Metamorphosis as the surge on the wave breaks to spray turbulence becomes a vortex a twisted relationship between gravity and entropy symbiosis do the spiral galaxies dream here in the helix of my heart on on on the vortex trembles the frozen rhythm of the traffic outside like a broken melody in the green foliage of the garden new patterns appear everything living within a rhythm another personage world within endless worlds water & sand passed neither glass nor mirror through which one cannot pass to a mirage wherein quivers a trace beyond recall metamorphosis an alchemy of elements that assume their form with intent an event time reached in an unfathomable breach the incomprable magnitude of multiplicty a world in all of its ever existences transitioned into until now a universe that devours & regurgitates itself time a dimension that ripples with its rhythms into a pattern of events transformed into entelechy in eternal metamorphosis a demiurge where fury of fire flood quake drought or rage of apocalypse exploding skies creeping pestilence or us between in a nebulous symbiotic moment where devils are angels & angels devils as nature in its rags & glory roams its own wilderness lost & found as life flows on in eternal metamorphosis
Robin Hislop
Africa North. An Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Africa North Solstice winds, rain return in spells a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well. All the babble of the Souk men over there, over there women. All the life of the planet so little part of it that I breathe. Weather beaten highlands, once passed through. The river bed, no more like a parched bone its late autumnal river meanders as a vein past four reservoirs a quest that will end in winter´s flood. Between them are momentary mists where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim. On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain dead once more, again, all pathways home washed away, again. A broken song remember me, sung in a doorway brings the world at large together as suddenly as it narrows. Water runs on marble nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed form water words, water memories, mists, fates. Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots blemished pearls on an implacable skin shards leaving fragmentary traces empty spaces awaiting faces. Lights dance in the night, picturesque “casas blancas del pueblo” appear through the darkness as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow. Mists cordon the mountain tops guerdoned crowns like wreathes. Ancient fields' still colours surrounded by burgeoning new lead to the valley below. Old women , old as aglow, so slow they go poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped. High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade to oversee goats on the hill beneath. Daughters of necessity naked in the rock unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh swamp of night rain, stark where epochs sleep in their shadows replication of memories, where the old becomes the new, a world splits in two with Morpheus in the breach. Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net both captured in the mimic mould. A knot is tied, a knot that wrestles embraces, that ravels birth unravels death & binds its existence. Her face is as if a moon glazed over with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end after its perplexity contains its surety. She draws her forefinger laterally across under her eye lid in a smear nor can you change the image of what you are in the pupil of her eye. Babble bodies blur voices with their echoes down the street sky high, prices fly a bird song breaks, a splash charade Faces in the rain thin weakness of watery years. A winnowing canvass tosses corn as fireflies in the blazing day. The hag in her rags begs her bag holding all shadows to account. You sit in the solitary corner at the empty dice board to throw, as the music swells, as strings play. On the washing line clothes of all shapes sizes are waiting to be filled suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow. A twinge of nostalgia flashes a link between a fluttering curtain an open window frame, a sun shadow game a flickering apparition pattern leaving only - strands. A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table as though a phantom reader should flick with regard through a score of notes then stops at the first blank white sheets stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more. On record, old honky-tonk goes on amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers in the same dust where faces turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear through a beehive of allies names, aye to fetch them home again as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said in a market of women shrouded in shawls. Berlin falls, Baghdad falls all the years turn to further tears further fears to merge with your voyage the shape of dreams to come to be only endearments of what has gone before. A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears indifferent to its beholders’ sight who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before. Children’s faces like radiant imps play carefree in the streets below overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo. In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress plays with cartoon molecules of Micky Mouse Kola bear nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds. Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes bad teeth, unshaven grin looking a faded duplicate of a down out James Joyce with the come on are you Irish, he asks perhaps he was once upon a time. They came through the cleft of the mountain - where the river ran to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye on the mountain face there is a scar once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are. Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children yesterday she knows but not tomorrow where she hides her sorrow even as he ploughs the hillside a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do. Twilight’s girls, girls, girls throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles. By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window seems almost immortal enriched with the blood it’s enriched, now at its roots. Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey. In the broken lights of the bazaar the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche. In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow. Streets packs ravage carcasses at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience to obey its disappearing shadows. A ghost city of watchers watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them now fragments in an admixture of old, new - amidst a junk yard of rubble watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories. The street’s mechanics of the day obey their limits, patterns of parts where we end only to start in a series of nows post mortem of the world at large an autopsy of ghosts on the slab. Born to see, in the boutiques people seem like their own mannequins existence is a mystery with no purpose only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.
