While I studied at the University of Newcastle in 1999, I had the pleasure of attending a whole-semester Poetry Workshop by Jo Shapcott, twice winner of UK’s National Poetry Competition. During those months I wrote several poems that, as often happens with art and time, I see today as works of youth -to use a polite expression. Still, here are a couple of them.
One of the first assignments I had to do for Jo Shapcott during the workshops was to try to translate a poem from a language I didn’t know. The poem, actually, was a Polish translation of her own “The Mad Cow Talks Back“.
The experiment was interesting, and years later, while reading her volume “Tender Taxes” of free versions of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, I came up with the character of Lavaca, a cow who likes to chew poems in languages she doesn’t know, then moo a response back.
On July 26th, 2008, I created two new blogs where Lavaca could express herself either in English or in Spanish. Readers can suggest poems (in other languages) for Lavaca to ruminate, through the Contact form.
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