LAF's Poetry Connection: Yolanda Castaño

Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) is bringing three European poets to India for a series of workshops, discussions and poetry readings. The first leg of this tour will take place at the Chandigarh Literature Festival, which starts tomorrow (11 Nov). The three poets -- Yolanda Castaño, Brane Mozetič and Adrian Grima -- will be in conversation with local poets Monika Kumar (Hindi) and Surjit Patar (Punjabi).

The Delhi leg of the tour will feature Castaño, Mozetič and Grima in conversation with the Hindi poet Anamika as well as the English poet Sampurna Chattarji. The conversation will be moderated by yours truly: so in the lead-up to the conversation (Nov 15, 6 PM, venue: India International Centre) I will post something about one or more of these poets everyday, along with a sample of their work. Here's the first of this series of blog posts, about the Spanish poet Yolanda Castaño:

  

Yolanda Castaño (Santiago de Compostela, Spain 1977) has been publishing poetry for over twenty years.  Her six collections have been awarded prizes such as The Spanish Critics’ Award, Espiral Maior, Ojo Crítico ― for the best published book by a young Spanish poet ―, Novacaixagalicia, “Writer of the Year” ―by the Galician Federation of Bookshops― and she was a finalist in the National Poetry Prize. Bilingual editions (Galician-Spanish) of her most recent collections have been published by Visor Libros ―Libro de la Egoísta (2006), Profundidad de Campo (2009) and La segunda lengua (2014). A dynamic cultural activist, Castaño has directed cultural projects with Galician and international poets since 2009: poetry translation workshops, an annual poetry festival, a monthly cycle of readings ―Galician Critics’ Prize for the best cultural initiative in 2014― apart from programming poetry events for other institutions. A poetry multimedia artist, she produced events around Europe and America, as well as in Tunisia, China and Japan. She worked for TV for several years ― Mestre Mateo Prize to the best TV Communicator in 2005 ― and contributed articles to a number of journals. Her writing has been translated into twenty different languages and she has edited and translated contemporary poets into Galician and Spanish. Castaño has also published five poetry books for children.

LISTEN AND REPEAT: UN PAXARO, UNHA BARBA

The entire sky is squatting. An intransitive thirst.

To speak in a foreign tongue

is like dressing in borrowed clothing.

Helga confuses the meanings of land and landscape.

(What kind of person would you be in another language?)

You, sometimes, you make me notice that

this vocal

string instrument of mine

sings out of tune.

In the light well of language,

prosody gets hooked

on my dress.

I will tell you something about my problems with tongues:

there are things that I cannot pronounce.

Like when I observe you seated and I see only

a chair–

ceci n'est pas une chaise.

A camera obscura projecting onto gray matter.

To pronounce: if the poem is

an exorcism, a phase transition ; some humor

solidifies to abandon us.

That's how phonation is, enthalpy.

But you are absolutely right:

my vocalism leaves

much to be desired.

(If I stop looking at your teeth

I won't understand anything of what you say.)

The sky shrinks. Helga smiles in italics.

And I learn to differentiate between a beard and a bird

beyond one's taking flight

if I try to trap it

between my hands.

[Translated by Lawrence Schimel as part of the collection The Second Tongue (2014)]