All the Babble of the Souk.amazon.com
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Presentación de Aventuras de Bit Bot, Aman y Lla + Cielito lindo, de Amparo Arróspide con Noni Benegas, Javier Gil, Angel Huerga y Oscar Ouzman. Poesia. Video by Robin Ouzman Hislop
This poetry reading was performed in Spanish on May 6th in Madrid Spain presenting Amparo Arróspide’s award winning poetry book, title as seen above, accompanying her in the presentation and reading were Noni Benegas, Javier Gil, Angel Huerga and Oscar Ouzman. The illustrations to the book were made by artist Asem Navaro & the video was made by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Hotel Naledi. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Hotel Naledi
where where O Naledi
a million years before they came
here on the southern savannah
creature of berry wood bone & antelope
had you always haunted
the subterranean world as a sepulchre
with your charred offerings
and your dead or was it just when they came
bigger brained with their sticks & stones
you do not often see each other
you can evade them from the plain
like you they roam in groups
thirty forty no more
you can hide you can conceal
but sometimes come the raids
the raids of the newcomers
you twist & writhe wriggle & crawl
on your belly on your back
through the cavernous fissures of the dark earth
torwards your terminal chamber
together with your contaminated dead
so many moons have passed
more than a hundred years
but what is time on the savannah
they grow strong you grow weak
they are a different germ it won’t be long
this is your shroud
you are bound to the savannah
& they will go on
a million years will be forgotten
& now here in the Dinaledi den
we uncover your fossilised remains
we remake your skeletons
transport your mummified effigies into our age
our brains blew up & shrank back again
though yours tiny as it was
had done as much before we came
but perhaps ours was the disease
that put the world to flame
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, & Moon selected Audio Textual Poems available at Amazon.com as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Sex Core. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Sex Core its pulse drives the mindless mindful crowd gravitates it into automata into a faceless faced phantasmagoria where multiple saccades magnetise erogenous zones - convert invert revert regenerate in helpless drift the machinations of our existence a suppressed surge - the numbed norm a dance of marionettes plastered on glittering billboards that announce us their shadows cast into rebirth of tomorrow’s abyss relentless the sex core consumes its victims like sacrificial slaves led to the slaughter – as our heads float by on platters served the menu of the day – bubble & pop.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, & Moon selected Audio Textual Poems available at Amazon.com as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Damn You All & No Mars Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Damn you all
wild cooing of doves in distant branches
beyond the curtain drawn window
in the darkened room
where he sits on the edge of the bed
frail & thin gently nodding to & fro
thinking progress be damned
nation states wear hoods
ghost riders in the sky stampede
the plains & piss in the oceans
the salmon from the rivers have gone
in what seas will they now spawn
& he is down by the riverside
down by the riverside where
he casts his line into its waters
waiting for it to tauten the sudden
tug the thrill electric of connection
the flick the jerk as a wriggling
sparkling life glints in the light
sails through space to land at his feet
the poetic stance
oh not at all damn you all
“No Mars”
return to the Jaguar Moon
what is perpetuation
one is many is everyone
is everything is a person
a matter of perspective
she alone will adorn the many Jaguar Moon
evolution is but diversity
it will always come again
but sapiens are but rapiens
now their remains
if the world should come again then come O Jaguar Moon
the sleek Brazilian jaguar does not in her aboreal gloom
distill so rank a feline smell as grishkin in a drawing room
who is grishkin O Jaguar Moon
when she’s feline & we her prey
unless we outlive the day
her kiss that sips our blood like nectar
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Six Poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE) by Olga Muñoz. Translated by Amparo Arrospide and Robin Ouzman Hislop
Six poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE)
16.
