Jen Hadfield
Cheshire, Inglaterra 1978
Jen Hadfield. Creció en Cheshire. Estudió Letras Inglesas en la Universidad de Edimburgo y obtuvo mención honorífica en su máster en escritura creativa conjunta en las Universidades de Glasgow y Strathclyde. Actualmente radica en Shetland, donde escribió su primer libro Almanacs (Bloodaxe, 2005), ganador del premio Eric Gregory en 2003.
Bibliografía:
Almanacs, Bloodaxe, Hexham, 2005
The Printer's Devil & The Little Bear, Redlake Press/Rogue Seeds, Clun, 2006
Nigh-No-Place, Bloodaxe, Hexham, 2008
Byssus, Picador, London, 2014.
Traducción de Juana Adcock (Monterrey, 1982. Es poeta y traductora).
Poemas publicados originalmente en Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe, 2008).
Erizo, Hamnavoe
Encogiéndose en mis manos
este corazón percudido y con estoperoles pero bondadoso,
que puntea mis palmas ahuecadas, respira:
riñón encogiéndose en parrilla caliente,
o motociclista muy pequeño, arrancado de la orilla
de una dulce, balbuciente mañana.
Borracha, lo mimo como a una bola de cristal,
empecinada en que los misterios realistas
deberían resultar algo más que conjeturas
y pulgas.
Hedgehog, Hamnavoe
Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –
a kidney flinching on a hot griddle,
or very small Hell’s Angel, peeled from the verge
of a sweet, slurred morning.
Drunk, I coddle it like a crystal ball,
hellbent the realistic mysteries
should amount to more than guesswork
and fleas.
Tabú
Quieres mirar a la pradera
en el invierno, el pantano engrosándose
como la pared uterina,
reventando sus bejines
y cremando su pinguicula,
doblándose en el rocío del sol y scilla,
apagando los ojos brillantes.
Preguntas dónde
pernoctan
—probarán pozas en las alturas
de los rojos cerros
del invierno,
patas traseras levantando destellos
de lluvia roja—
buscarán su nicho
de turba que se desmorona.
Peregrinos de tal
orden asceta
ni siquiera dueños
de los colores espectrales
de la nieve.
No, ésa es la bandera blanca
en la Esquina Amén.
Ése es tu corazón latiendo
diecinueve
por docena.
Eso es sólo el agua fría
aquietándose
en la forma
de tu garganta.
Taboo
You want to look on the lea-side
in winter, the swamp thickening
like the uterine wall,
popping its puffballs
and creaming its butterwort,
folding in the sundew and squill,
putting out the eyebrights.
You ask what they do
for accommodation –
try high pools
in the red hills
of winter,
hind-paws slapping up flares
of red rain –
look for their niche
of collapsing peat.
Pilgrims of such
an ascetic order
don’t even own
the spectral colours
of snow.
No, that’s the white flag
at Amen Corner.
That’s your heart going
nineteento-
the-dozen.
That’s just the cold water
stilling itself
in the form
of your throat.
MELODEON ON THE ROAD HOME
I love your slut dog,
as silent with his three print spots
as a musical primer.
He sags like a melodeon
across my spread knees.
When I dig my fingers
into the butterfly hollows
in his chest, he pushes my breasts
apart with stiff legs.
Isn’t it good
to forget you’re anything but fat
and bone? I’m telling you
it’s good to be hearing your dog’s tune
on the broad curve out of town,
a poem starting,
pattering the breathless little keys.
To see more than me, I flick
the headlamps to high beam
and it’s as if I pulled an organ stop –
black light wobbling
in the wrinkles of the road,
high angelus of trees.
From: Almanacs
Publisher: Bloodaxe, 2005
THE ASTERISM
‘a mystery, and a waste of pain’
Annie Dillard
Inexplicable pain –
you’re a thing like Sirius
or Aldebaran – another
asterism of the first magnitude:
remote incandescence –
colour – heat – which degrade
when I regard you with
the naked eye, dazzling
and extinct.
When I consider all
the things you are – the neglect
of pain; a window of slumping glass
between us and the distorted world –
I wish we held you not inside
but near. Jungled
in your orchid
and passionflower,
creepers and bromeliads
of pain, we’d peer through
each other’s scintillate leaves.
If we spoke of you at all,
it was ruefully,
to say:
If it flowered
less often, like a cactus,
then I might look forward
to its alien bloom. Still,
when it dies back, I feed
and pot it up.
Or boast I grafted
and grew a great pain
last year, a scion
of the original
stock.
From: Byssus
Publisher: Picador, London, 2014,
UNFLEDGING
Hold the bird in the left hand, and commence
to pull off the feathers from under the wing.
Having plucked one side, take the other wing
and proceed in the same manner, until all the feathers
are removed.
- Mrs Beeton’s Household Management
I raise Paisley wounds,
spill yellow pollen of fat.
This is reversing time, like a vandal
who scores shellac blooms
from a soundbox, tightening to snapping
the strings of a lute.
As if I scraped a poem’s lard
from vellum. As brattish
as kicking a cat.
In pale skin are magnolia buds:
the muscles that worked wings,
but I’ve undone the wings,
gripping each pinion
as if to slide home the marriage ring
and never dream of flying again;
I’ve plucked the eyed, seed feathers,
the chicky down, the fine human hair
like first casing of mushroom spawn,
the long quills that striped across
the evening sun this week,
trembling in the rainstorm’s target.
From: Almanacs
Publisher: Bloodaxe, 2005
.