New poem and artwork at Colourful Star

Just a reminder that there's a new post on our Anglo-Bulgarian poetry-and-art project Colourful Star ...

Unknown Translations

Having experimented with writing in rather hazy Bulgarian and then translating the poems back into English, I've put a few together in a little e-pamphlet ... and you can download it here

From 'Unknown Translations'

For the last couple of weeks, I've been dallying with an experiment. Rather than writing in English, I've been writing in Bulgarian (which I'm learning in a DIY kind of way) and translating the results back into English. Being far from fluent in Bulgarian, I've had to work with a very limited vocabulary and very limited knowledge of idiom and grammar. In many ways, the results have been fairly hit and miss, but one or two of these efforts (which almost certainly read very badly in Bulgarian) seem OK - perhaps because, to me, they seem to be wholly different to what I would 'normally' write and perhaps because trying to think in another language results in connections which I wouldn't have otherwise made. 

Weather forecast

Today it will rain butter,

a bookish wind will blow,

the sun will wash dishes

and the clouds will play

the bagpipes. Don’t worry.

This is normal when

love is allowed to write

the weather forecast.

It’s best to walk barefoot

and carry a big coat.

Tom Phillips, 2015

Everything looks good tonight

Everything looks good tonight

because children emerged from the dark,

laughing and singing in Queen Square,

because, beyond them, two terriers

snuffled at a wooden post,

because a conversation had only just ended,

because by the zebra crossing

someone automatically took

someone else’s hand,

because the city lights

opened out around the docks

and, beneath the Balmoral, the boat’s reflection

hung, almost perfect, upside down,

because on the last few hundred yards home

I heard people speaking Russian, Spanish, Italian,

because I had been talking with friends

from somewhere I’d been last summer,

because I was wearing the shoes I’d worn

in that place and for a moment

I could feel again the contours

of the pavements as if they’d been

imprinted on cheap plastic and canvas.

And so, yes, crossing the footbridge

everything looks good. By the old gaol gate,

someone pissed against a stone bulwark.

A cyclist went past. And I remembered

deliberately making another footbridge

pulse and shake by walking in step –

and Mike plunging into the river

from a pub terrace in Shrewsbury,

and reading ‘They flee from me ...’

for a practical criticism assignment

months after driving up the east coast

of Australia in bush-fire season

and being in love with people

I’d never see again, because

that was how it was back then,

because even flying home

was an opportunity and we sat

outside a house in Buckinghamshire,

with me jet-lagged and still smelling

of the chemicals they’d sprayed us with

in Sydney, and we were talking

at the night as it came down

and I would sleep on the sofa

when the cat brought in a dead pigeon.

Cars pass. The passengers look out.

I’m in amongst the bins and recycling boxes.

Across the valley, the city lights articulate

a kind of semaphore and I am nearly home.

Some films

It's been a while, to be honest, but, if it came to it, I'd probably say these:
Moderato Cantabile: piano lessons and gender politics in rural France (OK, I know that doesn't sound very attractive, but great nonetheless)
Tales from the Golden Age: nails the myths of totalitarianism in five short pieces
And, somewhat more obviously ...
Withnail & I, Spinal Tap, Salvador, Apocalypse Now and Lawrence of Arabia.