TRANSLATIONS
8 Poems by Gastón Baquero
Gastón Baquero by Eduardo Margareto Born in Banes, Cuba, in 1916, Gastón Baqero grew up in the countryside, a rural beginning that figures as one element in his, in many ways very urbane, poetry. He was part of the Orígenes …
3 Translations with Notes: Laforgue, Soupault
Jules Laforgue and Phillip Soupault are two poets with very little in common, especially when considering the early period of the former. Laforgue’s early work relentlessly circulates around an unremitting metaphysical anguish (the poet himself would refer to his ‘poèmes philo’), a sort of bent continuation of the Romanticism of a Lamartine, with the difference that if in Lamartine nature, rich as it is, is a site of absence, for the young Laforgue it is patent that nature has already kicked the bucket – so there are no verdant dales through which one might wander while pondering the retreat of the absolute: no site of retreat and meditation remains.
El Salvador Tragic: 10 Roque Dalton Poems from 3 Books
Roque Dalton | courtesy of Transparencia Activa As far as tragic poets’ stories go, Roque Dalton’s (El Salvador, 1935-1975) is perhaps the most tragic in Central America. In the 1950s as a Law student, he was the brightest of a …
Men Stink of Far Cities: Translations from Jean Mariotti’s ‘Sans Titre’
Born in Farino, New Caledonia, in 1901, Jean Mariotti became that island’s foremost author of poetry, novels … and one children’s book, Les contes de Poindi (his only published English translation). Much of his adult life was spent in Paris, but he often returned to his island home for years at a time. Please read Le roi Nickel: Jean Mariotti en Nouvelle-Calédonie, a terrific account of his life and work by Eddy Banaré (in French only).
Trilingual Visibility in Our Transpacific: 3 Mapuche Poets
The work of the three Mapuche poets included here – Jaime Huenún, Maribel Mora Curriao and Roxana Miranda Rupailaf – has been drawn from the Tri-lingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology, forthcoming with Interactive Press in later 2013. Poems are presented in …
2 Translations of Alex Skovron
PEN Melbourne’s Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee (TLRC) recently commissioned Jacques Rancourt, French poet, translator and director of the Paris-based Festival franco-anglais de poésie, to translate a collection of poems by Melbourne poet Alex Skovron. Skovron and Rancourt discussed and …
Fogarty & Garrido: A Bilingual Conversation between 4 Poems
Mapuche ‘campesinos’ – Lionel Fogarty Chile our liberation fight is the same Indigenous courage we must unite on land we relate to better than rich Chilean brother we here are unity for you Columbus 1492 was a white man like …
Malaman: Words for ‘Sound’ from Several Languages
Malaman is a chanting of words for ‘sound’ from several languages. They are chanted with the intention of releasing their inherent sound-energy and are neither words for music nor for sound-as-noise. These are words for sound, one of the world’s …
Rilke and the Buddha: 3 Translations
These poems instantiate a significant cross-cultural and intermedial dialogue between West and East, Europe and Asia, sculpture and poetry, the founder of Buddhism and a Modernist poet. Rilke’s interest in the Buddha was stirred by an Indonesian statue in Auguste Rodin’s garden in Meudon which the French sculptor had procured (along with other Buddha statues) from the 1900 World Expo in Paris.
Transmissions: 3 Translations of Sappho
‘Transmissions’ comprises of creative translations and selective re-orderings of some fragmentary works of ancient Greek poet Sappho. These compilations emphasise the occasionally violent and manipulative nature of Sappho’s poems, the potential for multiple interpretations through lacunae, and some possible implications of imposing narratives on a poet about whom we know so little and whose works survive only in pieces.
In the Republic of Words: Ethics of Translation and the Politics of Contemporary Korean Poetry
In a book I recently read with my students in an undergraduate translation class, the writer sets forth twenty provocative theses on translation in this era of globalisation for a new comparative literature, ranging from ‘Nothing is translatable’ to ‘Everything …
4 Poems Translated by Gabriel Sylvian
Read four poems by Korean poet Gi Hyeongdo, translated by Gabriel Silvian. These poems, a special addition to Cordite 35: Oz-Ko, are accompanied by an interview between Gabriel Silvian and Oz-Ko touree Terry Jaensch on Gi’s life and poetic works.
