Then spree

Website of Nia Davies, poet, editor, writer, performer

Tag: Patagonia

Forgetting Chatwin

Las Plumas, Patagonia

Las Plumas, Patagonia

Back in August of this year I visited Buenos Aires and Patagonia as part of my work with Wales Literature Exchange. Forgetting Chatwin was an epic journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific with four Welsh poets Richard Gwyn, Tiffany Atkinson, Karen Owen and Mererid Hopwood  and a group of Chilean and Argentinian poets: Jorge Fondebrider, Jorge Aulicino, Verónica Zondek, Marina C Kohon, Ines Garland and Silvia Camerotto. I took hundreds of photographs with my brother’s wonderful camera and learnt so much about the region, its peoples, culture, literature. I wrote an account of the journey for Wales Literature Exchange and it is published alongside galleries of images of Buenos Aires and Welsh Patagonia, the Andes/Bariloche and Chile.

en castellano

I’m thrilled that  two of my poems have been translated into Spanish recently.

Following (mind-expanding) travels to Buenos Aires, Patagonia and Chile as part of the Forgetting Chatwin journey Argentinian poet Marina C Kohon has translated my poem ‘Tiny Nudist Colony’.  You can read ‘Pequeña Colonia Nudista’ in translation and the original on her blog. There you can also find translations of some of the  Welsh poets who travelled to Patagonia with me: Karen Owen, Mererid Hopwood, Tiffany Atkinson and Richard Gwyn.

In 2012 one of my poems was among thousands dropped – or bombed rather – out of a helicopter above London’s South Bank.  Casagrande, the Chilean collective, showered the crowds at the Poetry Parnassus festival with little strips of paper, each printed with a poem in English and Spanish. The way they fluttered down in the light was quite mesmerising, as was the sight of people running, jumping and clambering over each other to catch a poem. The bombed poems have now been published in a book which, alongside poetry from young UK poets, a poet from each Olympic country and several fantastic Chilean poets, contains my poem ‘I want to do everything’ in English and also translated into Spanish by Chilean poet Kurt Folch.