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.
"When we inquire how long it took to write their books, every year several reply, 'My whole life.' And this makes sense—a book is not the work of a moment or simply a product of the time the poet was setting down words on the page. Many of the poets have been writing poems—or the poems that helped them get to the ones in their books—for decades."
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"But Zewdu’s poem is all about lightness and wit: he mixes 12 syllable yewel bet lines with 6 syllable half-lines, making the poem very light and quick on its feet; he subverts the traditional aabb rhyme scheme and keeps readers a bit off-balance with a/bb/ccc/d/ee. So the task of translating this poem is to convey Zewdu’s clear message while staying true to his wit and lightness."
