En lite annorlunda diktantologi

Carol Ann Duffy (f. 1955) är brittisk "poet laureate" sedan 2009. Hon har en stor produktion bakom sig (och säkert också framför sig)- här är en trevlig antologi som hon sammanställt.

Carol Ann Duffy kontaktade femtio av de bästa samtida poeterna (hennes eget val) och bad dem välja dels en egen dikt dels en av en poet från en annan tidsålder. Ämnet : mode eller kläder/klädedräkt. I "Out of Fashion" (Faber & Faber 2004) redovisas dessa dikter.

"A poem, if you like, is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire. Good poems, have their origins in intensely lived days or nights, yet continue to exist independently of these beginnings. Birth, work, love and death are, in themselves, messy events; but poetry is the place where they all scrub-up well." (Från bokens förord).

Jag fastnar för den rumänska poeten Nina Cassian f. 1924 (numera bosatt i USA) och  hennes dikt

Dance

Dressed in blue, I could
turn in the wind,
insert myself gently
into immediate matter.

Dressed in green, I could
provoke a disaster
that would never have happened
dressed in alabaster.

Dressed in red, I could
trace a diagonal
from one shore to the other- well done!-
to help pass a diaphonous army.

Dressed in yellow, I could slide
to death's side
- and so on.

Flera av Nina Cassians dikter har översatts till svenska. Diktsamlingen "Kontinuum"  till exempel(2011) har getts ut av bokförlaget Tranan.

Nina Cassians eget val:

A Coat av William Butler Yeats

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.