Música i poesia al Museu de Tortosa

Amb el nom Refugi Art, la Sílvia amb Sinta Salvadó i Enric Panisello, van fer un recital de poesies amb música al Museu de Tortosa el 20 de maig 2017.




 

La calaixera - un poema de Sílvia Panisello

Encara que hem estat poc actius aquí al blog durant els últims dos anys, hem estat molt actius en ‘la vida real’! Fent traduccions, revisant textos, fent recitals de poesia, contant contes, participant en actes culturals, col·laboracions amb museus, biblioteques, campus...

A poc a poc anirem actualitzant el blog amb algunes d’aquestes activitats però avui us volíem ensenyar la poesia amb què la Sílvia va guanyar el XIX Ramon Ferrando Adell de Poesia 2016, del poble de Jesús (Baix Ebre). L'acte de lliurament del premi va ser el 7 de gener, 2017.

Ruta Viterària a Miravet (2015)

El 10 d'octubre de 2015, la Sílvia va participar en l'acte de poesia-tast de vins en homenage al poeta miravetenc, Roc Llop. Es va seguir una ruta pel Cap de la Vila de Miravet. A cada parada es va fer un tast de ví (del celler Masroig), l'escriptor Emigdi Subirats ens va explicar moments de la vida del poeta, i la Sílvia va recitar algunes de les poesies de Roc Llop acompanyada musicalment per la Sinta Salvadó amb el violoncel.

Gerard Vergés, poeta d’honor a Sant Cugat del Vallès

Reproduim un apunt interessant del bloc La Marfanta sobre el poeta ebrenc, Gerard Vergés.

El poeta Gerard Vergés és el poeta d’honor de l’onzè Festival de Poesia de Sant Cugat del Vallès. En aquest sentit, més d’un centenar de persones van assistir dissabte passat a la inauguració de les jornades, que converteixen la ciutat del Vallès Occidental en la capital de la poesia catalana. L’acte va ser també un homenatge al poeta tortosí, que es va materialitzar de manera simbòlica amb l’entrega d’una escultura de l’artista Manel Cusachs.

Durant l’acte, el director de la Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, Oriol Izquierdo, va destacar que Vergés no és un autor molt conegut, però sí molt reconegut com un dels referents de la poesia catalana, des que el 1981 va guanyar el premi Carles Riba amb el poemari ‘L’ombra rogenca de la lloba’.

Poems on Water

Blog Action Day 2010 deals with the issue of water.

Water, that wonderful but elusive element, which says so many things to each and every one of us. Below we offer our humble contribution to the day’s thoughts and reflections, with two poems talking about water, one in English and one in Catalan.

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water
I heard the old, old men say,

'Everything alters,

And one by one we drop away.'

They had hands like claws, and their knees

Were twisted like the old thorn-trees

By the waters.

I heard the old, old men say,

'All that's beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.

WB Yeats

Cançó de Pluja

No sents, cor meu, quina pluja més fina?
Dorm, que la pluja ja vetlla el teu son…
Hi ha dues perles a la teranyina,
quina conversa la pluja i la font!
No sents, cor meu, quina pluja més fina?

No sents, cor meu, quin plorar i quin cantar?
Canten les gotes damunt la teulada,
ploren les gotes damunt del replà…
Gotes de pluja, gardènia que es bada…
No sents, cor meu, quin plorar i quin cantar?

¿No sents, cor meu, quina pau més divina,
amb la música dels núvols desfets?
Pluja de nit, delicada veïna,
dentetes d’aigua en els vidres quiets…
No sents, cor meu, quina pau més divina?

¿No sents, cor meu, que la pena se’n va,
dintre aquest plor de la pluja nocturna,
i les estrelles somriuen enllà?
Enllà somriu un mantell tot espurna…
No sents, cor meu, que la pena se’n va?

No sents, cor meu, quina pluja més fina?
No sents, cor meu, quin plorar i quin cantar?
No sents, cor meu, quina pau més divina?
No sents, cor meu, que la pena se’n va?
No sents, cor meu, quina pluja més fina?

Josep Maria de Sagarra

Un poema de Olga Xirinacs

Aquesta setmana celebran la Setmana de la Poesia a Barcelona.

Informació aquí.

