ROBERT MINHINNICK [16.673] Poeta de Gales

Robert Minhinnick

(Neath, Gales, Gran Bretaña, 1952).

Robert Minhinnick es un autor galés de reconocida trayectoria internacional (ganador entre otros del UK Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem); ha publicado ocho poemarios (el último, King Driftwood) y una novela Sea Holly (2007). Robert fue el editor durante nueve años de la revista Poetry Wales y combina su labor de escritor con la de asesor experto en desarrollo sostenible para Sustainable Wales.

OBRA: 

POESÍA:

The Yellow Palm (1998)

A Thread in the Maze (1978) C. Davies

Native Ground (1979) Triskele

Life Sentences (1983) Poetry Wales

The Dinosaur Park (1985) Poetry Wales

The Looters (1989) Seren Press

Hey Fatman (1994) Seren Press

Selected Poems (1999)

After the Hurricane (2002)

King Driftwood (2008)

After the Stealth Bomber

NOVELAS:

Sea Holly (2007) Seren Press

ENSAYOS:

Watching the Fire Eater (1992) Seren Press

The Green Agenda: Essays on The Environment of Wales (ed.) (1994) Seren Press

Badlands (1996) Seren Press

To Babel and Back (2005) Seren Press

TRADUCCIONES:

The Adulterer's Tongue: Six Welsh Poets: A Facing-Text Anthology (ed., transl.) (2003)

Un día y una noche en la república cruda

¿No hay ningún galés esta noche?.... ¿Ningún irlandés?.... ¿Ningún  pinche australiano?

(Kelly Jones, The Stereophonics, concierto gratuito al aire libre, Sydney, 18 de abril de 2010)

Y los murciélagos frugívoros

cruzan el escenario en donde está la banda,

pero Kelly Jones no pregunta si esta noche hay murciélagos frugívoros.

Kelly Jones no comprende a los murciélagos frugívoros.

Kelly Jones no ve los murciélagos frugívoros.

Kelly Jones no es D. H. Lawrence

aunque son casi del mismo porte,

enjutos como gavilanes.

Y Kelly Jones no pregunta si David Herbert Lawrence está esta noche, detrás de

los hules, en el crepúsculo índigo,

deslizándose por el escenario, o colgando de cabeza como cuelgan los murciélagos frugívoros.

Kelly no tiene ojos de lentejuela o una lengua para picotear el néctar.

Ahora el cielo se ha puesto

color de oxiacetileno. Pero Kelly Jones

no cambia de clave.

[Versión de Pedro Serrano]

Poesía galesa contemporánea, traducción y prólogo de Jorge Fondebrider, Pedro Serrano y Verónica Zondek; con Luciana Cordo Russo y Rhiannon Gwyn. Editará Trilce, México DF

A Day and Night in the Raw Republic

Any Welsh in tonight? …..   Any Irish? …..Any fuckin Australians? 

(Kelly Jones, The Stereophonics, outdoor free concert, Sydney, April 18, 2010)

And the fruit bats cruise over the stage where the band sits 

but Kelly Jones doesn’t ask if there are fruit bats in tonight.

Kelly Jones doesn’t understand fruit bats. 

Kelly Jones doesn’t see fruit bats.

Kelly Jones is not DH Lawrence 

although they are about the same size,

spare as sparrowhawks.

And Kelly Jones doesn’t ask if David Herbert Lawrence is in this evening, beneath the gum trees, in the indigo dusk,

gliding over the stage, or hanging upside down as fruit bats hang. 

Kelly Jones does not have sequin eyes or a nectar-nibbling tongue.

Now the sky turns the colour

of oxy acetylene. But Kelly Jones

does not change key.

The Rhinoceros by Robert Minhinnick

1.

Look at these.

Thaw sweat.

Smoke on the swale.

Swarf off a swollen sea.

2.

No.

These. World famous

footprints at low water. Nine

thousand years old, they say, but who’s

counting. Not me.

Yet maybe I am.

3.

A small man. Or woman. Outcast

or outlaw, hunter, flintknapper, cook.

All of these.

Yes, a woman, pregnant once again,

and coming home through the red mud.

4.

Or maybe she was dancing.

Yes, a woman, I guess,

who loved to dance

and paint her eyes with kohl and ochre

and squat to squint at herself

in some rock pool and ask

“what are you?”

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5.

At night before she slept

she would breathe her harsh

hashish and tell her story behind the flames

about the brine-bright animals

she had scratched into the sand:

her wolf,

her bear,

her rhinoceros.

Yes, an armoured rhino

like the torrent poured golden

and smoking from the blast furnace ladle,

a rhino where the glacier will be

and coming out of the sun,

a rhino she will picture

with her goatwillowstick

on the last morning she will wake.

The Yellow Palm by Robert Minhinick

As I made my way down Palestine Street

I watched a funeral pass -

all the women waving lilac stems

around a coffin made of glass

and the face of the man who lay within

who had breathed a poison gas.

As I made my way down Palestine Street

I heard the call to prayer

and I stopped at the door of the golden mosque

to watch the faithful there

but there was blood on the walls and the muezzin’s eyes

were wild with his despair.

As I made my way down Palestine Street

I met two blind beggars

And into their hands I pressed my hands

with a hundred black dinars;

and their salutes were those of the Imperial Guard

in the Mother of all Wars.

As I made my way down Palestine Street

I smelled the wide Tigris,

the river smell that lifts the air

in a city such as this;

but down on my head fell the barbarian sun

that knows no armistice.

As I made my way down Palestine Street

I saw a Cruise missile,

a slow and silver caravan

on its slow and silver mile,

and a beggar child turned up his face

and blessed it with a smile.

As I made my way down Palestine Street

under the yellow palms

I saw their branches hung with yellow dates

all sweeter than salaams,

and when that same child reached up to touch,

the fruit fell in his arms.

.