Hélène Cardona is a poet, linguist, literary translator and actor. She was born in Paris, the daughter of Spanish poet Jose Manuel Cardona, from Ibiza, and a Greek mother. She is a citizen of the United States, France and Spain. She studied in the University of Cantabria, Spain and in the Sorbonne in Paris, gaining a master's degree in American Literature. She has received fellowships from the Goethe-Institut and the International University of Andalucía. Cardona has worked as a translator for the French Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Embassy, and for the film industry. Her book Life in Suspension won the 2017 International Book Award in Poetry. She played the part of Françoise "Fuffi" Drou, the beauty shop proprietor in the film Chocolat.
She is author of: Dreaming My Animal Selves (Bilingual English/French), The Astonished Universe/ L'Univers Stupefait, Life in Suspension. She has translated: José Manuel Cardona’s Birnam Wood/ El Bosque de Birnam (Bilingual English/Spanish), Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac’s Beyond Elsewhere, Dorianne Laux’s Ce que nous portons, Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings (Whitman et la Guerre de Sécession). She lives and works in Santa Monica, California.
Night Messenger
I wake. In a meadow
brained with wild grasses and flowers
notes of music drift from a harp.
A penguin is running.
I follow to the river.
He lays on a leaf,
lets the current carry him
and says, this stream is your life,
instead of watching from the meadow,
flow with its rhythm.
Guided by Scottish pipes
I reach the gate
between my past and the waterway.
Like the penguin, I lay on a leaf,
let the river transport me
knowing I've entered another world.
Between Klimt and Giacometti
A room haunted by paintings
seizes my mind, fluid unpredictable
lives, their secret eliciting
attention, Klimt's innate aesthetic,
linear statements without tonality.
Their spontaneity transmits essential wisdom.
Dark eye shapes, dominant lip lines, upturned
corner of mouth, eyelashes and iris
connected, vine charcoal ready to tumble
like a Giacometti. Soft focus and impressive
looseness enhance anatomy,
allow latitude for creativity.
Every wall is a beginning.
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