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Sue Wootton lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her poetry collections are Hourglass, Magnetic South, By Birdlight and a letterpress portfolio of poems, Out of Shape, hand set and printed by Caren Florance (Canberra: Ampersand Duck). Her fiction includes a children's book, Cloudcatcher, and a short story collection called The Happiest Music on Earth. Her screenplay Bleat was produced as a short film by Short Film Otago in 2014.
Sue has won several awards for her writing, including the 2015 Caselburg Trust International Poetry Prize, the 2013 Victorian Cancer Council Poetry Award, the 2011 NZ Poetry Society, the 2010 Takahe and 2007 Inverawe (Tasmania) international poetry competitions, and both the fiction and the poetry prizes in the 2006 Aoraki Literary Festival competition. Her poem “Wild” was placed second in the 2013 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Her story “Virtuoso” was a winner in the 2008 NZ Book Month "Six Pack" competition. Sue has been shortlisted for the NZ Sunday Star Times story competition and has twice been a runner up in the BNZ Katherine Mansfield fiction competition. She held the 2008 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago.
These poems were translated by Saray Torres de Riddell, and read and published as part of the Festival de Poesia, Granada, Nicaragua, 2010.
Sue is the editor of the Monday Poem column in the Otago Daily Times.
Her website is suewootton.com
TEMPORADA DE BERENJENAS
i.m. Phil Laing, asesinado en Zimbabue 18 de diciembre 2003
Esta temporada de berenjenas: maíz
más alto que el hombre, susurran sedosas mazorcas.
Cubro con la palma de mi mano
los tomates que se han comido el sol,
los arranco de sus tallos,
siento su verde tallo estremeciéndose.
Camino sobre la brea derretida, cargando bolsas repletas
de cerezas, pensando para la Navidad, para mi madre,
guisantes de Zimbabue. Y luego una llamada
perpleja en la noche silenciosa con las manos vacías,
buscando las palabras para contarle. Una muerte
en la familia. Un asesinato. Una atrocidad sin sentido,
y el mensaje en un inglés
casi irreconocible, sospechoso, denso,
codificado con dolor y temor. Palabras exageradas y
fuertes, absorbiendo luz sin reflejar rostros.
¿Cómo puede ser verano todavía? Nos hemos hundido
en el hielo. Sólo madura la angustia.
Cada noche, satélites titilando,
y luego se desvanecen. Estrellas brillando,
permanecen mudas. La luna perforada
arrastra un manto de nube sobre un solo ojo,
luego sobre ambos, parpadea de nuevo.
En el ardor del medio día sujeto los tomates a la tabla
los rebano, los contemplo jugosos.
Berenjenas a la parrilla, observo las burbujas,
mezclo vinagretas, pero no puedo verterlas.
Permanezco inmóvil, la jarra medio llena de aire.
AUBERGINE SEASON
i.m. Phil Laing, killed in Zimbabwe 18 December 2003
This is aubergine season. Corn
stands higher than a man, and silk cobs
whisper. I cup my palm
around tomatoes that have eaten the sun,
pluck them from the stem,
feel the green cord tremble.
I walk on melted tar, carrying split bags
of cherries, thinking for Christmas, for my mother,
Zimbabwe snow peas. And one phone call later
I stand in silent night empty-handed,
working up the words to tell her. A death
in the family. A murder. An atrocity. Senseless,
and the messages coming in a kind of English
we don’t quite recognise: slippery, dense,
encrypted with grief and fear. Words with tight,
swollen skins, that drink all light, that reflect
no faces. How can it still be summer? We have plunged
into ice. All that ripens now is anguish.
Every night, satellites blink,
and pass. Stars glitter,
remain mute. The pitted moon
hauls a cloudy shawl over one eye,
then both, then winks again.
In the burn of noon I pin tomatoes to the board
and slice, watch the spout of juices.
I char-grill aubergines, observe the blisters,
mix vinaigrettes, but cannot pour.
Am stilled, the loaded jug mid-air.
VIAJE CON AGUA Y CON ESTRELLAS
Ay, amar es un viaje con agua y con estrellas
Pablo Neruda
Cien Sonetos de Amor: XII
Noche plena. Triunfante cielo estrellado. Remabas, yo sentada atrás,
arrastraba mis dedos. Nos perdimos hacia fluidas dimensiones.
Desde los remos y desde mis dedos, fosforescencia. Habíamos volcado,
la corta incandescencia – cometas de verdes colas hundiéndose.
