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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Helene Cardona



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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