JEN HADFIELD [17.666] Poeta de Inglaterra

Jen Hadfield

Cheshire, Inglaterra 1978

Jen Hadfield. Creció en Cheshire. Estudió Letras Inglesas en la Universidad de Edimburgo y obtuvo mención honorífica en su máster en escritura creativa conjunta en las Universidades de Glasgow y Strathclyde. Actualmente radica en Shetland, donde escribió su primer libro Almanacs (Bloodaxe, 2005), ganador del premio Eric Gregory en 2003.

Bibliografía:

Almanacs, Bloodaxe, Hexham, 2005

The Printer's Devil & The Little Bear, Redlake Press/Rogue Seeds, Clun, 2006

Nigh-No-Place, Bloodaxe, Hexham, 2008

Byssus, Picador, London, 2014.

Traducción de Juana Adcock (Monterrey, 1982. Es poeta y traductora).

Poemas publicados originalmente en Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe, 2008). 

Erizo, Hamnavoe

Encogiéndose en mis manos

este corazón percudido y con estoperoles pero bondadoso,

que puntea mis palmas ahuecadas, respira:

riñón encogiéndose en parrilla caliente,

o motociclista muy pequeño, arrancado de la orilla

de una dulce, balbuciente mañana.

Borracha, lo mimo como a una bola de cristal,

empecinada en que los misterios realistas

deberían resultar algo más que conjeturas

               y pulgas.

Hedgehog, Hamnavoe

Flinching in my hands

this soiled and studded but good heart,

which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

a kidney flinching on a hot griddle,

or very small Hell’s Angel, peeled from the verge

of a sweet, slurred morning.

Drunk, I coddle it like a crystal ball,

hellbent the realistic mysteries

should amount to more than guesswork

                and fleas.

Tabú

Quieres mirar a la pradera

en el invierno, el pantano engrosándose

como la pared uterina,

reventando sus bejines

y cremando su pinguicula,

doblándose en el rocío del sol y scilla,

apagando los ojos brillantes.

Preguntas dónde

pernoctan

—probarán pozas en las alturas

de los rojos cerros

del invierno,

patas traseras levantando destellos

de lluvia roja—

buscarán su nicho

de turba que se desmorona.

Peregrinos de tal

orden asceta

ni siquiera dueños

de los colores espectrales

de la nieve.

No, ésa es la bandera blanca

en la Esquina Amén.

Ése es tu corazón latiendo

diecinueve

por docena.

Eso es sólo el agua fría

aquietándose

en la forma

de tu garganta.

Taboo

You want to look on the lea-side

in winter, the swamp thickening

like the uterine wall,

popping its puffballs

and creaming its butterwort,

folding in the sundew and squill,

putting out the eyebrights.

You ask what they do

for accommodation –

try high pools

in the red hills

of winter,

hind-paws slapping up flares

of red rain –

look for their niche

of collapsing peat.

Pilgrims of such

an ascetic order

don’t even own

the spectral colours

of snow.

No, that’s the white flag

at Amen Corner.

That’s your heart going

nineteento-

the-dozen.

That’s just the cold water

stilling itself

in the form

of your throat.

MELODEON ON THE ROAD HOME

I love your slut dog,

as silent with his three print spots

as a musical primer. 

He sags like a melodeon

across my spread knees.

When I dig my fingers

into the butterfly hollows

in his chest, he pushes my breasts

apart with stiff legs.

Isn’t it good 

to forget you’re anything but fat

and bone? I’m telling you

it’s good to be hearing your dog’s tune

on the broad curve out of town,

a poem starting, 

pattering the breathless little keys.

To see more than me, I flick

the headlamps to high beam

and it’s as if I pulled an organ stop – 

black light wobbling

in the wrinkles of the road,

high angelus of trees.

From: Almanacs

Publisher: Bloodaxe, 2005

THE ASTERISM

‘a mystery, and a waste of pain’ 

Annie Dillard

Inexplicable pain –

you’re a thing like Sirius

or Aldebaran – another

asterism of the first magnitude:

remote incandescence –

colour – heat – which degrade

when I regard you with

the naked eye, dazzling

and extinct.

When I consider all

the things you are – the neglect

of pain; a window of slumping glass

between us and the distorted world –

I wish we held you not inside

but near. Jungled

in your orchid

and passionflower,

creepers and bromeliads

of pain, we’d peer through

each other’s scintillate leaves.

If we spoke of you at all,

it was ruefully,

to say:

If it flowered

less often, like a cactus,

then I might look forward

to its alien bloom. Still,

when it dies back, I feed

and pot it up.

Or boast I grafted

and grew a great pain

last year, a scion

of the original

stock.

From: Byssus

Publisher: Picador, London, 2014, 

UNFLEDGING

                           Hold the bird in the left hand, and commence 

                           to pull off the feathers from under the wing.

                           Having plucked one side, take the other wing 

                           and proceed in the same manner, until all the feathers 

                           are removed.

                                               - Mrs Beeton’s Household Management

I raise Paisley wounds,

spill yellow pollen of fat.

This is reversing time, like a vandal

who scores shellac blooms

from a soundbox, tightening to snapping

the strings of a lute. 

As if I scraped a poem’s lard 

from vellum. As brattish

as kicking a cat.

In pale skin are magnolia buds:

the muscles that worked wings,

but I’ve undone the wings,

gripping each pinion

as if to slide home the marriage ring

and never dream of flying again;

I’ve plucked the eyed, seed feathers,

the chicky down, the fine human hair

like first casing of mushroom spawn,

the long quills that striped across

the evening sun this week,

trembling in the rainstorm’s target.

From: Almanacs

Publisher: Bloodaxe, 2005

.