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Poemas para Michael Jordan / Poems for Michael Jordan en The Guardian

Traducción de Tim Benjamin

“Awarded first place in the CNCA’s Roberto Bolaño Prize for Young Literary Creation in the Poetry category, 27-year-old Francisco Ide Wolleter stands out from the latest generation of Chilean littérateurs. His Poems for Michael Jordan are miracles of observation, imbuing quotidian life with existential drama. You won’t ever watch basketball the same way again after this. “

the ball’s porous plane makes me think of human skin

a tactile nostalgia though contact is always illusory

the facts are thus: we’re structured on emptiness built of atoms, atoms whose nature is to repel and be repelled.

that’s why we don’t mix with things that’s why when we touch we haven’t really touched anything at all

the arc, precise distance, the power ball in hand and control of the instant

as if nothing else existed not hunger nor destitution nor blame this is how one must approach it all

love is a discipline identical to that of basketball and a game maintains the structure of life

you have to go mad with love while there’s still time as if you’ve done away with everything else

I always played that way and when my teammates understood this they hewed tunnels through the air for me and my master’s move to pass through

the ball in the air, fruit-like:

an orange suddenly bobs upon the waves

an eye seen through fogged glass

fate is

the phenomenon of the ball passing through empty space to arrive

at your empty hands

*****

Francisco Ide Wolleter (Santiago, 1989) has published Observatory (Corriente Alterna Editions, 2011), Yakuza (Cinosargo Editions 2014) and Poems for Michael Jordan (Luma Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland; Ajiaco Editions, Santiago; 2014). He was awarded a scholarship by the Fundación Pablo Neruda in 2010. His texts were included in the anthologies Tea Party, Tri-national anthology of poetry: Peru, Bolivia, Chile (Cinosargo / La Liga Editions, 2012) and New poets from America: Young poetry from Chile to Nicaragua (Fundación Neruda, 2013). In 2013, he was awarded second place in the Lamas Médula International Poetry Contest (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In 2014, he was awarded first place in the CNCA’s Roberto Bolaño Prize for Young Literary Creation in the Poetry category, and honorary mention in the Novel category. He also won the Toribio Larraín City Prize.

Tim Benjamin writes and translates from a new home base in Philadelphia, publishing reviews and commentaries on both US and South American culture and politics. He recently returned from just under half a decade living and working in Santiago, Chile

https://www.theguardian.com/books/translation-tuesdays-by-asymptote-journal/2016/dec/20/translation-tuesday-poems-for-michael-jordan-by-francisco-ide-wolleter

#Tim Benjamin #Francisco Ide Wolleter #michael jordan #the guardian #poetry #Asymptote