Day 3 begins
It’s the morning of day three. In good form after the few pints and lots of poetry in the Kingdom Bar last night.
Two exciting launches to look forward to today, the first one by my uncle, Bernard Stack, of his novel His Mother Was A Stranger at 12.00pm in the Plaza; the second by my good friend and blog collaborator, poet Paul O’Mahony, of his Epic Poem in 33 Cantos at the fringe poetry event in Lynch’s Bakery and Café at 5pm.
Lynn Roberts won the poetry collection prize @ Listowel Writers’ Week
Lynn Roberts with Dillon Boyer
At the “Meet the Bloggers” event in Lynch’s Bakery & Cafe,
Lynn Roberts gave us this poem from her winning collection of 12 poems …
Isn’t it a beauty?
Let us consider the translator:
amphibian; moving between elements,
breathing water, breathing air; ingesting
complex planktons under the shark’s
political eye; excreting guano
to fertilize mutual incomprehension;
immigrant loomsman, weaving
from diplomacy’s exquisite fine wool
interlaced carpets of Isphahan or
coarse drugget; making peace or trade;
oenologist, brain yeasty
with spores; fermenting words, converting must
to Chateauneuf du Pape, and standing wine
to vinegar; Homer to Pope, or
poetry to motion;
psychotherapist,
interpreting the shuttered circles of
a zoo-bound bear into the ordinary round,
or moonlit howl into doleur de vivre;
intermediate woman,
sieving the Sanskrit grunts and verbal
hieroglyphs of teenage speech
through mesh of instinct, winnowing out
the little knotted, folded seeds and grains,
searching for meaning in the alien corn.
Let us consider the translator,
through whom words pass, like water, like wine.
Lynn Roberts.
first published in the book of Writers’ Week Competition Winners.
Paul O'Mahony and Patrick Stack
