(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 day of lunar celebrations in Lhasa but kindly don’t treat me as a pretext for gnawing on ravens. Manage your own indigestion with diligence. Not every household fire needs more ghee.
Peter Boyle is a Sydney-based poet and translator of poetry. He holds a Masters Degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of New South Wales and a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Western Sydney. He has published ten books of poetry and nine books as a translator of poetry from Spanish. His most recent collections are
Ideas of Travel and
Notes Towards the Dreambook of Endings (Vagabond Press, 2022 and 2021). In 2020, his book
Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness won the New South Wales Premier’s Award for Poetry. His book
Ghostspeaking also received the New South Wales Premier’s Award in 2017. He has performed his poetry at International Poetry Festivals in Canada, France, Colombia, Venezuela, Macedonia, Nicaragua and El Salvador. As a translator his books include
Anima and
No Known Cause by Cuban poet José Kozer,
The Trees: Selected Poems of Eugenio Montejo, and
Three Poets: Olga Orozco, Marosa Di Giorgio and Jorge Palma. His translations of French poets René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Yves Bonnefoy and Max Jacob have appeared in journals and anthologies in the USA. In 2013 he was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Award for Literary Translation.
