poets of the world

The last post was about Fernando Pizarro, a local poet from NW Spain.  The best information I could find about him was here: https://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/fernando-pizarro-garcia-17302.html


Afterwards I started to the explore https://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.co.uk/ a bit more widely and realized that its scope is giddying.  (The highly productive editor is  the poet Fernando Sabido Sánchez.)


 There must be samples of about 2,000 Spanish poets alone, 1,250 Mexican, more than 1,800 Argentinian...  and a bit of most other countries: 250 UK poets,  1,000 Americans, 55 Haitians, 144 Guatemalans, 70 Finns, 64 Iranians, 42 Icelanders,  102 Swedes, 133 Japanese, 92 Vietnamese, 60 Morroccans  ..(  For a few countries the coverage is surprisingly light: just 17 Nigerians and 8 Pakistanis, for example. )


 Poems may appear in the original language or translations (Spanish, English, German...) . Annoyingly for the purposes of this blog post, the texts are not electronically copyable.


In such a vast horde is it possible to find the silence needed to encounter a poem? 


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from Gieve Patel (India), "Bombay Central"


That odour does not offend,
The station's high and cool vault
Sucks it up and sprays down instead,
Interspersed with miraculous, heraldic
Shafts of sunlight, an eternal
Station odour, amalgam
of diesel oil, hot steel, cool rails,
Light and shadow, human sweat,
Metallic distillations, dung, urine,
Newspaper ink, Parle's Gluco Biscuits,
And sharp noisy sprays of water from taps
With worn-out bushes, all
hitting the nostril as one singular
Invariable atmospheric thing,
Seeping into your clothing
The way cigarette smoke and air-conditioning
Seep into you at cinema halls ....




https://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/gieve-patel-15691-poeta-de-india.html




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from Sandeep Parmar (UK), "Against Chaos (after Jagit Singh)"






He who has not strode the full length of age, has counted
then lost count of days that swallow, like fever, dark chaos,


And you, strange company in the backseat of childhood,
propped on the raft of memory like some god of chaos,


You threaten to drown me: wind through palmed streets.
Oracle of grief. The vagrant dance of figures in chaos


carting trash over tarmac. Stench of Popeye's Chicken,
the Capitol Records building, injecting light and chaos


into the LA sky. That paper boat in rainwater, rushing, dives
out of my reach and old women give no order here to chaos, ...




https://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/sandeep-parmar-17667-poeta-de-inglaterra.html


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Fun ways to improve your Spanish: pick a pretty straightforward funny poet (such as Australia's Emmie Rae https://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/emmie-rae-15094-poeta-de-australia.html ), read one of the poems in English, then read the Spanish translation.


new york city


sent you home a picture of my naked chest and
your were like, shit is dangerous on the internet
for your sake I'm deleting that and when I
ordered a small iced coffee it was twice the
size of my head and I hugged it like a real
boyfriend or a baby which seemed appropriate
considering the circumstances I guess.


nueva york


te envié a casa una foto de mi pecho desnudo
y te pusiste como "esta mierda es peligrosa en internet,
lo borraré por tu bien" y pedí un café con un trozo de hielo
de dos veces el tamaño de mi cabeza y lo abracé como
si fuera my verdadero novio o como a un bebé porque
teniendo en cuenta las circunstancias
parecía lo corecto, supongo




(Translation by Óscar García Sierra)