Rebellious Sun

 

 

 

LA REBELDÍA DEL SOL (REBELLIOUS SUN)
Poems in Spanish and English
Antonio Machado Collection
Olifante ediciones de poesía, 2022
ISBN: 978-84-125566-0-5
144 pags. 14 x 20,5 cm.
Perfect paperback
www.olifante.com
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LA REBELDÍA DEL SOL (Rebellious Sun). In 2018, Charles Olsen received the III Antonio Machado Poetry Fellowship of Segovia and Soria. He spent a month in each place, doing workshops and talks in schools and with the local community groups, visiting local villages, walking in the countryside, and getting to know the people and places that infuse Antonio Machado's poetry. As well as poems inspired by these experiences Rebellious Sun includes a selection of poems by other writers in Spain and New Zealand from special editions of the Given Words project Charles runs, and finishes with poems inspired by a line found in Machado's overcoat after his death 'These blue days and this sun of childhood', which in Charles' case took him back to his own childhood in Aotearoa New Zealand.

All the poems are printed in both Spanish and English, however the introduction to the collection is only in Spanish. You can read the introduction in English below.

Available from Amazon.com or order through your local bookshop.

In Spain you can find it in Casa del Libro, FNAC, Proteo Librerías, Babel Libros, Amazon.es, or through your local bookshop.

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INTRODUCTION

This collection is divided in three parts reflecting different aspects of my work during the III Antonio Machado Poetry Residence of Segovia and Soria. The first, Where the echo sleeps, is inspired by month-long stays in Segovia and Soria. I not only visited both cities but also stayed in the nearby towns of La Granja de San Idelfonso and Alconaba where I could breathe the country air, go on long walks and, thanks to friends both old and new, was introduced to the hidden corners and stories of each province.

During my residency I met and shared my poetic and artistic work with students in both provinces. In Soria I visited the Manuela Peña School in Covaleda, the Art and Design College and the Antonio Machado Foundation, and in Segovia the San José Cultural Centre, the Public and Municipal Libraries, and I led a workshop with Paladio Arte, a theatre company and social inclusion project working with people with learning difficulties and disabilities. I also invited the public to participate in a poetry game with words chosen from poems by Machado. In the section Given Words, I share poems from participants in Aotearoa New Zealand and Spain.

In the last part, Blue Skies, I have taken as inspiration the Alexandrine verse found in the pocket of Machado’s overcoat after his death ‘These blue days and this sun of childhood’, which takes me back to the skies of my own childhood in Aotearoa New Zealand where I lived the first eleven years of my life. The final poem ‘When you least expect’, is a more recent reflection where political acts brush up against the personal, which in Machado’s case led to his fleeing Spain.

I have enjoyed my journey in the lands of Castile and León in the footsteps of Machado, and the chance to see these places not only through his poetry but also walking the same landscapes and streets, alongside local inhabitants, future generations and new friends, taking photographs, filming, drawing and writing in my notebooks. It gives me much pleasure that my poems and pictures share these pages with writers from Spain and the country of my birth, Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as with Antonio Machado himself.

Charles Olsen
Madrid, June 2022

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La rebeldía del sol (Rebellious Sun, Olifante Ediciones de Poesía, 2022) by the River Duero.

MORE FROM REBELLIOUS SUN

Review on Kete Books by Erica Stretton.

Review by Sarah Tremlett in Liberated Words.

Read the poem Walks with the Professor on Olifante Ediciones de Poesía.

An hour-long special, Metaverso on Spanish Radio 3 extra, dedicated to La rebeldía del sol.

Charles reads Walks with the Professor on Given Words Instagram.

Charles reads in Spanish El río Duero on @colsenart Instagram.

Read the poem When you least expect along with a translation into Italian by Andrea De Alberti on Medium Poesía. When you least expect was previously published in Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017, J. Ross (ed.), Massey University Press, and in 2019, in More of Us, Wellington: Landing Press, and Almanacco dei poeti e della poesia contemporanea n. 7, Rimini: Raffaelli Editore.

You can read about the poem Vertigo and watch the poetry film here, and it is also featured on the educational poetry project Una Poema Cada Semana (A Poem a Week), where you can find photos of this poem in the book.

PRESENTATIONS

'Rebellious Sun' sees the light in Spain on The Big Idea

Photos from the presentation in the poetry book fair, Expoesía, in Soria, Spain, August 2022.

Photos from the joint presentation of La rebeldía del sol and Lilián Pallares's Bestial, in the Biblioteca Piloto del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia, December 2022.