In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Claudia talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’The moth' by Miroslav Holub.

We are delighted to feature 'The moth' in this episode and would like to thank Bloodaxe Books for granting us permission to use the poem in this way. Do visit them for further inspiration!

Claudia visited The Poetry Exchange at Greyfriars Chapel in Canterbury, as part of Wise Words Festival in September 2014. We’re very grateful to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange.

Claudia is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

'The moth' is read by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

The moth

by Miroslav Holub

The moth,

having left its pupa

in the galaxy

of flower grains

and pots of rancid dripping,

the moth

discovers in this

topical darkness

that it’s a kind of butterfly

but

it can’t believe it,

it can’t believe it,

it can’t believe

that it’s a tiny,

flying, relatively

free moth

and it wants to go back,

but there’s no way.

Freedom makes

the moth tremble

for ever. That is,

Twenty-two hours.

Miroslav Holub, Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations. Trans. Dana Hasova and David Young (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

*****

Adaptation

by Fiona Lesley Bennett.

Czechoslovakia 1976

A man is shuttered away in a laboratory

he stares down the lens of a microscope

into the peppercorn eyes of a moth.

At night words fall through him like particles

that cluster and mutate in spiralling patterns

Nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit .

Every twenty-two hours

the moth hangs in its pupa

waiting for the blood to fall

and for the wind and the currents.

Columbia 2011

A woman is kept in a jar, the jar

is kept in darkness, the darkness

is blacker than her eyes. Inside herself

she dreams she is a girl running barefoot

with a net in the garden.

creelo, creelo, creelo

Somewhere

between thought and dream, between

decades and hemispheres and species

the edge of belief begins

like a wing that trembles  

and then lifts. 

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