"In Sueño del Alma: 22 Andalusian Sonnets, Cat Woodward crafts a luminous tapestry of mystic and metaphysical poetry that captures the fierce, melancholic beauty of Andalusia. This sequence of sonnets explores "The Looking," the act of perceiving as a divine and transformative encounter, weaving a poetic language that evokes the grand, symbolic traditions of Rilke, Lorca, and Valéry. Each poem, steeped in rich, vivid imagery, traverses themes of time, fate, love, and death, inviting readers to experience the cycles of day and night, the masculine and feminine, and the dreams and destinies shaped by this gaze-filled land. The unique form of the Andalusian sonnet underscores the poems’ otherworldly quality—each unrhymed stanza culminating in a resonant couplet, evoking both inevitability and transcendence. This is a work of poetic precision and symbolic depth, a testament to the enduring soul of Andalusia."
Released 31st January, 2025 // 32 pages // 978-1-916938-73-1 // RRP: £8.99. Pre-order from Broken Sleep Books here.
Poems from Sueño del Alma:
I dreamt that several bougainvilleas after the
bougainvillea, deep inside the bougainvillea,
behind an orange petal: the real Bougainvillea.
Apricot Bougainvilleas cover a house whose
cool marble stair I’m descending; the dead
in their neighbouring apartments laugh, make
love, learn to play their instruments. I hear
the wrought banister’s roughness comment
to the smoothness of the tile: the House of
Dream has bouquets and vases, but no scent.
In the parched courtyard is a gate and beyond it
the street, where I see, dissected by the iron
grille, myself. I am shabby, without prologue,
nose to the dust, out there sniffing like a dog.
Enormous yellow hill, the yellow of cymbals
and loud brass instruments; my gaze peels
the skin off you like the rind of a grapefruit.
And you, sea, full of those relentless spiritual
boulders that roll in things, how you hurl your
blue soul at my finely-whetted eyes. A coast
reflects the agonies of heaven, returning the
diligent stare with its own little fleck of god.
Soon, the sun melts the yellow hill to a pool
of stippled gold, the sea dries to a lid of salt,
the boulders go back in the angels’ pockets,
and I am recalled into that dreadful passion
while, anchored to the air as by a sturdy hook,
all that remains is my look.
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