KATHLEEN JAMIE [10.836]

Kathleen Jamie 

Es poeta, ensayista y escritora de viajes, una de un puñado de notables escritores escoceses elegida en 1994 como la "nueva generación de poetas" - era una estratagema de marketing en el momento, pero resulta haber sido una selección muy clarividente. Se convirtió en profesora de escritura creativa en la Universidad de Stirling en 2011.

Jamie nació el 13 de mayo 1962 en Renfrewshire, Escocia. Su familia se trasladó a Currie, a las afueras de Edimburgo, cuando era joven, su padre trabaja como contable y su madre en la oficina de un abogado, y ella comenzó a escribir poesía cuando era una adolescente. La etapa escolar de Jamie estuvo marcada por una sensación de atrapamiento, la falta de oportunidades. Describe su decisión de convertirse en escritora como "una decisión negativa", una reacción contra la perspectiva de una vida de trabajo en una oficina.

Mientras estudiaba en la Universidad de Edimburgo para un grado en filosofía, su poesía atrajo la atención de Douglas Dunn, que se percató de lo que él ha llamado Jamie de "innocent eye". Su habilidad para interactuar con el mundo natural, su ingenio y su inventiva rápidamente le marcó como un talento prodigioso. Recibió un premio Eric Gregory de la Sociedad de Autores en 1981. Este reconocimiento fue seguido por el lanzamiento de su primera colección, Black Spiders, en 1982, cuando tenía sólo veinte años.

Premios:

1981 Eric Gregory Award

1982 Scottish Arts Council Book Award for Black Spiders

1988 Scottish Arts Council Book Award for The Way We Live

1995 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (shortlist) for The Queen of Sheba

1995 Somerset Maugham Award for The Queen of Sheba

1995 T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for The Queen of Sheba

1996 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for (The Graduates)

1996 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Queen of Sheba

1999 T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Jizzen

2000 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) (shortlist) for Jizzen

2000 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Jizzen

2001 Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award

2003 Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) (shortlist) for Mr. and Mrs. Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994

2004 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) for The Tree House

2004 T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for The Tree House

2005 Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award for The Tree House

2006 Ondaatje Prize (shortlist) for Findings

2006 Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award (shortlist) for Findings

2012 T S Eliot Prize, shortlist, The Overhaul [6]

2012 Costa Prize Poetry Award for The Overhaul

Obra:

Black Spiders 1982

A Flame In Your Heart (with Andrew Greig) 1986

The Way We Live 1987

The Golden Peak: Travels in North Pakistan 1992 (reissued as Among Muslims in 2002)

The Autonomous Region: Poems and Photographs from Tibet 1993

The Queen of Sheba 1994

Jizzen 1999

Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead (Poems 1980-94) 2002 (shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)

The Treehouse 2004 (winner of the Forward Poetry Prize) and Scottish Book of the Year Award.

Findings 2005, essays

Sightlines 2012, essays

The Overhaul (September 2012)

Ulmaria

La tradición sugiere que algunas poetas

gaélicas eran enterradas boca abajo.

Así que la enterraron, y volvieron a sus casas,

un sombrío salmo

rodeándolos como niebla,

sin saber que el líquido

que goteaba de sus labios

buscaría su camino hacia abajo,

y que atrapadas en su trenza de pelo gris

que lentamente se deshacía

había semillas de verano:

ulmaria, melisa,

testimonios de honestidad, ya

empezando su arrastrarse

hacia la luz, así mostrándole a ella,

cuando llegara el momento,

cómo desenterrarse —

para salir a la superficie y saludarlas,

la boca joven, y llena de nuevo

de tierra, y saliva, y poesía.

Meadowsweet

Tradition suggests that certain of the

Gaelic women poets were buried face down.

So they buried her, and turned home,

a drab psalm

hanging about them like haar,

not knowing the liquid

trickling from her lips

would seek its way down,

and that caught in her slowly

unravelling plait of grey hair

were summer seeds:

meadowsweet, bastard balm,

tokens of honesty, already

beginning their crawl

toward light, so showing her,

when the time came,

how to dig herself out —

to surface and greet them,

mouth young, and full again

of dirt, and spit, and poetry.

en Jizzen, London: Picador, 1999

http://mitakuyeoyasinn.blogspot.com.es/search/label/traducci%C3%B3n%20propia

Moon

Last night, when the moon

slipped into my attic room

as an oblong of light,

I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She traveled

with a small valise

of darkness, and the first few stars

returning to the northern sky,

and my room, it seemed,

had missed her. She pretended

an interest in the bookcase

while other objects

stirred, as in a rock pool,

with unexpected life:

strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,

the paper-crowded desk;

the books, too, appeared inclined

to open and confess.

Being sure the moon

harbored some intention,

I waited; watched for an age

her cool gaze shift

first toward a flower sketch

pinned on the far wall

then glide down to recline

along the pinewood floor,

before I’d had enough. Moon,

I said, We’re both scarred now.

Are they quite beyond you,

the simple words of love? Say them.

You are not my mother;

with my mother, I waited unto death.

The Stags

This is the multitude, the beasts

you wanted to show me, drawing me

upstream, all morning up through wind-

scoured heather to the hillcrest.

Below us, in the next glen, is the grave

calm brotherhood, descended

out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling

like the signatories of a covenant;

their weighty, antique-polished antlers

rising above the vegetation

like masts in a harbor, or city spires.

We lie close together, and though the wind

whips away our man-and-woman smell, every

stag-face seems to look toward us, toward,

but not to us: we’re held, and hold them,

in civil regard. I suspect you’d

hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight

our shared country, lead me deeper

into what you know, but loath

to cause fear you’re already moving

quietly away, sure I’ll go with you,

as I would now, almost anywhere.

The Dipper

It was winter, near freezing,   

I'd walked through a forest of firs   

when I saw issue out of the waterfall   

a solitary bird.   

It lit on a damp rock,   

and, as water swept stupidly on,   

wrung from its own throat   

supple, undammable song.   

It isn't mine to give.   

I can't coax this bird to my hand   

that knows the depth of the river   

yet sings of it on land.