No estem a Barcelona però pensem llegir poesia aquesta setmana igualment. Avui llegirem una de les poemes que més ens agrada a la nostra família, una de crancs de la Olga Xirinacs, que es pot trobar al llibre Marina/Cavall de Mar (editat per Barcanova).

Un pas enrere,
Un pas avant,
Per l’escullera
S’enfila un cranc.

Va ben armat,
Com un soldat,
I tot el cos,
El té blindat.

En una pinça,
Hi porta un ram.
Per qui deu ser,
Tan elegant?

Un altre cranc
L’està esperant,
Un pas enrere,
Un pas avant:

Roques avall,
Dalt d’un cargol,
Ballen la samba
I el rock ‘n roll.

Olga Xirinacs

William Wordsworth

One of the most famous English poets, William Wordsworth was born on this date, the 7th April, in 1770.
This is perhaps his most well-known poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud.


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils

A poem - On the Ning Nang Nong.

Yesterday was World Poetry Day. So, better late than never, here is our small contribution to the celebrations - one of our family favourites, On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan.

On the Ning Nang Nong

Where the Cows go Bong!

And the monkeys all say BOO!

There's a Nong Nang Ning

Where the trees go Ping!

And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.

On the Nong Ning Nang

All the mice go Clang

And you just can't catch 'em when

they do!

So its Ning Nang Nong

Cows go Bong!

Nong Nang Ning

Trees go ping

Nong Ning Nang

The mice go Clang

What a noisy place to belong

Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Spike Milligan

Una poema - Yeats en català

A l’any 2005, la traductora irlandesa-catalana Patrícia Manresa Ní Ríordáin i el poeta ebrenc Albert Roig van traduir l’obra de poesia L’espasa i la torre d’en W.B.Yeats de l’anglès al català. El llibre va ser publicat per Edicions 62. Clik aquí.
Aquí tenim un dels poemes.

DEATH
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone –
Man has created death.

MORT
Ni la por ni cap esperança
No vetllen l’animal que mor;
L’home espera la seua fi
Esglaiant-se, esperant-ho tot;
I moltes vegades ha mort,
I moltes ha tornat a alçar-se.
Davant dels assassins
L’orgull de l’home ferm
Respon a l’últim
Alè amb l’escarni; la mort
La coneix per dins – l’ha creat
L’home la mort.

Paraules del traductor i poeta, D. Sam Abrams (3)

Tercer fragment de l’entrevista amb D. Sam Abrams publicada al Barcelona INK.

Third extract from the fascinating interview with D Sam Abrams, professor at the Open University of Catalonia, literary critic, poet and translator. The full interview was published in issue no.2 of Barcelona INK.

Question: You have translated many Catalan poets – do you have a favourite?

Abrams: I have favourites. Of current poets, Màrius Sampere and Bartomeu Fiol and Joan Margarit.
As for the classics, for me, one is Ausias March. I think he was the greatest Catalan poet of the period, the greatest Spanish poet of the period, the greatest European poet of the period – ergo, the greatest poet of the world at that time (16th/17th century) for both his command of the language and his command of the form. He was a man with a foot in both the middle ages and the beginning of the Renaissance and this gave him a dramatic tragic view of life. There’s a point when he names himself in a poem and that for a poet was unheard of in those days.

Question: But he’s relatively unheard of ...

Abrams: Because nobody has ever translated him.

Question: And he remains untranslated?

Abrams: He’s been translated but only in the small press. I proposed to the Catalan government that they set up a team of experts: two university professors and two poets and that the draft a literal crib of his work so that somebody, a big name in English poetry (the man I had in mind was Seamus Heaney before he won the Nobel prize), could translate the crib into actual English poetry and all of a sudden March would make a big splash.
I was listened to. But I think that they felt that it was out of their reach – but it has been done before. There was an unknown Polish Renaissance poet. They made a crib and Heaney translated it and now he’s famous all over the world (Jan Kochanowski) and I can guarantee that March is ten times better than him!

Paraules del traductor i poeta, D. Sam Abrams (2)

L’americà D. Sam Abrams és professor de literatura a la UOC, poeta, crític literari, i traductor. Ha traduït 20 llibres de poesia catalana moderna a l’anglès. Adjuntem un segon fragment de l’entrevista publicada al Barcelona INK.

