reading, writing, translating.
Death
How you are clear,
What freshness stayed between your fingers…
You are a fountain,
With white stones in your depths,
Continue reading “Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen ‘Death’ – A Translation”
You beat me and threaten me
Now I lift my enlighted head
And scream: ‘Enough!’(…) Condemning me to eternal darkness
Now my African soul is illuminated
And discovered the fraud and screamed, screamed a thousand
times:_’Enough!’.
You put me in this cage and now you want to crucify me
Now I’ve drawn the rosy tint from my eyes
And screamed: ‘Enough!’
Continue reading “Noémia de Sousa ‘I Will Rise Lucid’ – A Translation”
On beaches that are the white faces of the beloved dead
I will let your name lose itself repeatedly
But await me:
For however long the journey
I’ll return.
Continue reading “Sofia de Mello Bryner Andreson ‘Await Me’ – A Translation”
‘I Am a Dangerous Woman’[1] was published in 1979 in Harjo’s second collection of poetry What Moon Drove Me To This? and like much of Harjo’s poetry, in this collection and beyond, it explores cultural and feminist concerns.
Continue reading “Thoughts on Joy Harjo’s ‘Dangerous Woman’: Resistance, Power and Survival”The picture of defiance;
stood still and fair.
She, opulence born, declaring
‘Give me justice!’
to deaf ears
in streams of sober black velvet laced in pearls
Continue reading “Queen”I dream each grain of the ocean bed
anemone, coral reef
jellyfish blooms –
colours that unbend, unravel
tied in ribbons in knots of fragile wind I may be
Continue reading “nocturnal”
