TOM POW
Tom Pow nació en Edimburgo el 25 de mayo de 1950. Su padre era un artista influenciado por el surrealismo, que enseñó en Moray House y Edinburgh College of Art, así como en las escuelas. Tom Pow estudió Historia Medieval en la Universidad de St Andrews, luego enseñó durante varios años en Edimburgo, Londres y Madrid antes de establecerse en Dumfries, donde se convirtió en un profesor de Inglés en Dumfries Academia. Fue Jefe de Estudios Creativos y Culturales de la Universidad de Glasgow Campus Crichton, Dumfries. Es ahora Honorario Senior Research Fellow allí, y también da clases en la Universidad de Lancaster en el MA de Educación a Distancia en Escritura Creativa.
Bibliografía:
Rough Seas (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1987)
The Moth Trap (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1990)
Red Letter Day (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1996)
Landscapes (with linocuts by Hugh Bryden) (Dumfries: Cacafuego Press, 1999)
Landscapes and Legacies (Aberdour: inyx, 2003)
Sparks! (with Diana Hendry) (Edinburgh: Mariscat, 2005)
Transfusion (Nottingham: Shoestring, 2007)
Dear Alice: narratives of madness (Cambridge: Salt, 2008)
In the Becoming: new and selected poems (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2009)
In Another World : among Europe's dying villages (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2012)
A Wild Adventure, Thomas Watling, Dumfries Convict Artist (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2014)
Concerning the Atlas of Scotland and Other Poems (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2014)
Tom Pow:
La poesía es mi manera de ser en el mundo. Es la manera en que presto atención. Como epigrama para uno de mis libros usé un verso de Annie Dillard: "Estamos aquí como testigos". La poesía es mi manera de ser un testigo. También me ofrece el gusto de hacer.
En lengua escocesa "poeta" y "hacedor" comparten la misma palabra: "makar". Y los poemas tienen que ser hechos con la misma atención para funcionar y durar, al igual que cualquier otra cosa.
Escribo poesía porque da placer. Es, como en el caso de cualquier otra forma de arte, la mejor manera de jugar. Es también una manera de revelar el pensamiento y la emoción. Una vez que está en la página, puede ser interrogada o probada para descubrir lo honesto o lo cercano que ha sido el poeta a la experiencia.
DON QUIJOTE
(Versión rítmica en español a modo de soneto
por Benjamín Valdivia)
Es muy común que por cualquier razón
tras años de locuras obstinadas
se componga la mente. Las mujeres
cuyos nombres del alma anhelo fueron
en tiempo se diluyan cual nosotros.
En el espacio breve del final suspiro
los lances de la vida som risibles:
sus heridas ya son irremediables.
Y así acontece al pobre don Quijote
para enfrentar él mismo y su escudero
mentiras brutas que creyó eran glorias
"No muera", ruega Sancho al Don muriente.
Por una última historia cambiaría
tres reinos donde el sol no se ocultase.
Cangrejos: Tiree
Atamos un gusano de grasa de panceta
a una roca chata con tanza
y la lanzamos desde la orilla
al agua clara
de la bahía. Cayó suavemente
sobre la arena y las algas.
Un tirón nos dijo que había picado
o vimos al cangrejo mismo
aferrado a la grasa en jirones tirando de ella
de manera constante: ese era el truco.
Demasiado pronto, demasiado fuerte
y se dejaba caer desde la sombra
de su piedra, evadiendo torpemente
su destino. Pero suavemente
jalando de la áspera línea
de un puño al otro
y ellos venían a nosotros
como bultos de lava, el agua
escurriéndose por sus lomos.
Silenciosamente tercos
colgaban
de un a pinza improbable
antes de la sorda rajadura cuando golpeaban
contra la pared del muelle o el costado
de los baldes en que los conservábamos.
En hilera
cuatro o cinco de nosotros, chicos de vacaciones
competíamos diariamente hasta que cada
balde era una masa de agua salobre
de temible loza
burbujeante debajo
de su piel del agua salada.
