Este mes hemos seleccionado un poema titulado March 22. Su autor, John Steffler es un poeta canadiense que consiguió ser Poet Laureate en Canadá en 2006.
March 22 by John Steffler:
Sitting outside with a book
for the first time this year —
on the blue walls
the birds are scribbling
wildly with brilliant
crayons,
and the spirals and saws and mazes
tangle and fade
and are overlaid with more bird iconography,
more landscape according to Blue Jay, Grackle, Starling,
Robin.
I want to paint the inside walls of my skull with these
scrawls
which are more useful than all the buildings of Waterloo,
all the blunders of roads and suburbs.
The blue is a tongue on which all dissolves,
is swallowed
with a kind of smile — space and time being
actually pleasure, narrative
unafraid of an end.
Two grackles greasy with cobalt, viridian, shoulder
their way through the branches, taste
each frost-baked apple left on the tree.
Small,
small in the blue, a pale
hawk circles on heavy wings, thinking of fruit
of another kind.
Grave consciousness
that encloses consciousness. Today
there’s no point thinking of him.
22 de Marzo de John Steffler
Sentado fuera con un libro
por primera vez este año –
en las paredes azules
las aves están garabateando
salvajemente con brillantes
lápices de colores,
y las espirales y las sierras y laberintos
se enredan y se desvanecen
y están superpuestos con más iconografía de aves,
más del paisaje de acuerdo con Blue Jay, Grackle, Starling,
Robin.
Quiero pintar las paredes interiores de mi cráneo con éstos
garabatos
que son más útiles que todos los edificios de Waterloo,
todos los disparates de las carreteras y los suburbios.
El azul es una lengua en la que todas se disuelve,
se traga
con una especie de sonrisa – el espacio y tiempo
siendo en realidad placer, la narrativa
sin miedo a su fin.
Dos mirlos grasientos con cobalto, pigmento azul, cargan su
su camino a través de la ramas, prueban
cada manzana helada y horneada a la izquierda en el árbol.
Pequeño,
pequeño en el azul, un pálido
halcón da círculos con sus alas pesadas, pensando en la fruta
de otro tipo.
La tumba del conocimiento
que encierra el conocimiento. Hoy en día
no tiene sentido pensar en él.
Biografía en ingles:
John Steffler (born November 13, 1947) is a Canadian poet and novelist.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Steffler was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Since 1975 he has lived in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador where he taught at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College (a campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland). Steffler currently resides in Montreal, teaching at Concordia University.
His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright (1992) won the 1993 Thomas Head Raddall Award and was nominated for the English-language Fiction category of the 1992 Governor General’s Awards.
His books of poetry include That Night We Were Ravenous (1998), which won the 1999 Atlantic Poetry Prize.
On December 4, 2006, Steffler became Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, a position intended to «encourage and promote the importance of literature, culture and language in Canadian society. Federal legislators created the position in 2001 to draw Canadians’ attention to poetry, both spoken and written, and its role in our lives.» Steffler’s term expired in November 2008.
Bibliography
Poetry
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An Explanation of Yellow. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1981.
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The Grey Islands. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
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The Wreckage of Play. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988.
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That Night We Were Ravenous. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998.
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The Grey Islands. London, ON: Brick Books, 2000.
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Helix: new and selected poems. Montreal : Signal Editions, 2002.
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The Grey Islands, unabridged audio edition (2007)
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Lookout. Plattsburgh, NY: McClelland and Stewart, 2010.ISBN 978-0-7710-8267-2 (shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize)
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