A second extract from the fascinating interview with D Sam Abrams, professor at the Open University of Catalonia, literary critic, poet and translator. The full interview was published in issue no.2 of Barcelona INK.

Question: So, just how Catalan are you?

Abrams: I’m as integrated as you get but I don’t believe in total integration. I believe sooner or later you always come up against a wall. Two examples of this: One, politically speaking, an American is born in a democratic tradition and it’s very difficult for an American involved in Catalan politics to understand the “if you don’t like it why don’t you stand up and walk away” attitude. This “yes, maybe ... we want to be independent but we are afraid to use the word ...” As an American I find that very hard to understand. As my grandmother used to say, “either shit or get off the pot.”

The other is this. I was the Secretary of the PEN Club here for two years and one of the problems I kept coming up against was imagination and creativity. An American is born to think about ways of doing things. It’s hard for Catalans to conceive new ideas. For example, when it was the 100th anniversary of the poet Joan Oliver Pere IV, I had the idea of printing posters with his poems and to go up and down the Rambla and stick them up, and have the members putting up posters as well as the poet’s only daughter putting up the first one. The immediate reaction was a very lethal Catalan question, “Vols dir?” That means, “we’ve never done this, do you really think it’s going to work?”

Question: You are in favour of independence.

Abrams: Oh, absolutely, and I think the last two years in local politics has proved this right.

Question: Has your learning the language had an effect on your political opinions?

Abrams: Before I even came here I was under the impression that Spain was one great nation. I was told before I came here that Catalan was a dialect and the language is Spanish. But it became clear when I arrived that all of this was completely erroneous and that was before I even spoke the language.

Paraules del traductor i poeta, D. Sam Abrams (1)

L’americà D. Sam Abrams és professor de literatura a la UOC, poeta, crític literari, i traductor. Ha traduït 20 llibres de poesia catalana moderna a l’anglès. Adjuntem un petit fragment d’una entrevista publicada al Barcelona INK, revista publicada aquí a Catalunya amb històries curtes, poesies, i pensaments, tots relacionat amb Barcelona.

We include an extract from a fascinating interview with D. Sam Abrams, professor at the Open University of Catalonia, literary critic, poet and translator. The full interview was published in issue no.2 of Barcelona INK, a relatively new magazine featuring English writing on, about, or from Barcelona.

Question: Just how difficult is it to translate poetry?

Abrams: Translating poetry is a wonderful experience. There’s no experience that compares to it in terms of using your reading skills. It’s when you translate that you realize just how little attention we actually pay to those little black marks on the page. All of a sudden you are in the driving seat and you have to say whatever it is the person you are translating is trying to say. You are responsible for that. You have to understand every inch of what he says. So first of all, it’s a very intense reading experience.

Second, it’s a very intense cultural and linguistic experience. Because you have to understand what that person is saying and you have to know the language very very well. I really don’t believe this distance between people saying “well, I really didn’t know that much English when I translated Walt Whitman into Hebrew ... .” If your personality as a translator is that important, then, yes, but if you are actually trying to translate, transfer a poet from one language to another, you need to be standing behind the poet to grasp the poet.

In that place it’s intense working within your own language. You learn a lot about your craft as a poet.

A poem - Bear

Coming up to Halloween, what about a slightly scary poem?

Bear
There was a boy
Who almost saw
A bear beside
His bed.

O bear, what are
You looking for?
He almost went
And said;

And are you looking
For a boy
That’s fat, and nicely
Fed?

But then he shut
His eyes, and thought
Of other things
Instead.

Jean Kenward

A poem - Two Funny Men

From time to time we will post poems or extracts from some of our favourite books. There are many kinds of poems in English but one style I really enjoy are short, amusing ones, for children or adults who haven’t grown up. Writers such as Roald Dahl, e.e. cummings, Cristina Rosetti … today a poem by Spike Milligan, called Two Funny Men. It is also interesting for English learners from Catalonia to see how we say a l’inrevés (back to front) or cap per avall (upside down).

Two Funny Men

I know a man
Who’s upside down,
And when he goes to bed
His head’s not on the pillow, No!
His feet are there instead.

I know a man
Who’s back to front,
The strangest man I’ve seen.
He can’t tell where he’s going
But he knows where he has been.

Spike Milligan