Poetry Month Blogging at Harriet (On Translation)

Rosetta Stone (from AfricaWrites.org)

During the most recent (Inter)National Poetry Month, poet and critic Daniel Borzutzky was invited to serve as one of the Poetry Foundation's four guest editors on its online site Harriet, and as part of his editorial charge he invited a host of poets and critics to contribute short blog essays on various themes. The poets he invited included Don Mee Choi, Lucas de Lima, Jen Hofer, and Cecilia Vicuña, as well as yours truly. When Daniel and Michael Slosek first invited me, I said yes (after assurance that only one post would be needed), and then, as April approached and innumerable deadlines closed in, I worried about what I might contribute. 

After reading sparkling thoughts by Cecilia, and then Don Mee's brilliant essay, though, I developed cold feet, which froze when I viewed Lucas's stellar entry. Daniel, however, was a calm, patient and encouraging helmsman, and eventually I was able to send an essay his way, to join the others, as well as Jennifer's dazzling entry, which concluded the series, for all of which he wrote illuminating introductions. I should add that because of a little rights quibble with the Poetry Foundation the essay temporarily vanished from Harriet, but it has been reposted and is available for everyone to see.

I have posted links to the blog posts, which are all smart and concise essays, and quite creative. Mine, "Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness," arose out of longstanding concerns I have had about the body of translated work available to US and Anglophone readers, and culminated initially in a talk I gave last year at the Thinking Its Presence: Racial Representation conference at the University of Montana, organized by Prageeta Sharma, Joanna Klink and Dorothy Wang, and named after Dorothy's eponymous, foundational study.

I should note that all of the translations in my essay are my originals, so any faults therefore are mine. Also, I asked and received permission from the Poetry Foundation to publish a snippet of Daniel's introduction, and from my essay. To read the full piece, which isn't long, please do go straight to Harriet, and if you enjoy it and the other essays and find them useful in any way, please do let the Poetry Foundation know. I believe they'd appreciate hearing from readers. (Please also check out the great entries curated by Dawn Lundy Martin,  Brandon Shimoda, and Stephanie Young.)

Lastly, it is tremendous honor to note that the esteemed translator Susan Bernofsky, who has brought Robert Walser, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Yoko Tawada among other major writers to US readers, wrote a beautiful piece about my essay and the topic in general, which she posted on her blog, Translationista. Please do check it out, and if you are are so motivated, please consider undertaking translation!

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Don Mee Choi: "Darkness, Translation, Migration"

Lucas de Lima: "Poetry Betrays Whiteness"

Jen Hofer: "Proximate Shadowing: Translation as Radical Transparency and Excess"

Cecilia Vicuña: "Language Is Migrant"

John Keene: "Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness"

From Daniel's introduction to my blog post:

How does the absence of texts in translations deny individual readers reflections of their race and identity as it is presented in other countries and cultures? What does it mean that U.S. readers might not even be aware of the presence of black people, let alone black writers, in countries like Pakistan and Iraq? How does this absence limit our understanding of both the black diaspora in general and, more specifically, as John alludes to in a footnote, of the very different and often times very complex conceptions of race found in countries such as Cuba, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic? Part of the question I’m hearing here is that at this moment in the U.S., when opinions about race continue to be presented as essential truths, that it would do a world of good for unitedstatesians to understand that some of our ideas about race are arbitrary, and that others have been constructed to fit the needs of historical, establishment powers.

And from my essay:

Why is this absence of translated black voices significant? One of the ongoing problems, if I can state it bluntly, is that if we already are experiencing serious and ongoing crises in American society in part through the omission, elision, and erasure of, and indifference to narratives, stories, and other forms of imaginative expression, in all their complexity, of black American people’s lives and existences—an issue that affects not only black Americans but everyone in the society; as the Native American writer Bill Yellow Robe, among many others, underlined in a talk he delivered at the 2016 Thinking Its Presence conference, the same is true with narratives, stories, plays, and so on by indigenous peoples, to give another glaring example—we further limit our understanding of the world, in multiple ways, in the absence of black stories and voices from outside the Anglosphere, which is not a coherent whole, but nevertheless is limited in its capacity to convey the breadth of experience of black peoples across the globe. Just as black Americans are hardly a “fringe,” neither are black people and voices from the rest of the world.

Call and Response: The Gift of Women Poets

Ntozake Shange in 1977
(© Marilyn K. Yee/New York Times)

A month ago, poet, critic, activist, and visionary Amy King sent out a call to an array of writers inviting us to write on a woman poet who had influenced our work and whose poetic gifts to the world we wanted to celebrate. The effort was to be collective and collaborative, producing a micro-anthology commemorating some of the greatest--and in some cases forgotten--voices in and of our literatures, voices without whose efforts many of us would not be writing. 

We were urged to choose writers who either were no longer physically with us or who were getting up in years, since in both cases they are less likely to receive the attention that contemporary, younger women writers do. Most importantly, given the continued sexism and misogyny in the literary and wider worlds, compiling this poetic pageant remains necessary work. Singing these poets' talents, and bringing others to their songs, is one of the most important things we can do. We need their vision, and we need it to shape our own.

