Thinking in Spanish, Lisa Fudio

Thinking in Spanish

in Spanish there are two ways of saying ‘I am’
‘yo soy’ or ‘yo estoy’
one for each state
permanent or temporary

yo soy…
a woman
a mother
a writer

yo estoy…
tired
happy
learning Spanish

if I wanted to say
‘I am sad’
in Spanish I would say
‘yo estoy triste’
i am sad, right now, in this moment
but it’s temporary

‘yo soy triste’ means something different
i am a sad person
my sadness is permanent

but sadness is never permanent
sometimes I forget that

in English there’s no way to clarify so
my brain hears ‘I am sad’ and thinks
‘yes. i know
you are a woman
you are a mother
you are a writer
you are sad’

so now when I am sad, I tell myself to think in Spanish
‘yo estoy triste’
only temporary
never permanent  

How I did it

When I started writing seriously I began with short stories. I needed the sense of completing something. I’ve only recently begun writing poems, though I read a lot of contemporary poetry. In fact I’ve only written six poems so far – so the three poems I entered for the competition was half of my entire back catalogue!

I added ‘Thinking in Spanish’ to make up the numbers. I thought it was too personal to win; this success has taught me how important it is to be authentic.

It came to me as I was standing in the kitchen listening to an audiobook Spanish course. I was amazed to discover that distinction in Spanish, and applied it to my grief about my father’s death. I was learning Spanish as a way of remembering him, because he loved languages.

I wrote the poem immediately, on the Notes app on my phone. The lack of capitalisation is intentional because I wanted it to be read as a single thought, which was exactly how it cameto me.

The finished version is pretty much as I wrote it; I just took out a short middle section about how the process of learning Spanish will never be completed. It felt like a caveat that complicated the intention of the poem. I belong to a local writing group and at the end of 2023 we all stated what our goals were for the next year. My goal was to be shortlisted for something, but that meant I had to start submitting my work. So that was my resolution for 2024.

My biggest issue with writing is the idea that it must be right first time. I really struggle with accepting the ‘bad first draft’; unless I can picture a poem in its finished state, I find it hard to start. It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to write without that expectation – and I’ve been much more creative as a result.

My underlying goal is to fully believe that I’m a writer. I see all these English Lit graduates and Creative Writing MAs in the bios of people who are published. Recently I performed one of my poems at an event and there was a row of seats at the front with a sign that said, ‘Reserved for poets’. So I thought, ‘Maybe I am a poet now’.

LISA FUDIO currently works as a counsellor and wellbeing practitioner and is undertaking further studying in counselling. She is a member of a women’s writing group who meet monthly to workshop ideas. She is also a big reader and documents her reading on Instagram (@lisareadsthings). This is her first publication.

The other finalists

‘Live Stream’, Claire Lynn (second place)
‘falling down your danger mouth’, Milla van der Have (third place)
'From a field beneath the Galtee Mountains', Andrea Bussell (Unpublished Poet Prize)
‘The Way Rain Sometimes Can’, Roselle Angwin
‘Love In A Time of Extinctions’, Sophia Argyris
‘Swallowing the Bees’, Sharon Black
‘The Language of Mothers’, Penny Boxall
‘Insomnia on the Hill of Storms', Rosie Hadden
‘Facts about whales’, Livvy Hanks
‘The speed of snow', Jo Haslam
‘Neither an Entering nor a Leaving’, Rosie Jackson
‘Dog’, Dillon Jaxx
‘Also’, Tonya Lailey
‘The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman, 1776-1800’, Lydia Macpherson
‘The Alchemists’, Audrey Molloy
‘Flypast’, Mary Mullholland
‘Haweswater’, Ilse Pedler
‘Death Inverted’, So Sparham
‘That first day, a woodpecker’, Janice Warman

Meet the winners of all competitions