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Bara genom att studera nedanstående introduktion från arrangörernas sida så inser man att detta är Poesifestivalen med stort P. I år går den av stapeln 30/6 till 9/7. Något år ska jag besöka den, det har jag lovat mig själv. Det framgår av stycket att årets utnämnda festivalpoet är Fiona Sampson. Mitt första diktexempel blir en fin dikt av henne som nyligen publicerades i Irish Times.
[International poetry is ever a strong feature of the programme, with a focus on Romanian women poets lead by the Festival poet in residence Fiona Sampson including legendary poet Ana Blandiana.
Acclaimed Kurdish poet Bejan Matur reads with T.S. Eliot award winner Jen Hadfield, American poets Thomas Lynch and Tony Hoagland read together and poet Choman Hardi, a Kurdish poet who sought asylum in the UK in 1993 will perform from her new collection.
Annual festival highlight Versopolis will showcase emerging European poets, in performance and translation including Charlotte Van de Broeck (Belgium), Nikolina Andova (Macedonia), Veronika Dintinjana (Slovenia) with two of their UK counterparts, Kayo Chingonyi and Helen Mort.]
Källa: Ledbury Poetry Festival
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Fiona Sampson är publicerad på mer än trettio språk, genom tjugofem volymer poesi, kritik och språkfilosofi. Hon var tidigare redaktör för Poetry Review men gör fortfarande arbeten som kritiker inom dagspress och på nationell radio. Hon är professor i poesi vid University of Roehampton, där hon också redigerar the international quarterly Poem. Källa: University of Roehampton
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Rise and fall, by Fiona Sampson
(Published in Irish Times, 2017-03-25.)
 |
| "The Rooks Have Returned" (1871) Alexei Savrasov |
On grey days rooks bounce
slowly on thermals above the trees
opposite the house they rise
and fall without seeming to care
it’s all a fallacy of course
because without human life
the house stills like something dead
and throws that stillness out of window
after window its blank stare
deadening the fields around it
what story could have you walk
into this deserted valley
one morning like the first who
came this way after something
broke in the old life did you
live here then the time of iron
posts and axles time of stone
barns time of planting fruit
in clearings where the first trees
were hauled down and burned the house
was busy then between wars
that came and went like weather were you
equal to it so much labour
squandered by the thing that broke
the old life down they are not calm
these ruined and empty houses
that used to fly their roofs like banners
of occupation or of hope
***
Tony Hoagland föddes 1953 i Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Han tog en BA från University of Iowa och en MFA från University of Arizona. Hoaglands poesi är känd för sina akrobatiska, kvicka anspelningar på det moderna livet. Källa: Poetry Foundation
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Description, by Tony Hoagland
(From Unincorporated persons in the late Honda dynasty : poems. Minneapolis, MN : Graywolf Press, 2010.)
A bird with a cry like a cell phone says something
to a bird which sounds like a manual typewriter.
Out of sight in the woods, the creek trickles
its ongoing sentence; from treble to baritone,
from dependent clause to interrogative.
The trees rustle over the house: they are excited
to be entering the poem
in late afternoon, when the clouds are creamy and massive,
as if to illustrate contentment.
And maybe a wind will pluck off the last dead leaves;
and a cold rain will splash
dainty white petals from the crab apple tree
down to the ground,
the pink and the brown mingled there,
like two different messages scribbled over each other.
In all of this a place must be
reserved for human suffering:
the sick and unloved, the chemically confused;
the ones who believe desperately in insight;
the ones addicted to change.
How our thoughts clawed and pummeled the walls.
How we tried but could not find our way out.
In the wake of our effort, how we rested.
How description was the sign of our acceptance.
***
Jag avslutar med en begravningsentrepenör.
Thomas Lynch (född 1948 i Detroit, Michigan) är en amerikansk poet, essäist och begravningsentrepenör.
Lynch utbildades av nunnor och kristna bröder vid Brother Rice High School i Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Lynch gick sedan till universitet och mortician school, från vilken han tog examen 1973. Han tog över sin faders begravningsbyrå i Milford, Michigan 1974, ett jobb som han haft sedan dess. Källa: Wikipedia
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The Grandmothers, by Thomas Lynch
(From Poetry Magazine, March 1982.)
A hundred sixty years of lucid memory sit
under a plump umbrella on the patio -
two widows nursing whiskey sours argue politics:
my grandmothers. When they turned 80 we began
to mark their changes as we might a child's
in terms of sight, mobility and appetite,
teeth and toilet habits, clarity of speech
a thousand calibers of round flight
by which my children make their distance now from me.
Sometimes I think of them as parts of me . . .
I think their ageless quarrels come to roost
like odd birds with an awkward plumage in my blood.
The one says tend your own twigs, peep & preen.
The other wings beyond the kindly orbit here
and sings, and sings, and sings.
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