CONTRIBUTORS

Peter Boyle

Peter Boyle is a Sydney-based poet and translator of poetry. As a translator he has has published six books, including The Trees: Selected Poems by Eugenio Montejo (Salt 2004), José Kozer’s Anima (Shearsman 2011), Marosa di Giorgio’s Jasmine for Clementina Médici (Vagabond 2017) and Poems of Olga Orozco, Marosa di Giorgio & Jorge Palma (Vagabond 2017). His translations of poems by Pierre Reverdy and René Char have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Shadowtrain, Jubilat, Verse and The Eco Anthology of International Poetry. In 2013 he was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Literary Translation. He is also the author of seven books of poetry, including Ghostspeaking, Towns in the Great Desert and Apocrypha. His awards include the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Poetry (1995 & 2017), the Queensland Premier’s Prize and the Judith Wright Award.

Three Translated Samuel Trigueros Espino Poems

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Peter Boyle

Image courtesy of Festival de Poesía El Salvador PIGS ‘I have seen friends Circe turned into pigs. Her wheel, her diamond. The pigs don’t know my hideouts, mercenaries of shadows.’ –Edilberto Cardona Bulnes I have beheaded pigs, but Circe insists …

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Border Crossing

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Peter Boyle

When you get there. At the frontier. It is very dangerous. Invisible precipices. Water sharp as knives. There are children playing between rocks. Many guns scan the bodies of the children. Suitcases tear open. A play of hands taking out …

Posted in 56.0: EXPLODE | Tagged

Two Poems by Olga Orozco

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

Cartomancy The dogs that sniff out the lineage of ghosts, listen to them barking, listen to them tear apart the drawing of the omen. Listen. Someone approaches: the floorboards are creaking under your feet as if you will never stop …

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from Marosa di Giorgio’s Funeral carriages laden with watermelons

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

          What a strange species is the species angel. When I was born I heard them say “Angel”, “Angels”, or other names. “Spikenard”, “Iris”. Foam that grows on branches, the most delicate porcelain increasing all by itself. Spikenard. Iris. And in …

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Discovered in a Rock Pool

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

A star-shaped object rising up out of the water – five wavering arms, five spokes of a chariot wheel, five curved cylinders, at their centre a cluster of grey barnacles, small pearls, a silver light, the water that drips from …

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José Kozer’s ‘Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew’ in English and Spanish

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Peter Boyle

Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew To howl out ballads, to hear plainchant up ahead, constantly, right to the end. To tread ears of corn on Judgement Day, and see wholegrain bread emerge from …

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Jack Gilbert Gets ‘Foeted’

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Peter Boyle

Anonymously they came for his bones hoping they would still hang with some flesh. ‘Blah blah’ said one, and ‘Yes yes’ said the other. Little too-mortal teeth ripping into the poems they knew were not the truth of it. ‘Oh …

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Eight Poems by Gastón Baquero

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Peter Boyle

Gastón BaqueroBorn in Banes, Cuba, in 1916, Gastón Baqero grew up in the countryside, a rural beginning that figures as one element in his, in many ways very urbane, poetry. He was part of the Orígenes group, a gathering of rather diverse poets including Lezama Lima, Eliseo Diego, Cintio Vitier and Fina Garcia Marruz, who collaborated on the highly influential journal of that name between 1946 and 1956. The Orígines group was at the centre of a major renovation of Cuban poetry, moving it away from 19th Century models towards a range of new aesthetics, notably the neo-barroque movement associated especially with José Lezama Lima.

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“A hundred mute gods”

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Peter Boyle

(A hundred mute gods, their eyes all put out, crowd together on a stone altar. Starved of blood. Lingering on in their hunger for one more sunset. A Sybil dozing lightly in an iron lung prophesies.) It may be a …

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My soul is wet with the tears of impossible things

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Peter Boyle

“My soul is wet with the tears of impossible things” — Federico Garcia Lorca, ‘Todo será el corazón’ On the surface of the eternal soul hundreds of verses moistened with our lives that have grown sick and weary. I carry …

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The dark has taken root on all four walls

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Peter Boyle

Translated with Peter Boyle “The dark has taken root on all four walls” — Kevin Hart, ‘Room’ Holding fast to this line of Kevin Hart through their deep roots I enter the experience of those prison days. Once more I …

Posted in 07: NORTHERN TERRITORY | Tagged ,

Everyday

Posted on July 1, 1998 by Peter Boyle

You go to a restaurant and you eat a meal and you choke and die. It happens like that. You feel horny and you visit a sauna, get careless, and you catch AIDS and die. You open a present while …

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