There is a hand that writes our

story from somewhere else.  

Even if we hide under a table

or under the bed, our story written

by that hand will go on being written, regardless.

In grammar, punctuation links language fragments and provides signposts to guide a reader through a text. Its importance is often undervalued, only becoming obvious when it is misused or absent. The twenty-one poems that make up Punctuation remind us of the connections that are forced upon us, and those we choose to make. How shall we live? How shall we shape the stories of our intersecting lives? These beautifully crafted poems are concerned with the walls that divide us and the shadows that define us. They are tender and defiant, deeply loving and (at times) deeply pained.  ––Sue Wootton

I wrote of Rogelio Guedea’s last collection that ‘the depth of these poems is in their directness, in their assumption that candour in itself is an emotional force.’ Again with this new selection, I’m struck with his calm discerning eye, his attentive ear, that so define the grain and texture of ordinary life, and how inevitably love, politics, generosity, an expansive sense of what we share, are celebrated and directly spoken as part of that grain. These poems in Spanish are a rare gift to New Zealand writing (the poet is a New Zealand citizen), as they expand both the style and the possibilities of what poetry does. While Roger Hickin’s lucid translations once more highlight the achievement in dual language publication that Cold Hub Press offers us. The poems themselves and their English versions, from the most internationally enterprising of our poetry presses, are a ‘celebración’ to delight in.  ––Vincent O’Sullivan

Two stories

There is a hand that writes our

story from somewhere else.

Even if we hide under a table

or under the bed, our story written

by that hand will go on being written, regardless.

That hand is not God, though it might be.

Nor is it from the future, though it might be.

Not from the past either, but you never know.

For example: one day you forget you had a son

with a woman you’ve forgotten and one day

that son, in his own words, demands of you

everything you failed to be for him,

since he did not know you.

The story that links you, who wrote it?

That hand, from that other place,

which you are yourself.

© Rogelio Guedea 2017

Translation © Roger Hickin