Category: Translation

The Taste of White Chocolate With Flecks of Freeze-Dried Strawberries

About loss, relief, days filled with mysteries
and the taste of black sesame.
I mark sashiko in watercolour, whichever way the stitch goes.
Against the pale cotton background. In the recesses of summer nights.
I live in the distance, I live with my defeat, quietly, limiting sugar,
white flour, all kinds of fools.

And you?

You talk about daphnia, threads rippling just above the water,
the penetrating green which begets mould, a raid coming from the ocean,
waning ground picked up by waves, stones appearing out of nowhere.
Wild beaches with no path, no seam.

We go through cycles, we pass each other in collections, between letters.
And you say you dreamed it all, the west coast
the taste of smoked fish, the oyster festival hidden behind paper masks.

 

Speculations

for my son

I’m on a bus to pick up my son,
in the past I had no son, no whaling dreams
no evening dress. I didn’t need any memories
to write until things turned black or faded in the sun.

I didn’t have to disguise myself to be open about gender
and submarines. About nuclear explosions
at the bottom of the ocean. Summer is turning pale. In the folds of books
sand is crunching, ginkgo leaves are going dry. A living fossil

shimmers between the tree branches pierced by an arrow. As well as the smell
of hot springs, I do not recognise muffled voices.
I get out soundlessly, I curse the day.

Maybe I’ll try to make some Irish stew.
Butter the pretzels, top up the water in the coffeemaker.
In the evening we drink wine, someone says they know me well.
Read between the lines. Rack their brains, tell jokes

try gestures, retrieve, do some tricks.

 

Translator’s Note:

I’ve been following Margo Południak’s creative journey for a long while now. She is a very talented poet, but also a visual artist, photographer, graphic designer, and book designer. Simply speaking, whatever she touches, she turns into gold.

We met online, through a mutual Facebook friend, and remained in contact for years, but last year marked a rather special moment when we finally met in person. It was one of those meetings when you feel like everything immediately clicks into place, as if you’ve known the person forever.

Reading Margo’s poetry gives me a similar feeling: of quiet recognition, of looking in the mirror, of the “a-ha!” moment. Translating her poems only amplifies this feeling further. What I also love about the process is the fact that Margo, who has lived in Ireland for a good few years now, speaks very good English herself, so while discussing translation solutions and ideas, we can go quite deep into the conversation. In the end it’s always about weighing the options, carefully choosing the right term or phrase, looking at the syntax and deciding whether it hits the mark or not. If the translator and the author can discuss it on equal terms, it makes the whole translation process pure magic. Translating Margo’s poems was that for me.

 

Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator, and managing editor of the European Literature Network (ELN). She has translated over 50 books from English into Polish, and some fiction and poetry from Polish into English. She has published two bilingual poetry and photography books (with Lisa Kalloo), most recently Deliverance / Rozpętanie, as well as the book-length interview Lili. Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation in Anna Blasiak. She regularly reviews books in translation for the ELN, where she also runs a monthly poetry column “Poetry Travels,” and a blog devoted to Polish literature, “The Polka.” She is one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki. annablasiak.com. Photo by Lisa Kalloo.

 

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QUI VIVE
WHO GOES THERE

The shore of the day by then on the edge of the finger
shifted
the boat surging rips open the other side of the lake
the reflections are not some reflections
some bent phosphorescent things
under the water
like the head of the sleeper
sunken and bare
follows the light of his distorted visions, speaking

The dinghy fades in the erased night
coastal sands arise again to the bed—here he sleeps a ground without his feet
without an eye to see there—no need, deafness.
some trees on the shore flick off brawny crabs, microbic wolves
while their hands lace with the branches of the sleeper

Their elasticated needles pass through the buttocks’ skin and ravage his back
the ploughing ripples through the sleeper’s mid
five or six serpents undulate below the ribs where quiver dorsal fins
muscles float in the wind and throughout the leap
sails the trembling of the tractor in the spine of the sleeper

—will he know in the end what got going across his back?
—who knows to where these gums in this agitated bay plunge or dwindle?
—against what defends him?

Alone the sleeper enters into it to his loss
because there they come, the hands which pluck out and the sleeper plucked,
they are going to draw him near before bursting with laughter scattering their teeth
anatomic rosary become again vertebrae—having him finished to fling the skeleton
on a bank which is not the shore but the antechamber of someone
amidst-adjoint-bays where reigns neither sun nor moon
nor link between them nor reception—boudoir of the shadows exists not in the house­­­
from where the moment is ever once again he hopes to unescape himself
come back to the dinghy
but to be patient there
away once more hoping to extend his hand to the day.

 

MARCHE DANS UN MONSTRE
MARCH INTO A MONSTER

Man-a-bark
abandon the toys of your progress
in the silt of the lake the track
rises plunges without being heard
the bell sounds from the struts of the ship!
Man-a-bark, of the sea embrace the snake
and give your hand to the monster.

Follow him like your shadow among deserted streets
scrubbed by gusts cut from seawater
the tolling wind purged from the air wears you away
offshore cries a madman in the negative the hooks whistle!
Leap into the monster’s skin!
Nor the words that your diving suit holding this bird breath silenced.

                                                Long ago the stars
                                                bedded the sea
                                                in the salt of your blood
                                                the future of their pollen
                                                well at the rate of your monster
                                                you won’t have time
                                                to put on your space suit.

Now march into your monster march!
Rove in your seven-league boots!
Your soles circling around yourself
yourself lost on an island a siren in your head
onwards your monster! walk with it!
Without showing it is invisible
like me.

 

Translator’s Note:

I came across Franck Gourdien’s book Qui Vive in a wonderful bookshop in Marseille, called L’Histoire de l’œil, which has a packed contemporary poetry section. 

The two translated poems, “Who goes there” and “Step into a monster” demonstrate the stretching surreality of his poetry. The first, “Qui Vive” in the orginal, is both a map and body, taking in an unconscious, interior landscape. This corporeal space grows and mutates; simultaneously it tries to identify itself and plot a trajectory. This is suggested in the first line, “The shore of the day by then on the edge of the finger/ shifted/ the boat surging rips open the other side of the lake.” We move into increasing uncanny territory whilst remaining the conscious observer. 

“Step into a monster / Marche dans un monster” is an invocation to action that at the same time dissolves the rational will. Evolving from “Who goes there,” the poem is a complete dissolution to our origins, “Long ago the stars/ bedded the sea /in the salt of your blood.” I enjoyed trying to translate the phrase “Homme-barque” and wanted to keep the suggestion of the command, “embarque.” In the end, I stayed quite close to the original with “Man-a-barque” and hopefully have kept the orality and peremptory tone with the added ‘a.’

 

Franck Gourdien’s poems lead us through the unconscious, warping perception with a musicality that echoes interiorly. With elements of Rimbaud, his poems connect surreal mental states with a lyricism that goes beyond natural and unnatural, achieving a kind of feral quality. Implicitly, there is an ecological dimension. He presents a psyche living and suffering in a distorted nature of its own making. The two poems translated come from Qui Vive (2017), published by La Barque. It is his first collection of poetry and another is due to be published this year. Photo by Courtois Stéphane.

 

Tom Tulloh is a translator from nearly all the cardinal points of London, but now lives in Marseille. Recent work includes three translated poems in Noria revue and a short story by Jean-Luc Raharimanana in Your Impossible Voice.

 

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