World Poetry Day With Watercolours

As you may know, today is/was World Poetry Day. Around these parts, it's coming to a close, but it's not quite over yet! I've been trying to post to FB and tweet quite regularly all day, so this post will be like a round up of poetic goodness. You may also know that I am very interested in languages and translation, so I've tried to share as many translated poems as I share English ones. (You may also know that I am attempting to self teach a few languages, but I'll talk about that in more detail a little later).

I tried to make today into a little project, and though I didn't do as much as I would've liked, I'm quite happy with what I did. My idea was to bring art and poetry together with loose illustrations based on the poems I'd share. I was going to paint abstract paintings but it didn't quite work out that way.

Well, enough talk! I present to you now the three poems I used as artistic inspiration:

#1 - "The Wandering Guitar Player" by Mahmoud Darwish, published in "Victims of a Map"

These are quite loose watercolour illustrations

#2 - "The Tree and the Sky" by Tomas Tranströmer, and translated by Robert Bly

I illustrated lines of the poems that inspired me most

#3 - "Cat Lives" by Sarah Kirsch, translated by Anne Stokes in  MPT magazine.

I saw this poem as I leafed through MPT
 magazine, and I knew I had to paint it

Now, since this is World Poetry Day, it only seemed right to share lines from poems in their original language, too. 

(click on the title link to see a translation)

#1 -'Chopos' by Pedro Serrano:

Tiemblan de miedo,

cada hoja, cada rama,

crines hirsutas, verticales.

Comendadores de dios, poetas

de la displicencia o el cansancio,

pinceles del azul, panteras verdes.

#2 - 'A Star' by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

مَسَّنِي ضُوْءٌ
شَرَخَتُ زُجَاجَ أَحْلامِي
خَرَجْتُ مِنْ الفَضَاءْ

إِليَّ مِنْ بَعيدٍ
تُعبِّئُ نَجْمَةٌ تَعَبِي
تَعُجُّ إِليكِ حَجَّاً عامراً
مِنْ الهواءْ

#3 - 'Je suis l'enfant de ce siècle' by Abdellatif Laâbi

J'avais appris à marcher
puis j'ai désappris
Je me suis lassé des oasis
et des chamelles avides de ruines
Étendu au milieu du chemin
la tête tournée vers l'Orient
j'attends la caravane des fous

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I hope you enjoyed this post, and had fun with your own poetic journeys. What did you do for World Poetry Day? Did you write poetry, tweet about it, read other people's poetry? Do let me know in the comments, as I always enjoy reading them!