This poem by Cavafy (in my translation) has an unconventional (to say the least) take on the character of Hamlet’s uncle Claudius and the plot of Shakespeare’s play: My minds turns to distant places.I walk along the streets of Elsinore,and round its squares, and I rememberits saddest story, that unfortunate kingkilled by his nephewfor imaginary […]
King Claudius by Cavafy
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. The heavy fighting left many dead and the island split between Greek Cypriots in the south and the Turkish occupied north, with peace being maintained by a UN Buffer Zone between them. In ‘Spoon sweet’ by the Cyrpiot poet, […]
The 1974 Turkish invasion reflected in Cypriot poetry
Whilst waiting for the weather to turn fair,
I brush the chalk dust from out my hair,
straighten up this my bedraggled gown,
take the next, if available bus for coffee,
in our overcrowded Cornish town.
Beware the tilted pavements, the granite chicanes,
canine trailing trip wires and sleeping bags
that litter the arcades. Walk carefully along
the pavement edge and avoid the scaffolded barricades.
Mary Custis Vezey in Harbin, 1920s A couple of days ago, on Twitter, I broke some splendid news about Vernon Duke. His memoir, Passport to Paris, which has been out of print since 1955, will be republished in 2025 by Paul Dry Books. The new edition will include my brief introduction and my translations of […]
“They Pursue Their Fabulous Dream”: A Late Californian Poem by Mary Custis Vezey
Mary Custis Vezey in Harbin, 1920s A couple of days ago, on Twitter, I broke some splendid news about Vernon Duke. His memoir, Passport to Paris, which has been out of print since 1955, will be republished in 2025 by Paul Dry Books. The new edition will include my brief introduction and my translations of […]
“They Pursue Their Fabulous Dream”: A Late Californian Poem by Mary Custis Vezey
In Munich coming out of the U bahn,
past the notice about the Putsch,
a magnificent sheathed building appeared.
On the white coverall an elaborate printed design so
passersbuy might see the final construction
the architecture already inspiring.
Lloyd’s Bank, Penzance has looked shabby and shrouded for weeks.
The overall possibly reminding
pedestrians of the Bibby Stockholm.
Game On meets Auntie May in the advertising.
Rather a “temple” of Mammon, a monument to cut price aesthetics
and ponder the paradox.
Has anything been learnt in one hundred and one years.
I’ve let two months go by without sharing a single thing here, which is very much unlike me. And there have been things to share, like fresh translations of Vernon Duke in Arc and of Julia Nemirovskaya in The Queens Review, as well as news about other projects, like my completion of Alexander Voloshin’s mock […]
“For Helping a Passerby”: Vladislav Ellis’s Hungry Years
FOR M.F.H.
I can’t remember being in class with you.
Not socially I mean, but at Grammar School.
If it was Latin you would have been at the top,
As I was usually bottom, lost and
deposed by deponents.
Perhaps on the Rugby field –
we could both have been props.
I couldn’t see without specs and
coming from London, soccer
was really your game.
We might hae rolled down the grass
Together on the Island-
years passed before I knew it
to be an ancient coastal fort or castle.
With H.C. we might have climbed
the rock we called “Old Smokey”.
Or did we look and fish together
for mulllies together in rock pools?
We followed the older boys building dens
-of cardboard and canvas and pitched camps
In tents on the grass like Brutus
Before the battle of Phillipi.
Your father was a printer and to
my parents a cockney with fair hai rand
ran the youth club with judo in the schoolhouse
next to the textile factory, close
to the beach and the sea.
We traveled to Penzance daily on the buses
forgetting those cowboy films we watched on your TV,
we spoke little except,
I do recall staying off school your
coming around and telling me I had a detention.
What for I wonder?
Towards summer term in the third year,
I borrowed your exercise book
before the Physics exam, my own a mess,
and swotted up calorimetry. I could never
understand how a copper can could have a temperature.
Was it sick?
To my own surprise, I came top with
an absurd 98 per cent.So went on to
Measuring “g” with a swinging lath, like
a cricket bat with the Wing Commander
You went forward to Caesar’s Wars in
tripartite Gaul then Greek and Homer.
Where are you now I wonder>
With Russell Crowe in the Elysian Fields?
penwithlit