.

Or the sky: hawk

 

perhaps. Man woman or sugar

 

Could be anything.

Readers snooze,

Its like the midwest,

Or eden-monaro,

At home id-know,

 

Feels like glass,

A name,

Lifted by a crane,

Word post-card,

With without wings-amen,

 

country in a mans neck

Happiness in the night, last.

I know where im supposed to take you,

on stage, for a moment.

 

the tiny venue, the throbbing figures

 

nothing i can quote, but i approximate

by writing there were lots of toys,

& Nothing like a jimmy barnes oh.

 

Nothing i can quote, but i approximate,

 

these notions come from reading books by tanizaki,

 

The absent pearl earring draws my attention to his dark white neck.

 

Ive taken off my coat & my popover & remain inactive cool.

 

halfway home between one & another like an oyster…

 

a less observant guy than youd miss my thirsty shoe…

 

(not a better metonym than ass)

‘alluring aspect’ –

 

(unknown to the uncolonised as scrub)

‘or greenitude’ –

 

no sun Fell Hard

on my mental verandah

or the mushroom underneath.

The product of short days

 

 

Claire Potter

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Claire Potter was a Poets Union Fellow in 2006. She is author of two chapbooks, In Front of a Comma (Poets Union, 2006) and N’ombre (Vagabond, 2007). Her first full-length collection, Swallow, will be published this October (Five Islands Press). She lives and works in London.

 

 

Our Lady Of The Cave

From the ancient tale,
the miniature cries come to me
and I see what the monk saw
in the folds of the woman’s cape:
hundreds of young birds
in a maze of warm silence
and her arms stretching out
into the blue timbre of morning
The woman softly
ushered the birds away, said they were
no longer sleeping, promised the anxious monk
that the swallows would return and fill his hallowed
parish with the credence of vagrancy––
for what is unsettling in nymphs
is celebrated in tiny birds


Genet Lesson

Three metres apart   It’s snowing & tiny fronds of ice zigzag
between us    I reach across to you      but knock a mirror––   
realise you are on my other side        turn
right––   you are not there    left and you are blue,
 
from out of the
 
hand from the mirror takes mine & you reappear  
this time dressed in Chaplin   frill of dark mist edges you
nicely   & I’d like to take a picture   but have only an umbrella
 
decaying flowers, violets of which the bouquet, lest we forget, becomes
an umbrella, and vice-versa: the umbrellas are like bouquets,
and the bouquets are like umbrellas…
 
Suddenly, loss of order   & receding    Is, is
as is whatever    really right?
 
Three metres apart    but never so well expressed
of open air
 
O my rose    you whisper
          tap-dancing to curtain fall         
 
encore? 

 

 

The Tea Leaf Party 

My fretting friend & I
we’ll go slow tomorrow morning
not wasting any time––
 
We’ll trampoline trivial love
off the city pitches, spit
sugarplums and
heckle daisies with
ears pressed firmly to the ground
 
We’ll girdle all bleached
histories, skip
outside the radiation hoops
 
and below bad-mannered moustaches,
bray in raspy voices
to scare birds who open fire
from diamonds cut from sky
 
––Francis, come let me cradle
the qualms of your rocking suns
darn your memory pockets
with skeins of tightrope pulled
from a far-off star
 
and to the banksias who raise their
fiery brushes, the thurifers
will resurrect light
across our barren ground
 
to a clearing of the Sound
where ribaldry and tea
are taken not instinctively
but to catch leaves before they brown
 
 

 

Yvette Holt

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Yvette Holt heralds from the Bidjara Nation of Queensland, born and raised in Brisbane, Yvette is a multi-award winning poet, academic and feminist. She has lectured on Aboriginal Women Studies and Australian History in an Indigenous Context at the University of Queensland and the Australian Catholic University respectively. Her research has been in Indigenous Australian literature with a particular focus on Aboriginal womens’ poetry, Yvette is also a passionate advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their leadership on a state and national level.

Her prizes include the Scanlon Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing for her collection, Anonymous Premonition, and the 2010 Kate Challis Award.

 

 

Always My Lover

  
my lover the colour of candescent brandy seducing an Indian summer/
my lover the reason I leave diamond kisses scattered across an auburn, morning waist/
my lover, skin sweeter then Belgian chocolate dusted with perfumed spices/
my lover amethyst fingers endlessly melting every breath behind my sigh/
my lover the reason I read poetry to our unsuspecting goldfish/
always my love, forever my lover/

Motherhood

(Dedicated to Cheyenne Holt)
I love my suburban backyard and sharing it with you
lying on the trampoline just mother and daughter
and making funny animal shapes out of the soft marshmallow clouds
 
then when night falls we begin to count the twinkling stars on our hands and feet laughing at the passing
red kangaroos flying high above our mango tree
I love watching you transplant a leaf from our garden as you impatiently wait for it to grow
 
sometimes I squint while trying on new clothes in front of her though because no matter what I buy or choose to wear I always seem to
end up looking like a six foot-tall full-figured Barbie doll or maybe even a Ken
 
I like playing big sissy with you and rolling around on my bed, begging you to stop tickling me until I fall hard
onto the floor then I get all too serious and fed up but you just laugh hysterically and say ‘C’mon mummy that was
fun let’s do it again’
 
I look forward to dancing with you every Sunday morning and singing ‘I am woman hear me roar’ karaoke style
with my tired and worn-out hair brush
I love calling you from interstate and telling you I’ll be home tomorrow
 
there are so many things I love about motherhood but we keep it real and have our fair share of difficult moments
too like homework time, always radioactive in our neck of the woods, or asking her to clean out her bedroom for
the umpteenth time because I’m unable to see the carpet
 
and yes I know I totally freaked out when you told your school friends that Mr. Bean was really your father
because at the next P & C meeting I felt like the black adder
 
but through it all if motherhood were a mountain then you’ve taken me to the highest peak and if daughters were
flowers growing in the garden
you would always be me one and only sweet                     

Trippin’Over Your Tongue


The littering of literature fills my living space
I break and enter like a thief in the night
Selling my words on the black market page
Pawning my thoughts for a night on the town
Then peeling the label from a bus shelter wall
Trading my soul for a leather bound classic
Collecting collectibles
Like a crazed butterfly
Embracing your tongue
Before you have spoken
Recycling your dreams
Triggering my pen
Before I commence
Exchanging your whisper
For a reloaded quill
Sifting through texture on
The black poet’s corner
Moulding your ideas
Into something more or less
Bringing to boil
A melting pot of languages
Simmering over time
Sprinkling through the ages
To be or not to be
Obesity of our words
Gathering up the pounds
Charring the midnight ink
“Motherhood” and “Tirppin’ Over Your Tongue” first appeared in Anonymous Premonition, (University of Queensland Press, 2008)