Friday, February 23, 2007

The Overgrown Path



Song

Even asleep, you’re everywhere.
You fall through the house,
right down to the small room
where I sit staring at the screen.
Your head rests on a blinking cursor,
there’s a menu for your toes,

you’ve somehow
drifted into the CD drive
and come out as Janacek,
the overgrown path, the barn owl
lifting its wings. You lurk behind my eyes
and broadcast from my bones

but even miles away, you’re on my tongue,
you’re banging down the door.
Sometimes I wake in dread
that you might have lifted off
like some bright machine
or vanished music, the owl lurking

in the dangerous dark outside.
What if I couldn’t hear you?
As if there were anywhere now
out of reach, as if,
however late it was, or far
I wouldn’t hear you breathing

like a wing-beat in the blood,
a song passed from bone to bone. . .

Poetry Ireland Review 88

I have been working on the latest issue of Poetry Ireland Review, no 89, and realised I neglected to give the current issue a mention here, so here goes. Issue 88 has new poems by Kit Fryatt, Paul Batchelor, Liam Ó Muirthile, George Szirtes, Louis de Paor and many others. There’s a Dutch language feature with poems by Rutger Kopland, Dirk van Bastelaere, Hans Faverey and Cees Nooteboom. Eamon Grennan is interviewed by Catherine Phil McCarthy and reviews include David Wheatley on Roy Fisher; Peter Pegnall on Tony Harrison and Michael Foley; Maurice Harmon on Anthony Cronin; Richard Tillinghast on Greg Delanty; Chris Preddle on Paul Muldoon; Maria Johnston on Michael Longley and Peter Robinson on The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations.

The Orpheus File

Some links on Don Paterson's Orpheus (Faber, 2006)


'Translation shows us how poetry works - and reminds us why it matters' Don Paterson's New Stateman piece on translating the Sonnets to Orpheus

Interview with Don Paterson in The Guardian

Adam Philips on Don Paterson's Orpheus in The Guardian

Jeremy Noel-Tod's Telegraph review

Translations of The Sonnets to Orpheus by Howard A. Landman along with links to other translations.

This is from Stephen Cohn's Carcanet Press version

Don't depend on it, but here's the Wikipedia entry on Rilke. Some good links.

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