Armando Halpern

Updated: Wed, 20 May 2015 04:52 pm

http://armandohalpern.blogspot.com/

Biography
Samples
Blog

Biography

I was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and moved to the UK in 2005. Some time after arriving at the UK, the language in which my poetry is written changed to English, as if I could breathe the language of the country. Since then, I have been a frequent presence in a number of poetry cafes and other events and gigs. I am currently the editor of the Ariadne's Thread magazine (http://www.ariadnethread.net) and have recently published hte book "Animals and Other Love Songs" (See it ay: https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/uk/bookshelf.marketplacelink/B00VXJQRDQ ) I strongly believe that there is a place for poetry in our life and society, trying to deliver it with the best of my abilities. My poetry is sometimes based in classical culture and references, such as mythology, but never loses from sight the urgency of the moment, trying to capture it in its multiple shapes of intensity and emotionality. You can read other poems on my blog and get in touch by email for further information, a gig, etc.

Samples

Summoning the Dead Suddenly, words visit me and, when they do, they come all at once and, sitting here, I’m nowhere. Sometimes I give up on life, then, to tell you the wondrous story of what life couldn’t have been. I sit again by your coffin, mother, and talk wordless to what remains, still evaporating from the body and appeasement comes, at last, from colourless sounds and images anchored in thin, dim air. Sometimes, in the dreams I never tell, I’m leaving a single flower by your grave, as you would have done to me. The flower lies, seen from the distance of different unblinking eyes, like a pulsating living heart and the single gesture carries, then, a single purpose that is painful, slow as the conscience of things to come. Sometimes I see you again standing by your deserted body, I’m telling you about motherly love. I tell you how it can be a prison, a poison that blinds and contaminates, robbing from gestures the carelessness of birds. Words amongst us were never free, they carried the weight of ancestral rules, as if the god of time fought us. Sometimes, though, I’m still sorry, as if I could cry again the damnation of knowing too late that examples, set to follow, shouldn’t be fought but dropped, before fighting becomes another restraint. I mourn you so that the night closes, I mourn myself for the dead birds, still in my chest, still seeming to fly. Sometimes I just sit and stare, as if listening behind the sounds, as if writing was more than writing, I sit down and write out of time, filling with passionate and angry words the gaps between the bricks of my house. Quietness spreads, then, and I see that experience shaped my heart into a pump that time and rust will eventually stop.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.