La casa editrice Francis Boutle Publishers è una piccola casa indipendente con base a Londra, specializzata in storia sociale, storia dell’arte, delle donne e delle lingue regionali e minoritarie. L’impresa è stata fondata da Clive Boutle nel 1999. Clive Boutle ha studiato belle arti all’Università di Reading ed è stato plastico, editore, libraio, danzatore popolare ed attivista politico. Nel 2006 apparve un primo volume nella serie d’Antologie “Lesser Used Languages of Europe”, The Turn of Ermine, un’antologia di letteratura bretone seguita da sei volumi in galiziano, esperanto, normanno delle isole anglo-normanne, mencese (isola di Man), maltese, bretone e occitano (maggio 2015). L’antologia di letteratura in cornovagliese, Looking at de Mermaid, apparirà alla fine del 2015; l’antologia in gaelico scozzese sarà disponibile nel 2016. Le prossime antologie pubblicate nella serie saranno in cornovagliese, catalano frisone, basco, gaelico scozzese e irlandese. L’ambizione di questa serie di antologie è di far scoprire al pubblico anglofono tutta la ricchezza e la diversità delle culture regionali e minoritarie d’Europa attraverso una raccolta esaustiva di testi in lingua originale, accompagnati da traduzioni inglesi che restituiscono la storia della letteratura dai primi testi noti fino al giorno d’oggi. Le antologie non si rivolgono soltanto ad un pubblico colto, ma hanno l’ambizione di rivolgersi ad un vasto pubblico. Francis Boutle Publishers pubblica anche raccolte di poesie in lingue minoritarie, come l’opera di Aurélia Lassaque in occitano, di Maria-Mèrce Marçal e Montserrat Abelló in catalano, del poeta cornovagliese Mick Paynter e Ilijia Jovanovic in lingua romaní della regione serba. Quest’anno dovrebbe apparire una raccolta del soggettista iconico Tonino Guerra composto in romagnolo, della poetessa Noélia Diaz Vicedo in calalano valenziano e del poeta, cantante e musicista sami Niillas Holmberg. È prevista inoltre, per l’autunno 2015, una raccolta di poesie ungheresi e rumene. Francis Boutle Publishers sostiene alcuni eventi sul tema della poesia e della musica, affinché le culture regionali abbiano una maggiore visibilità.

ANTOLOGIA CLIVE BOUTLE

TESTO inglese

Cornish Words (Geryow Kernewek)

What shall we do with you,

Our Cornish words?

Shall we dance with you

Or portray icons,

Speak wise sayings, simple childish rhymes,

Argue politics or philosophy?

Why not write love letters – perhaps

More intended by them than is revealed?

Sometimes I think all this

Is a waste of time and effort:

For all words disguise what

We truly wish to say.

How then can we use

Our foolish fond words,

Beloved and enchanted words, 

Wild words which run away with us?

Hold up the mirror to our thoughts,

Breathe on it, wipe it clean:

Let us begin again.

Perhaps, year after year,

Age after age, we shall find

At last the true lost meaning

Not in our bardic lines,

But between those lines,

Shadowed, hinting at the essence,

Something of what we hope to signify.

Translated by Tim Saunders

News from the Other World (Vesti andar aver them)

Rise from the graves, you buried bones,

and tell about your history,

about Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, 

and what occurred in Auschwitz.

Stand up and tell

about forced labour, which they made you do,

and forced sterilisation, 

and how they made you

carry heavy stones

across the stairs of execution.

And tell about tuberculosis, cholera,

about all kinds of illness, typhoid too,

how everlasting hunger tortured you

and icy coldness made you die.

Stand up and tell

how they were peeling off the skin 

from you alive,

to decorate their writing desks.

Tell, too, how you were doubled up,

jammed against each other, because of cyanide,

and tell about the glowing ovens,

in which you found your grave.

Stand up, you bones of Romanies

and tell,

tell, how they grabbed your little children by the feet, 

and smashed them hard against the wall

until their brains began to spatter 

in all directions,

tell!

Translated by Melitta Depner

On the impossible (Sur la neeblaj)

On the impossible

middle pages

of the infinite

book of life,

some unlikely

future god

will find an ink-blot;

he’ll be annoyed,

he won’t put up with it,

he’ll rub it out!!

and from the book of life

will disappear for ever …

the whole of human history.

Translation by William Auld

I would like to be (Me a garf bout)

I’d like to be

A Frenchman.

A Frenchman who would be called

Martin or Durand.

A sarcastic Frenchman,

Brainy or thoroughly stupid,

But definitely proud,

Who thinks that his country

Is at the centre of the world.

Instead of being

One of these bungling idiots

Who live in the West, right at the fringe,

Always ready to criticise and condemn

The work of their fellow countrymen.

One of these bungling idiots,

Who want to govern themselves

But have three different ways of writing their own language

And don’t even die from embarrassment.

Translated by Jacqueline Gibson

Galician pipes (A gaita gallega) (extract)

Poor Galicia, you should 

never call yourself Spanish,

for Spain forgets you

although you are, oh! so beautiful.

As if you had been born in infamy,

it foolishly feels ashamed of you;

and the mother who despises her child

is called a heartless mother.

Nobody, to help you to your feet,

holds out a kind hand to you;

nobody dries you tears

as you humbly weep and weep.

Galicia, you have no fatherland,

you live alone in the world,

and your prolific offspring

scatters in wandering hordes

while, sad and alone,

prostrate on the green carpet,

you beg hope from the sea,

you implore God for hope.

And so although in their festive way

the pipes might sound happy,

I can tell you:

the pipes dont sing – they weep.

Translation by John Rutherford