Desapareceríamos todos si las abejas murieran. Por ahora somos cuatro: dos adultos y dos crías que cargar en brazos en caso necesario. Pronostican una marcha tranquila, aunque el zumbido nos alcance en las próximas jornadas. Como alimento llevamos la oscura miel de la familia, indigesta, dulzona. Los nuevos evitamos derramarla, ya que una gota perdida trae la maldición de confundir las criaturas propias. Sin olerla llegó el animalillo de nombre equivocado, en medio del camino.
16.
Were bees to die, we would all disappear. Right now we are just four: two adults and two cubs to carry in our arms if necessary. In spite of the buzz reaching us in the next few days, a peaceful march is predicted. We carry as food for the family our dark sickly sweet indigestible honey. As the newly arrived we take care not to spill a drop as a drop lost would curse us into confusing our own offspring. Not smelling the honey, a little animal with a wrong name appeared into the middle of the road.
17.
Volvemos a casa con la cría y el espacio se ha hecho redondo. Las elásticas paredes ceden a nuestras voces. Parece que el hueco estaba listo desde hace meses, pues cada objeto ocupa su espacio densamente. Sólo a la llegada nos percatamos. Despacio penetramos el aire, conseguimos traspasarlo para cobijar a los nuestros.
17.
We return home with the cub into a space that has become round. The elastic walls recede with our voices. It seems the vacuity had been prepared for months, as each object occupies its own dense space. Only after arrival do we realize it as we slowly penetrate the air and manage to cross it to find a shelter for our own.
18.
No rodará, no caerá al vacío. No lo abrazará el aire, continente escueto al principio, península improvisada, isla final. Como en los trucos de magia, existen hilos invisibles, saliva que me ata a tres cuerpos y hace de mí una marioneta ciega.
18.
It will not roll nor fall into a void nor embrace the air, a bare continent at the beginning, an improvised peninsula, an island at the end. As with tricks of magic, invisible threads exist, saliva that ties me to three bodies like a blind marionette.
19.
Cada uno aguarda su turno para respirar. No nos vemos siquiera. Ocupamos salas de cristal con cuerpos transparentes, reflejados al azar. La gran mentira, el espejismo del aire. Mientras, las crías dormitan en la madriguera, repleta de oxígeno su sangre recién nacida.
19.
We each wait for our turn to breathe. We can’t even see each other. Our transparent bodies occupy glass rooms, randomly reflected. The mirage of air, a great lie. Meanwhile, the cubs are dozing snuggled close, their newborn blood full of oxygen.
20.
Escucha a su madre leer un cuento, la historia que lo espera al otro lado. Aún lo separan unos centímetros del designio. Un jabalí descompuesto en el bosque recuerda a ese niño alumbrado a la muerte. El deseo repetido de luna en luna, la tristeza rojiza del vacío. Mujer estéril que sueña al hijo con solo apartar la mano a tiempo.
20.
He listens as his mother reads a story, a story that waits for him from the other side. Yet still a few centimeters separate him from his fate. A rotting boar in the forest resembles the birth of the child born to death. The same desire passed from moon to moon, the reddish sadness of emptiness. A barren woman who dreams her son with only the withdrawal of her hand on time.
21.
Encontraste el sedal entre la arena, lejos del lugar del sacrificio. Casi caíste, y con todo tu cuerpo –uñas, árbol, océano– preguntabas qué era ese hilo. Te dimos palabras precisas, las más adecuadas seguramente. Nos pierde la exactitud. Aún así, siguen muriendo los peces de asfixia, con ese mismo sedal de tus dedos.
21.
