Conviction
I stood, like a god, on the corner where
The old Red Trail to great Snowdon's summit
Turns left, level and stony, and there,
Like one who can boldly make fate submit,
I rolled a rock down the rough cliff-face
And watched as it galloped, lickety-split,
With a rabble of pebbles that joined the race
As it knocked them down along with it.
I knew very well that no one but I -
The god, though the fact's unworthy of mention -
Determined the shape of its destiny
When I set the simple stone in motion;
But I realised after it was gone
That I wasn't a god, I was the stone.
From the Welsh of T. H. Parry-Williams
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From book reviews:
...a collection of Poole's attractive translations [of T. H. Parry-Williams] has been published by Shoestring Press.
Parry-Williams was a major figure in the Welsh poetry of the last century and his innovative (within the Welsh tradition)
work in both sonnet and rhyming couplet is well-represented in these sure-footed translations which deserve to find plenty
of readers.
- Glyn Pursglove in Acumen
No hill-farmers here, rather the majesty of North Wales as a backdrop for Parry-Williams' complex and metaphysical poetry
alternations: life and death, truth and lies, mortal and immortal. Richard Poole's translation doesn't ask to be judged as
a translation but as a rendering of poetry as poetry. Of course, the place where Parry-Williams becomes Poole is hidden
from me, but occasionally sardonic colloquialisms like "pain in the neck" stopped my reading, making me wonder what the Welsh
idiom would be, how its ironic 'bite' might be different, etc. To Richard Poole's credit, I didn't stop very often. Anyone
who has travelled far into Snowdonia and observed the fate of road-signs written in English knows that translation from the
Welsh remains a political act; but the politics of Welshness are foregrounded explicitly neither in the translator's note nor
in the poetry itself, with the exception of "This Country", where the bone-dry quality of the irony makes every assertion
suspect: "Get this: I've had a bellyful of Welsh voices, / Crooning away, choiring their tedious noises". But "Wales has got
her claws into my heart, tearing at me".
- Nottingham Poetry International
2003 was a good year for Welsh poetry in translation. First we had the substantial Menna Elfyn/John Rowlands book of
twentieth-century Welsh poetry, weighing in at 400 pages, nearly 100 poets, and 26 translators... At the other end of the scale
was Richard Poole, with his slim, finely-tuned pamphlet That Fool July, versions of T. H. Parry-Williams of great fluency
and intellectual suppleness.
- Patrick McGuinness in The New Welsh Review
I'm inclined now and then to prefer certain aspects of Tony Conran's and Joseph Clancy's translations to Poole's, their takes
on "Llyn y Gadair", for instance, but in general, in capturing the astringency and sinewy strength of the originals, Richard
Poole does Parry-Williams proud.
- Glenda Beagan in Planet
That Fool July may be ordered from:
Shoestring Press, 19 Devonshire Avenue, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 1BS
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