Richard Gwyn

Poems for staying at home (Day 23)

‘When spirit plays at being matter, it turns into cat’. A selection of cat poems from Darío Jaramillo. Published in Impossible Loves (Carcanet, 2019).   Cats   The moon gilds the rooftops. Unannounced, the shadows of cats appear…. Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 16)

  Today’s poem follows the announcement by the Prime Minister of the UK to ‘stay alert’ (whatever that means), while the leaders of  Scottish and Welsh governments have told us to continue to ‘stay at home’, which seems… Read More

Banff journal: on Jaramillo, Borges, and living between languages

After a long day that a resourceful weather-forecaster might summarise as wet and irritating, my attention depleted by sleeplessness – mood, to continue the meteorological analogy, middling to crabby –  I am due to give a presentation on… Read More

San José de Mayo

A cold evening: walking in this strange amber light towards the theatre in San José’s main square. Everything seems to happen in slow motion here. Even the dogs are pensioners, shuffling arthritically down the pavement; they make some… Read More

Reasons for his Absence

  Reasons for his Absence by Darío Jaramillo Agudelo (Colombia)   If anyone asks after him, tell them that perhaps he’ll never come back, or else on returning no one will recognise his face; tell them also that he… Read More

Ballad of the House

    Last Tuesday saw the launch in Bogotá of Rómulo Bustos Aguirre’s Collected Poems (1988-2013), La pupila incesante. The event was introduced by another fine Colombian poet, Darío Jaramillo Agudelo. Both poets feature in my forthcoming anthology,… Read More