|
|
|
|
|
|
María Eugenia
Bravo Calderara Prayer in the National Stadium. Poetry.
1992. Bilingual text translated by Dinah Livingstone, with 2 poems translated
by Cicely Herbert and illustrations by Julio Moreno Robles. 88 pages.
ISBN 0 904872 16 5. £5.95.
Poems about her imprisonment
and torture after the 1973 coup in Chile and her experiences as an exile in
England.
'Her control in the poems, among
the terror and torture, is superb. It is typical that she writes a sympathetic
poem about one of the guards.'
-- The North
'We can feel the fear and despair, but also the hope and determination to
maintain one's humanity.' -- British Bulletin of Publications
'The Spanish texts are printed alongside the English versions of the poems
by Dinah Livingstone, but I read the latter as poems in their own right.'
-- Scratch
Alfredo Cordal
Tongues of Fire:
Lenguas de Fuego
edited by Dinah Livingstone, published
on March 24th 2011 -- Oscar Romero's Day.
Poetry. 2011. 96 pages. Bilingual text.
iSBN 978-0-904872-45-3. £9. Paperback book or pdf
file.
Tongues of Fire: Lenguas de Fuego is the
long-overdue collection of poetry by the exiled Chilean poet and playwright
Alfredo Cordal. Now a Londoner, Alfredo is a wonderful performer of his
work, both in his native Spanish and in English, and has given countless
performances of his poetry in London and elsewhere. His poems have appeared
in anthologies and Katabasis is delighted to be publishing this first
full, bilingual collection of his work.
For Alfredo Cordal is not only a great
performer; he is, above all, a wide-ranging, subtle and musical poet,
also a learned and well-read poet, who carries his scholarship lightly
and with grace. This collection shows some of his quality and range, both
of subject-matter and tone. It stretches from Latin American themes, starting
from before the Conquest, to poems about life in exile in a wide variety
of moods, including two delightful poems about the poet’s dog (when the
dog barks, he barks along with her). Other poems reach outwards towards
figures such as the poet-forger Chatterton and the murdered García Lorca.
In his end is his beginning and the
book ends with ‘Long-Ago Child Dreaming’, in which the protagonist Inca
child sounds very much like the poet himself. Alfredo Cordal is a warm
poet, who throughout the changes and chances of his fleeting world has
kept not only his intelligent ear and eye but his humanity and kindness.
|