En festival som verkar vara väldigt välorganiserad och som dessutom har en alldeles utmärkt webbsajt är, Ledbury Poetry Festival. Ledbury ligger i West Midlands, England, nära fantastiska omgivningar. Årets festival gick av stapeln 3-12 juli och det gick att lyssna till flera prominenta författare, däribland: Simon Armitage, Pam Ayres, Sophie Hannah, Jane Yeh, Denise Riley, Imtiaz Dharker, Don Paterson, för att nämna några.
Festivalen har varje år en speciellt inbjuden festivalpoet. I år gick den äran till den skotske poeten John Burnside. Jag hittade en bok av honom i Stockholms stadsbibliotek. Jag har valt en dikt om den japanska teaterformen No.
A noh mask, by John Burnside (f. 1955)
(from A normal skin. London : Cape Poetry, 1997.)
There's the pleasure of wearing a mask
in childhood:
of holding your breath
and thinking you've really changed,
becoming a smoother skin, a harder stare,
or peeling away the face you wear for others
and finding a darker child
at the back of your mind,
two parts pretence, though still
all tooth and claw.
A chance to suffer, too; to be freak.
For moments at a time I could become
one of those babies they showed at the county fair,
sealed in its jar like a plum, forever
hanging, in a smoke of formalin.
But this is different: the mask
another face that's waited in the flesh
to be expressed:
as if I'd promised, all along, to match
the white of your Shakumi with my bronzed
Shikami - not a real pretence at all,
only the game we've played
a hundred times:
echo and answer, memory and fear,
negotiated space, between the smiles.
***
Denise Riley drog direkt från Ledbury till "SoundEye Poetry Festival" i Cork, Irlands näst största stad. Det är en mindre festival med fina traditioner som pågår i dagarna tre. I år var det 19:e upplagan och den pågick mellan 10:e och 12:e juli.
Den innehåller huvudsakligen uppläsningar av olika poeter, såväl etablerade som mindre kända. Denise var väl ett av huvudnumren. Sången som citeras i dikten sjöng Gene Pitney, 1967. Ett fint år!
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| Denise Riley |
A misremembered lyric, by Denise Riley (f. 1948)
(from Selected Poems. Reality Street Editions London, 2000.)
A misremembered lyric: a soft catch of its song
whirrs in my throat. ‘Something’s gotta hold of my heart
tearing my’ soul and my conscience apart, long after
presence is clean gone and leaves unfurnished no
shadow. Rain lyrics. Yes, then the rain lyrics fall.
I don’t want absence to be this beautiful.
It shouldn’t be; in fact I know it wasn’t, while
‘everything that consoles is false’ is off the point –
you get no consolation anyway until your memory’s
dead; or something never had gotten hold of
your heart in the first place, and that’s the fear thought.
Do shrimps make good mothers? Yes they do.
There is no beauty out of loss; can’t do it –
and once the falling rain starts on the upturned
leaves, and I listen to the rhythm of unhappy pleasure
what I hear is bossy death telling me which way to
go, what I see is a pool with an eye in it. Still let
me know. Looking for a brand-new start. Oh and never
notice yourself ever. As in life you don’t.
***
I dag startar två olika festivaler, en i Norge (Skåtøy Vise- og Poesifestival) och en i Suffolk, England. Den i Suffolk är en kulturfestival med åtskilliga scener för allehanda konstarter. Men jag förstår inte varför den saknar ett fullständigt program.
Det är tråkigt och känns inte så lätt att följa. Jag har åtminstone lyckats läsa mig till att Clare Pollard förekommer under den sista dagen, 19 juli.
Hon har en mycket fin meritlista. Hon vann Eric Gregory Award som tjugoåring, 1998. Hennes fjärde diktsamling, Changeling (2011), erhöll Poetry Society's rekommendation. The Independent tog 2003 med henne på listan över de intressantaste författarna under 30.
Mission Beach, by Clare Pollard (f. 1978)
(from Look, Clare! Look!. Bloodaxe, 2005)
The hotel sat wild upon the hill,
amongst snakes dripping, paint, down the strangler fi gs.
We awoke to the croaks of purse-jawed frogs,
then breakfast in the green glow of fan-palms:
coffee, sun-split yoghurt, an ocean’s wink.
Cassowaries, those boneheads, those prehistoric freaks,
padded amongst our rooms, creaky as puppets,
attacking the tourists – fi erce despite their fewness –
striding boldly out before the bulb-eyed beasts
of four-wheel drives.
The beach was perfect: just us.
I began to strip, all elbows and daring, and my breasts
fl opped out, slightly silly and as blinding as the sand.
My nipples were that pink inside conch shells.
How we rushed into the splash, shedding everything!
We fell nude into the brilliant, cool, illuminated sea
and I have never been so happy.
My body could feel itself.
The wine tapped like adrenalin in my brow, and you,
you were slippery as a dolphin in my arms…
My love,
we didn’t know that it was stinger season –
that my breasts might have been whipped raw,
that your beautiful hairy chest might have fl oated
bang into a jellied sack of pain.
That you might have had to piss on me.
That your heart could have stopped.
I have never been so happy.
I jumped and wrestled with you,
all the while thinking thankyou, thankyou –
though I didn’t believe in god,
only those ancient blue-black birds
quietly loping in the forest above us.
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