You found the fishing line in the sand, far from the place of sacrifice. You almost fell down, and with your whole body – nails, tree, ocean – asked what was that thread. We replied with precise words, surely the most adequate. Exactitude is our undoing. But still fish continue to die of suffocation, with that same thread from your fingers.
Olga Muñoz Carrasco is author of the books: La caja de música (Madrid, Fundación Inquietudes/Asociación Poética Caudal, 2011), El plazo (Madrid, Amargord, 2012), Cada palabra una ceniza blanca (Valencia, Ejemplar Único, 2013), Cráter, danza (Barcelona, Calambur, 2016), 15 Filos (Madrid, Cartonera del escorpión azul, 2021), Tapiz rojo con pájaros (Madrid, Bala Perdida, 2021) and Filo (unpublished). Her editorial work is linked to the Genialogías collection at the Tigres de Papel publishing house and the Lengua de Agua collective. She completed her doctoral studies in Philology in Madrid, USA and Peru, and is currently a professor and researcher at Saint Louis University (Madrid Campus). In Lima she published her monograph Sigiloso desvelo- The poetry of Blanca Varela (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, 2007). She prepared Blanca Varela’s anthology Y todo debe ser mentira (Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2020) and in France she has just published her study Palabras para un canto. La escritura en espiral de Blanca Varela (Paris, Belin Éducation/Humensis, 2022). In recent years, her works have appeared in the field of Spanish-American and Spanish poetry. She is part of the research project “El impacto de la guerra civil española en la vida intelectual de Hispanoamérica” (“The impact of the Spanish civil war on the intellectual life of Latin America”) , which led to her book Perú y la guerra civil española. La voz de los intelecturales (Madrid, Calambur, 2013). She also teaches at the José Hierro Foundation (Madrid) and at the Diploma Course on Appreciation and Poetic Studies, Caracas (Venezuela).
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) .
Route Signs. Poems by Javier Gil Martin. Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arrospide & Robin Ouzman Hislop
FIRST TERRITORY
child eats crying
child cries eating
in animal concert
Blanca Varela
Lips that you have not used to kiss
little feet you haven't walked on yet
eyes which see just a foot from your face
hands you still don't know are yours
only
crying, hunger and sleep
and some furtive smile
but now comes life
beautiful Guille,
and kisses will come and your steps
and your eyes will see to the end of the horizon
you will know your hands, and how to handle them
but don't forget, my child,
that crying, hunger, sleep
were your first territory.
PRIMER TERRITORIO
- niño come llorando
llora comiendo niño
en animal concierto
Blanca Varela
Javier Gil Martin (Madrid, 1981). With a degree in Spanish Philology from the UAM, he is professionally dedicated to subtitling and literary proofreading and passionately to reading and editing, mainly poetry. He has coordinated, together with good friends, several literary collections. In 2020 he founded the publishing project “Cartonera del escorpión azul” and since 2006 he coordinates the “Versos para el adiós” section of Adiós Cultural magazine. As an author, he has published Poemas de la bancarrota (Ediciones del 4 de agosto, Logroño, 2015), Poemas de la bancarrota y otros poemas (Espacio Hudson, Argentina, 2018), Museo de la intemperie (Ejemplar Único, Alzira, 2020) & Museo de la intemperie [II] (Cartonera Island, Tenerife, 2022). His “Route Signs” is a section of the latter.
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) .
Forest Feline. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
forest feline fir purring
-
dusks dawns this wastrel man
his vagrant days that like tattered
rags clothe his face
as autumn leaves fall
we walk together now to listen talk
where both our persons are now
diminished
before the tempest of ice
-
i care not for the molecules of kings
nor the stratagem of regimes
where we walk diminished in our pain
-
will come again jaguar moon
forest feline purring your dawn dusk’s born
hawthorn & the rowan the red berries growing
a van flashes by our simulacra
i have nothing to offer you
but my blood in your music
-
as I stumble through the straw
but this is beech place not pine
though i guess it’s the same decline
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, & Moon selected Audio Textual Poems available at Amazon.com as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)