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Archive feature: Poems translated by poets

‘You meet such a nice class of people’

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31 december 2015
Looking back on Poetry International’s features from 2015, my favorite moments have to include a translation exchange between the poets Els Moors, from Belgium, and Joshua Clover, from the USA; as well as a trilingual renshi written by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto and Shuntaro Tanikawa (Japan), Ming Di (China) and Kim Hyesoon (South Korea). For this project, the four poets, with the participation of Korean-American poet Don Mee Choi, depended on translation and translating each other in order to collaborate and, eventually, to produce the full poem in their respective languages. As Kenneth Rexroth suggests in his 1959 essay ‘The poet as translator’, translation allows a poet to compose her own set of peers, across various borders and differences: ‘All through the world’s literature there are people I enjoy knowing intimately, whether Abelard or Rafael Alberti, Pierre Reverdy or Tu Fu, Petronius or Aesculapius. You meet such a nice class of people’.
It’s not uncommon, of course, for poets to translate other poets, but I think it’s not emphasized enough how often, and profoundly, the art and practice of translation catalyzes, rehearses or infiltrates a poet’s ‘own’ writing. And it’s not emphasized enough how much poetic inspiration and skill must be mobilized to produce an effective, even moving, translation.

To close out the year and move forward to the new one, I want to revisit our trilingual renshi feature, to emphasize the dexterous and intricately coordinated translation work the poets had to do, as well as highlight the many other poems by Kim Hyesoon that have been brilliantly translated by Don Mee Choi in our archive.

Likewise, Els Moors and Joshua Clover’s translation exchange is a way to recall Moors’ other work in translation, such as her translation with Sarah Posman into Dutch of UK poet Warsan Shire’s ‘Conversations about home (at the deportation centre)’. We should note, as well, that Russian poet Lev Rubinstein, who appeared alongside Moors as a Poetry International Festival guest this past year, is translated in our archive by Philip Metres, an well-known poet, scholar and activist in his own right from the USA. 

Such examples abound in our ‘Poets & Poems’ section: 2014 festival poet Daniel Falb has been translated by Uljana Wolf and 2010 festival poet Christian Hawkey; Hawkey, in turn, has been translated into Dutch by Tsead Bruinja; Dolores Dorantes has been translated by Jen Hofer; and Jean-Michel Espitallier by Keston Sutherland.

Below are a few highlights from our archive of poets-as-translators (or translators-as-poets):

Trilingual renshi by Ming Di, Kim Hyesoon, Shuntaro Tanikawa and Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, with additional translating by Don Mee Choi

• Kim Hyesoon, ‘All the garbage of the world, unite!’, trans. Don Mee Choi

• Els Moors, ‘the white fucking bunnies’, trans. Joshua Clover and Sarah Posman

• Warsan Shire, ‘Conversations about home’, trans. Els Moors and Sarah Posman

• Ali Abdolrezaei, ‘Mother me out!’, trans. Abol Froushan

• Eugenie Paultre, ‘Winter 1’, trans. Cole Swensen, Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal

• Jean-Michel Espitallier, ‘Here and there’, trans. Keston Sutherland

• Zheng Xiaoqiong, ‘Singing’, trans. Jonathan Stalling

• Daniel Falb, ‘observe these families of behavior’, trans. Christian Hawkey

• Christian Hawkey, ‘Report from the Undersecretary of Inquests’, trans. Tsead Bruinja

• Agi Mishol, ‘Woman martyr’, trans. Lisa Katz

• Dolores Dorantes, ‘We are the war and we are the refuge’, trans. Jen Hofer

• Maung Chaw Nwe, ‘Harbour’, trans. ko ko thett and James Byrne 

• Peter Gizzi, ‘Vincent, homesick for the land of pictures’, trans. Samuel Vriezen
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