TRANSLATIONS
Gig Ryan in Vietnamese Translation
Oppenheimer trước Ủy Ban Điều Tra Những Hoạt Động Phương Hại Mỹ Quốc Những câu hỏi của họ bắt đầu, rồi đến những giả định, tiếp tới là những giả thuyết Mỗi góc cạnh bị tránh né, bị đẩy tới. …
Phan Nhien Hao in English Translation
In the changed season I heard the season has changed the river is running this direction then one day the sea will enter the city I heard in the far places people had lit up the night with pleasure some …
5 Poems by Ардак НУРГАЗЫ in English, Chinese and Kazakh
Ardakh Nurgaz (Ардак НУРГАЗЫ） is a Kazakh poet, essayist, critic born in 1972. He graduated from university in 1995, and began publishing work in 1991. From 2006 to 2008, he was editor-in-chief of Foreign Literatures, a bi-monthly in Kazakhstan. He is now correspondent of The Alma-Ata Evening newspaper. He has published the poetry collections A Book of Pseudo Freedoms (2009) and A Collection of Humming Birds (in Chinese and Kazakh, 2012).
The Earth of Kashgar (translated excerpts of a long poem)
Other than the fact that Adili Adili Tuniyazi is a Uyghur poet, I know nothing more about him. But when I first read his work in Dangdai xianfeng shi 30 nian (Avant-Garde Poetry for 30 Years), I was impressed. The word zuguo (motherland) that he refers to frequently in his poem is so ambiguous that I suspect it’s not China proper.
4 Melancholic Songs by Rubén Darío
Born in Nicaragua as Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, Rubén Darío (1867-1916) is one of the most famous and influential of all Latin American poets. Generally credited with initiating the modernismo movement, he has had a profound impact upon Latin American …
3 Poems by Lydia Daher
November the rain is falling these days like a superfluous statement probably in order to give the grey a reason to mirror itself once more and there i am sneaking around november puddles together with the light of a broken …
2 Poems by Ulrike Draesner
untitled alongside the field vor uns um uns a banquet row gravel, surfaces, one and a half yards wide your accuracy the lopsided slant of the road the usual 2.5% beneath a creamy sun’s frosty halo against the ascending turf’s …
2 Poems by Nora Gomringer
The Hunter You bring along cake and wine, happen upon the wolf. He opens his pants and says: Reach inside. And he’s standing close to your car window while he speaks and you pray that he may not realize that …
2 Poems by Suzanne Dracius
Suzanne Dracius is a prize-winning writer from Martinique whom the French Cultural Minister has called ‘one of the great figures of Antillean letters.’ She writes in French and peppers her work with Creole, drawing on themes of ‘métissage’ (refers to the blending of two distinct elements, in either a biological or cultural sense) and ‘marronnage’ (refers to the flight of slaves from their masters).
One Dozen Ghio: Translations of Ennio Moltedo
Image from Consejo Nacional del Libro y la Lectura Ennio Moltedo Ghio (1931–2012) lived all his life in the cities of Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, Chile. His friend, Allan Brown, says that poets like Moltedo may well be known …
Twilight to Dawn: Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire is, of course, a key figure in European literature, with a far-reaching influence – an example, in his life and in his poetry, of what it means to be modern. Les Fleurs du mal, his major work, was influenced by the French romantic poets of the early nineteenth century; it is formally close to the contemporary Parnassians, but is psychologically and sexually complex. ‘Dawn’ and ‘Twilight’ are from the ‘Tableaux Parisiens’ section of Les Fleurs du mal; this particular group of poems established Baudelaire as the poet of modernism, of the flux of urban life with its milling crowds and solitary individuals.
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.