¿Qué fue de todos ellos? –
nuestra fila de baldes, el gran hedor
de nuestro deporte veraniego.
Fue un chico rubio
de Glasgow quien finalmente me hizo caer
patas arriba desde donde
me agaché sobre el muro del muelle.
Cuando me enderecé
estaba hundido hasta la cintura en aguas
infestadas de cangrejos. Nadie
podía sacarme. “Tienes que caminar
hasta la orilla”, gritó mi hermana
mientras mantenía las manos
bien alto por encima de mi cabeza
pensando que al menos podría
salvarlas. Pero, ¡qué hermoso
era todo a mi alrededor! La salpicadura
de verdes parcelas
y lagunas de intenso azul,
los conejos, las flores amarillas
sobre la costa pelada. El cielo
era insondable; todo estaba en silencio.
Y yo estaba ahí
moviéndome lentamente a través
de esa perfecta cuña azul
cargando el terror en una mano, culpa
en la otra, dejando la estela breve
para marcar mi vergüenza.
Landscapes and Legacies, Iynx Publishing, Escocia, 2003
Traducción de Jorge Fondebrider
Nota de edición: Tiree, isla de Escocia, la más occidental de las Hébridas
Song XIV
Oh little apple and whither
are you rolling? Ever further
from the riverside, where she waits,
as still as a heron, for you.
Oh little apple, will this be
your last word? There are no last words.
The river flows on, as it must,
past you and the lonely heron.
Spanish Shavingpoem
As light dims, I take my shaver outside
to trim my holiday beard. The grey drifts
down to tinder-dry grasses; the small blades
chirr like insects as my blind hand sifts
through the stubble. That's when my wife appears
and sees at once something else we can share.
In tending each wanton bristle, she blanks
out all but the job at hand. A car roars
through the vineyards; a dog barks. The leaves
rattle in the almost breeze, while I lean
forward like an old man in surrender.
There was stubble behind his blue jaw-line
my father always missed. His late kisses
exposed it when, trusting in her answer,
he tipped his face towards my mother. His mask
briefly hovers in the warm evening air.
Between my face and it, my wife's sweet breath
travels the blind trajectory of love.
The Last Vision of Angus McKaypoem
Angus McKay, Queen Victoria's piper, went insane 'over study of music'. He was admitted to the Crichton Royal from Bedlam when he was 43 years old. 'His most prominent delusion is that her majesty is his wife and that Prince Albert has defrauded him of his rights' (Crichton case notes)
Let it be noted (in copperplate), Angus McKay
is a gentleman to watch. The stoutest furniture
is firewood to him; a mattress, within a day,
he'll disembowel. He has been known
to drink his own urine; to spit, shriek, howl
and hoot like an owl:
though this last
does not appear
in his case notes from Bedlam –
"hooting and howling" in southern parts
being thought not
abnormal for a Scot.
Nevertheless, there is enough on his native ground
to amaze and perplex his keepers.
Fuck it! Angus McKay has done with them all.
He eases himself into the rivercold waters of the Nith
across which lies Kirkconnell Wood
and his freedom. At that moment
(to which the record is blind)
no body being found, never mind
testament forthcoming)
something catches his eye – a sudden flurry and a bird
with two necks intertwined; one black, the other –
bodiless – a shimmering Islay malt brown.
Angus McKay watches, mesmerised
as the cormorant lifts its white-cheeked head
till its brassy twin – the eel – the lifting with it,
unwinds like a flailing clef and falls, bit by bit,
into perfect darkness.
This, thinks Angus McKay, is how
the bagpipe has devoured my life.
He lies on his back, drifting downstream,
shadowing the black bag of a bird through flanges of light,
past two gracefully disinterested swans. The eel rages still –
the cormorant's neck rising and falling
in a helpless hiccup. Up ahead, the bird will calm,
its neck settle again on its shoulders –
but there, the quicksand waits to welcome Angus McKay,
sipping him, limb by limb, into its dark and clammy hold.
