Yolanda Castaño was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1977. BA in Spanish Lan- guage and Literature and with Media Studies, apart from being a poet, editor and an active culture manager, Yolanda Castaño has been a columnist and has worked in Galician TV during many years (Galician Audiovisual Academy Award as ‘Best TV Communicator 2005’). She has published 6 poetry books in Galician and Spanish, several chapbooks in Galician, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese and Macedonian, and a pair of compilations. A finalist of the National Poetry Prize, she has won poetry awards amongst which the National Critics Award (1999), the Espiral Maior Poetry Award (2007), the Fundación Novacaixagalicia, the Ojo Crítico (2009, best poetry book by a young author in Spain) and the Author of the Year Galician Booksellers’ Award (2015) stand out. She has coordinated collective books, art and poetry exhibitions; she has published works as an editor, as well as five poetry books for children and four of translations. Part of her work has been translated into 25 different languages.
BREAD OF CELEBRATION (IT’S AN UNFAIR WORLD).
The world is a hotel with no
reception desk.
The gift of eloquence no common good.
That’s not how the loaves and fishes were shared.
Over portside the bones the meat over starboard.
You’ll lose your head and it’s raining hats, money for the rich, and for
the poor more kids.
I know of bread I’d shred into pieces, morsels that could do for later;
if only a crumb could fill you up, could satisfy, could open your mouth.
Like lifeboats on the majestic Titanic, a thicket of combs for the man
with no hair.
The urbi et orbi of rhetoric: ‘neither is he here nor are we expecting him’ Beards are knit here and you’re
a chinless wonder.
And God will give this bread
to someone with less teeth.