What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our fifth series, What Translation Sparks, a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
"namely as the lilac bush bloomed my parents went out to a bowling club I was still very small when my parents went out to a bowling club I remember I had no siblings my mother wore 1 tight-fitting short dress she was very beautiful and melancholy she had waved hair and cried often namely as the lilac bush bloomed I remember my grandmother on my mother’s side sat me on 1 bench in the Rubenspark and held my hand, it was winter ’27 I remember my grandfather pulled me onto his lap and started to play his concertina then I got very sick namely as the lilac bush bloomed I remember the world was painted in impasto and I was afraid …….. this motto (was) incidental …….. I remember namely as the locust trees bloomed and the dog Teddy came into the house I let it all wash over me and my youngest aunt wore 1 pleated dress my father seemed anxious and hardly spoke, no one read to me and no songs were sung, the moon shone onto my bed and the stars, SANK DOWN, namely gradually language blossomed and we ran in a circle as the lilac bush bloomed in the schoolyard I remember. All typewriters I remember, namely thought processes everything that fluttered off, namely …….."
"I have read a wide shelf’s worth of books of translation theory, but when I actually sit down to translate, especially poetry, all of that beautifully formulated theory goes out the window, and I am faced with the poet’s mind, and my mind, and how I am going to get them to work together."
"Four hundred years on, we can still rely on the playwright to help ground us in—and make sense of—the current crisis, even in texts that make no direct allusion to the pandemic. No writer has better mined the depths and variety of human experience and emotion."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