That evening, owls will keen – in Gaelic –
from Kirkconnell Wood, where Angus McKay
perches, pale and dripping.
Will a soul never find peace? he asks.
Oh, where has my plump little lover gone –
and what's become of that shit, Prince Albert?
The Riverpoem
1. EVENING SKETCH
Night squats on the grey estate: the river,
the roads turn black. Up a deserted side-street
darkness tears away from a nakedly
lit shop-front: Mini-Cabs For Hire. Inside
a man, slumped on a frayed red settee, snores
before the T.V.'s vertiginous greens.
C & W, here is your soul: in this glimpsed
interior or on the waterfront,
where the hamburger man stares idly
through his caravan’s tight lozenge of light,
as two drunks, leaning into each command,
duel over their mongrel’s affections.
Later, in a bright, packed snug, one will lie
amongst broken glasses, weeping her shame,
as he cast narrow glances round the bar –
blue eyes blazing with fright and challenge.
2. FLIGHT
Someone kicks the blown pod of a mixer
to life, triggers a flock of birds. They rise
from their clenched roosts in a dark fan: splinters,
filings – a taut hawser, suddenly snapped,
disintegrated, sucked beyond a grey
zeppelin of cloud to where riverside
chestnuts shadow the milky amnion
and we appear – we, the giddy ones – corks
on the earth’s black waters. We are learning
slowly about pain: that however deeply
we trawl it, we will bob up again
into this cool, indifferent morning.
Here, to pluck the last overblown roses;
to watch birds fall on the lawn, like ashes.
3. FLOOD
Rather the sour dampness of her own rooms
that a Home. Rather the sofa’s chaos –
the urinous news, the anti-diet –
than the more orthodox regime.
Here to wait Death, like one of Cavafy’s
Senators, vast camiknickers soaking
up the blasting gas fire. Only a flood
could move her and, when the water do rise,
two policemen arrive. Her neighbours stand
at the edge of the great creeping puddle,
when, in the beam of a torch, she edges
her zimmer forward. Her hand trembles briefly
on her shawl – a gift meant for Christmas –
but her light-trapped face shakes off its tears.
4. NIGHT WALK
In the evening park, swings hang preter-
naturally still: horseshoes of packed ice
catch the pale moonlight. Deep in his enclosure,
the fallow deer tucks his nose into his haunches
till he is perfect form – stone or mask:
though the dark seaweed of his horns crowns him
like an ancient curse. Through black conifers
the creme turret of the local museum
commands the town: its death mask is a prize
amongst the rusting leg-irons. And what
has this chalk edifice to tell – the tin lips,
the fin of the nose – of evil? The moon
sidles from a cloud, looks down on the blank
physiognomy of this night, this park, this town.
5. SUMMER RITUAL
On hot days, the boys left their riverside
campfire beneath the viaduct to swim
and clown about in the centre of town.
Desperate beings! The sun ran down
their knuckled spines; dried the wet scallops
their buttocks left on the wall in lines. soon
a challenge grew: who could walk the white seam
of the weir, cupping water in his hands?
We waved back at countless waxen soles, watched
armless bodies totter and twist, to see
who could seal their sparkling gift and bear it
across the river. In the end, one was dredged
from a feculent pool; his pale face veined
by a lime-green weed, he fingers dripping tears.
6. THE RIVER BY NIGHT
It’s strange to hear that clear bell toll over
the containers’ nocturnal manoeuvres:
it reminds of pensions in foreign towns
with the shutters open wide and, as here,
lights strung out along a river. The water
ruffles like old flesh; each eddy drawing
a meniscus of light: an infinite
tremor of energy. In such domains
I read the capacious remedies of love,
the twisted spools of memory, which burn
but don’t go out. Yet this night river soothes
something deeper still, I can no more name
or touch than foretell where tomorrow’s gulls
will land – or try the hunger of their beaks.
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