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Sunday, April 28, 2019

Translation from a poem by Christophe Bregaint







 One of the pleasures of returning to Facebook is discovering new writings by fellow writers, if you friend writers you will become privy to a storehouse of both published and unpublished material, unpublished in the traditional sense that is. The trick is, of course, to only friend good writers, or at least writers whose writing you actually like.

One such writer for me is the Parisian poet Christophe Bregaint. I have been familiar with Christoph's poetry now for some time. I have published some translations and some transversions of his work. I am rather fortunate as Christophe actually seems to like reading my renderings of his poetry into the 'language of Shakespeare', as he once said to me. He is a wonderful poet, following like many young French poets in the path of such classic 19th century French poets, such as Baudelaire, Malarme, Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Of course translating contemporary French writers like Christophe is also a way of keeping engaged with the French language, I lived for some years in Paris when I was, ahem, a young/er man. I am incredibly lucky, I sometimes feel, to have this natural resource. As it allows me a second way, or medium, of looking at the world. Oscillating back and forth between the two, English and French, then offers you a possible third way, coming in the form of the transversion/ translation.



Poème par Christophe Bregaint


Vers des rives épuisées
Il y eut ces routes
Tuméfiées
Dont les visages sont devenus verdâtres 
Au fil du temps
Peu enclin à retenir les souvenirs des sillons des horizons consumés
A l’approche des côtes qui bordent les rivages de ces mers gonflées par les naufrages
Le vent reproche aux siècles le calme des silences des chemins
En déshérence
Dans l’espace sémantique des perspectives meurtries
Pas après pas
Comme la peau du ciel sent la mémoire de ce qui n’est plus
Qui dégouline sur les terres d’ombres
Qui rassemblent les affaires des empreintes d’une existence qui se marie
Avec l’avènement des ruines


















Transversion of a poem by Christophe Bregaint


Towards the exhausted banks
There are these roads which tumefy
So that faces turn green
In time
Little inclined to return to the memories
Of furrows of consumed horizons
Approaching the coasts which break the banks
The sea swelling with waves
The wind reproaching the centuries
The calm of the silence of the paths
Dormant in the semantics of dead perspectives
Step by step
Like the skin of the sky which feels the memory
Of what is no longer there
Dripping onto the earth shadows
Which resemble the affair of traces
Of an existence which is wedded

To the advent of ruins

https://editionsdupontdeleurope.eproshopping.fr/20107-a-l-avant-garde-des-ruines-christophe-bregaint.html

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Scum Gentry

Nice to see the return of the Scum Gentry, punk lit is a rare genre of literature to see these days, particularly in conventional old Ireland. Ross Breslin is back at the helm, Ross and I go back to the site's inception over five or so years ago now.

It was nice to see one of my old Rathmines poems surfacing on the newly vamped site. I must have wrote this poem over 18 or so years ago, when I was working on The Dark Pool. Although it never managed to fit into that collection, for some reason. It ended up on The Muse is a Dominatrix, also published by Walter Ruhlmann for mgv2>publishing, which he runs over in France.

It's early days for the Gents yet, but do dig in and explore around. Submit some of your wild ones, if you dare!

This poem was my comment on the paedophile scandal which rocked the nation, and perhaps my most inspired anti-clerical piece.

Bon Lecture!

https://the-scum-gentry-alternative-arts.com/our-lady-of-refuge-rathmines/

Monday, April 22, 2019

No Fool's Day

No one was more surprised than I when new poems started to come. You would think I would know better, at this stage, after so many years at it. But no. You tell yourself that that is enough of that lark, foolishly believing that you are done with it, and lo and behold poems start pouring out from between your thumb and forefinger, once again.

I will be posting the odd one here, and here it shall remain, beginning with the piece below.

The title of the new collection is Say Goodbye to the Blackhills. It has been obsessing me now for quite some time. I think I had a poem published with the same title, sometime last year! I shall try to find it. But, in the meantime here is a short poem written this morning.

No Fool's Day


Talk of war fills the air.
Before you, two wood pigeon
Frolic on the upper-most branches
Of a Sycamore tree.

The scene is idyllic, they could be
Straight out of a framed tableaux
Gracing the walls of some country
Manor in Fontainebleau, or the Forbidden

Palace. Although it is almost May
The temperature is only eleven degrees.
The jet streams are circulating the artic
Via the sea currents. There is nowhere to hide.

Poem cycle from Datura - poems taken from Merrion Square


I haven't posted anything in a while. So, here is the latest publication from my old partner in crime the irrepressible Walter Ruhlmann. It is really a wonderful resource Datura, full of poems in French and English. Walter is to be commended, as he is one of a handful of people out there promoting bilingual publications. Very happy to be teamed up with him again, here.

Just a short note on the texts.

You will find a sonnet by Ronsard, coming from Les Amours. I was really struck by some of Ronsard's poetry, coming as it does from the 16th century. And lo and behold you can see the origins of Baudelaire. That was a really beautiful discovery for me to make. So, I transversed one, see inside.

The cycle of poems that are published here are all taken from my last full length collection of poems called Merrion Square. I have been working in the area for the past year and a half, and I naturally started writing poems on the commute to and from work.

Just as Baudelaire became the central figure of Henry Street Arcade, see Flare 8, Oscar Wilde became the inspiration behind Merrion Square.

Bon lecture!



https://issuu.com/mgversion2/docs/issue_3_04_19