La casualidad helando el bote en cada brazada, por un momento
vibraron los tablones y los escalamos se destrozaron. Millones de millones de estrellas
por todas partes y entre ellas nosotros, sumergiéndonos entre la luz esparcida.
Éramos dos siluetas en la oscuridad. Remo a remo un mar estrellado
prismas agrietados. Un largo viaje: años. Y sin embargo,
¿Lo recuerdas, las huellas de mis dedos? Tan luminosas, en el agua, en tu piel.
VOYAGE WITH WATER AND STARS
Ay, amar es un viaje con agua y con estrellas
Ah, loving is a voyage with water and with stars
Pablo Neruda
Cien Sonetos de Amor: XII
Full night. A sky triumphant with stars. You rowed; I sat astern,
trailed my fingers. We had slipped into unmoored dimensions.
From the oars, and from my fingers, phosphorescence. Had we capsized,
what brief incandescence: green-tailed comets, sinking.
Chance nipped the boat at every stroke, a moment when the planks
juddered and the rowlocks graunched. The million million stars
were everywhere and we amongst them, dipping through splayed light.
How dark we were: two silhouettes. Blade by blade the starry sea
the split perspectives. A long voyage: years. Yet, my fingerprints,
do you remember? How luminous, on the water, on your skin.
fromMagnetic South (Steele Roberts 2008)
SUR MAGNETICO
Tú eres mi sur magnético.
Caigo ante ti.
Soy la anguila, la gaviota,
el pez dorado,
retornando y retornando.
Tuya la marea a la que nado.
MAGNETIC SOUTH.
You are my magnetic south.
I fall to you true.
I am the eel, the gull,
the silvery fish,
returning and returning.
Yours is the tide I swim to.
From Magnetic South (Steele Roberts 2008)
SOBRE EL TEJADO
Si puedes balancearte
patas arriba
sobre la delgada arista de lata
del rojo tejado
apoyándote en tu mano izquierda
y en la derecha una taza de té
haciendo malabares con tus pies
a un repollo, a la mariposa, a un solo grano de arena
y hacer aparecer de tus bolsillos
una mariposa nocturna y oscuridad
seguida de un amanecer
si puedes hacerlo todo
y hacerme creer
que subiste sin usar escalera
entonces tiro mi moneda
en tu sombrero,
maestro.
ON THE ROOF
If you can balance
upside down
on the thin tin ridge
of a red roof
supporting yourself on your left hand
a cup of tea in your right
juggling with your feet
a cabbage, a butterfly, a single grain of sand
and conjure from your pockets
moths and darkness
followed by a sunrise
if you can do all this
and have me believe
you got up there without using a ladder
then my coin
goes in your hat,
maestro.
From Hourglass (Steele Roberts 2005)
TEORIA DE CUERDAS
Esas líneas
de longitud
y altitud
que unen
el globo,
este planeta cual pelota colgante
atado
al sol
whakapapa*
desplegándose
por los mares
y los siglos
el nido
detras de tus costillas
donde
el algodón
enmarañado nunca usado
para reparar una fisura
culpables secretos
doblemente atados
pedazos
de arrepentimiento
la pelota ceñida
de coraje
tu desplegados
cuando se debe
la dura unión
de tu matrimonio
convencido
de que alguien
juega contigo
cual marioneta
convencido
de que tejes
tu propia vida,
tu sentido
la vida
tambalea
en la cuerda floja –
de múltiples filamentos
de espacio y tiempo
te va tejiendo:
una mortaja
que te sostiene
sin poderse
sujetar
se niega a si mismo
y se repite
y patina
por el universo
cayendo
en huecos
cayendo
en huecos
el instante
percibes
la
red
* whakapapa : ancestros en el idioma Maorí de Nueva Zelanda
STRING THEORY
Those lines
of longitude
and latitude
that bind
the globe,
this swing-ball planet
tethered
to the sun
whakapapa
unfurling
through seas
and centuries
the nest
behind your ribs
in which
is snarled
cotton never used
to mend a rift
double-knotted
guilty secrets
snippets
of regret
the tight ball
of courage
you unwind
when needs must
the tough braid
of your marriage
your conviction
that someone
plays you
like a puppet
your conviction
that you weave
your own life,
your sense
that life
teeters
on a high wire –
the multiple filaments
of space and time
that entwine you:
a shroud
that holds you
and cannot
be held
that negates itself
and replicates itself
and skates
across the universe
and falls
to holes
and falls to
holes
the instant
you glimpse
the
mesh
from Magnetic South (Steele Roberts 2008)