As Amy says in her introduction to "Call and Response: The Gift of Women Poets (Part 1)," which now appears on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet website:

While I am very much a fan of recovery projects, this collaborative endeavor is not that. If, as the curator, I must frame it at all, this rich pageant of poets highlights the very worthwhile intersections we all reach individually in our lives: that of recognizing that women-identified poets are of intense, even transformative value, despite living in a culture that often devalues the feminine. Each writer sings out an older or no longer living poet who had a personal influence on them. What you will find is a series of anecdotes and lead-ins to the work & personhood of these female poets who have endured and brought forth, for us, words that have deepened, moved, and given us the gift to see otherwise.

I wrote about the great Ntozake Shange (1948-), an ever-innovative writer who has been and continues to be tremendously influential for me. She is still with us, but several years ago suffered several strokes, in addition to the effects of a neurological disorder, and has experienced trouble speaking and getting around.  Her imagination and artistry are incandescent; most people rightly know her landmark choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, but Shange also is the prolific author of collections of poetry, novels, essays, works for children, and numerous other plays and choreopieces. You can find my celebration of Shange at the second link below; Part 1 encompasses Etel Adnan to Myung Mi Kim, while Part 2 includes Carolyn Kizer through Margaret Walker.

Call and Response: The Gift of Women Poets (Part 1)

Call and Response: The Gift of Women Poets (Part 2)

Dark Room Reunion Reading @ Poetry Foundation

Last Thursday evening, the Dark Room Writers Collective, founded 25 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Janice Lowe and Sharan Strange, after the death of James Baldwin (1924-1987), and of which I was a member for many years (I joined during the very first, remarkable season of their reading series, in 1988, after having seen Tom's high-top fade around town and learned about them at my barbershop, who told me he thought it was a "bookstore," which sent my hiking my 22-year-old behind halfway across Central Square to see these books I thought they'd be selling), had a reunion reading at the Poetry Foundation's stunning headquarters in downtown Chicago.

The reading convened only a small number of the many writers, artists, and creative folks who were members or affiliates over the years, a tally that numbers in the dozens, among them Tisa Bryant, Carl Phillips, Tracy K. Smith, Adisa Vera Beatty, Trasi Johnson, Artress Bethany White, Aya de León, Ellen Gallagher, Noland Walker, Muhonjia Khaminwa, Kambui Womble, and many others; nevertheless, present were Thomas, Sharan, Nehassaiu de Gannes, Major Jackson, Natasha Trethewey, and Kevin Young, as well as yours truly. The Poetry Foundation's Stephen Young opened the event, and eminent poet and my Northwestern colleague Ed Roberson offered an introduction, before turning the floor over to artist, poet and culture worker Krista Franklin who, in Dark Room fashion, was the local poet who joined us in offering poems. Poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffith took photos, and Janice Lowe also was present to bring the spirits back and dancing. Many of the great poets living in Chicago (and I'm going to miss some names) also came out to catch the set.

Though I was a participant and am usually halfway to some other place at readings, this event felt wonderfully grounding in so many ways, a homecoming (even in the exquisite interiors of the Poetry Foundation), as I have seen and sometimes read with several of these writers over the years, but not together with them in over a decade,  and I felt myself overcome each time one of them took the stage to read, offer reminiscences, dedicate poems, call out the ancestors, bring the noise. One of Thomas's charges, alongside the bootstrap writing, workshopping and reading all those years ago, was to bumrush the show, something that he and many others, including the many, many exceptional established and emerging figures who passed through the Dark Room's doors, set into motion for all of us, and for that I will always be grateful to him. I'm already getting verklempt, so instead of spilling tears here, I'm going to post some photos, including a few from the following day, when we dropped by Parrish Lewis Photography, where photographer Lamont snapped some photos.

Natasha Trethewey

Ed Roberson, Kevin Young, Natasha Trethewey, Nehassaiu de Gannes

The impresario, Thomas Sayers Ellis ("ain't it funky, y'all?")

Major Jackson

Kevin (leaning forward), Ed, Natasha, Nehassaiu, Major

Sharan in reflection

Sharan reading

Krista Franklin and Ed

iPad drawing of Thomas

Sharan, serene, as Lamont photographs her

Thomas, photographing Rachel Eliza (with the reunion series talisman)

Tom, photographing the Go-Go-melon

Tom's portrait of me, with self-portrait

Printers' Ball Poster (Poem: Serenade)

I was unable to attend yesterday's Printers' Ball, the annual free Chicago literary extravaganza summer event that the Poetry Foundation sponsors, but I did participate in a way:  artist Jenny Beorkrem, the founder of Ork Inc., a poster design company, and I collaborated on one of the posters that was displayed at the event.  As part of this project, I selected one of my oldest and most straightforward poems, "Serenade," which I thought would be design-worthy, and this is what Jenny came up with.

The first image is the mock-up of the poster. Jenny wrote that she wanted to play with abstraction (though not because of Seismosis, which she looked at, she told me, after completing her design), and, I imagine, to convey some of the poem's rhetorical, lyric and narrative movement.  The refrain literally--as opposed to just figuratively--pops out:

And here is the final (my name was inadvertently left off the bottom, but the poem is copyrighted, so...):

If any readers attended the Printers' Ball, please do let me know how it turned out!