Entries tagged with translation

February 11, 2024

Document 102: Note on Conduit

“Conduit” (“Kanal svyazi”)
trans. Arkadii Dragomoshchenko and Vladimir Feshchenko
Vsealizm (Moscow), 11 February 2024

From Moscow, for the second week in a row, comes a new translation of my work into Russian—here, “Conduit” into “Kanal svyazi”—in preparation for a bilingual edition to appear, one hopes, later this year. This work, brought forward over decades and across continents, truly stands as a conduit in the distressed conditions of communication, between the “territories of the East” and the rest of the world assuredly, but more generally as “what we live.” As I wrote on receiving word of this wonder:

There was a line from a Poets Theater play, Third Man by Carla Harryman, early 80s, spoken by Eileen Corder: “Go ahead, Moscow—I’m listening!” That was transgressive in the Reagan Era; in the current moment, one listens carefully to say the least. And now this translation of my poem “Conduit” has appeared—it is all about receiving messages, and not letting them stand as commonplaces or placeholders but as samples of “systematic distortion.” It’s about the “systematic distortion” of communication as communication itself, which we experience every day.

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September 1, 2023

Event 103: Poetry, Translation, Crisis

SESSION PROPOSAL WITHDRAWN

Poetry, Translation, and Crisis:
From the Post-Soviet Moment
to War and Emigration

American Comparative Literature Association
Montréal, 14–17 March 2024

Due to the difficult circumstances of the global present,
the organizers have canceled this session proposal.
Stay tuned for plans for a virtual colloquy in 2024.  

In 1989 and 1990, eight American avant-garde poets traveled to then-Leningrad to meet with Soviet counterparts, experimental poets working under quasi-nonofficial conditions during late Perestroika. These meetings followed extensive travel and translation activities in the 1980s. Among then-Soviets, the poetic schools of “metarealism” and “conceptualism” were well represented—by poets such as Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Alexei Parshchikov, Nadezhda Kondakova, Ivan Zhdanov, Ilya Kutik, Nina Iskrenko, Dmitrii Prigov, and Lev Rubinshtein. These events and developing contacts led to the publication of the collectively authored Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union and a flurry of translations. Three decades later, the dialogue between American poets and poets of the former Soviet territory, including both Russia and Ukraine, has continued. A comprehensive anthology of American experimental poetry, Ot “Chiornoi gori” do “Yazikovo picmo” (From Black Mountain to Language Writing), appeared from NLO in late 2022, with a publication event in Moscow and subsequent online reading. Other translations are imminent or postponed under the present circumstances, while interest in and translation of two generations of poets, now disrupted by war and emigration, continues. This session solicits contributions on past and on-going translinguistic, transcultural projects from both periods: the post-Soviet moment and now. What “cultural work” is being undertaken and advanced in these works of translation and affiliation, crossing over global spaces of conflict and establishing global poetic networks? The session language will be mainly in English, but contributions in Slavic languages are encouraged, and hopefully English translations can be arranged.

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March 26, 2022

Document 97: xxx / Ekaterina Zakharkiv

xxx
by Ekaterina Zakharkiv
(trans. Joseph Simas)

fucking sky: because it is open, it is occupied, recognized as an extremist organization, acting as a foreign agent, banned across the territory of the russian federation.

discrediting actions
with the help of words. how do you act on the sky with words?

don’t look up, don’t cross its borders, don’t read paul celan under its vaulted blanket.
the sky before dawn is buzzing, collapsing without warning.

it’s no longer a metaphor, no longer a generalization of conflict.
blinded, we roll into the sleepy suburbs and strike. we harm the defenseless.
we lose our sense of smell and fail to notice the stench of black smoke.
we get caught off guard in the mix.

now is not the time for quotations. all the marks have been forged into antitank hedgehogs. nevertheless

days go by, and we lay never-roses at the foot of myth. what have we seen with our own eyes? transmissions, streamed from a billion bloodlines. childhood dreams burgeoning into political imagination in airports and hotel rooms. craters blown into our former tongue suck up shards of grass, hallways blasted in. language is tongue-tied. it leaves neither trace of name nor address. in its vacant alleyways the hissing utterances of an orange serpent. no one’s, again … More

January 23, 2022

Entry 45: Writing in the Event

Writing in the Event:
“The Beirut/Hell Remix
(After Etel Adnan)”

Last October I had the good fortune to preview Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure, the Guggenheim Museum’s career retrospective of Adnan’s visual art, which makes significant reference to her writing. The cross-genre and multi-languaged aspects of her work could not be missed, an opening beyond the usual categories that art history and museum curating maintain. The museum was also making a political point in showing Adnan’s work along with a deep selection of the abstract painting of Vasily Kandinsky. The move from landscape to abstraction unites the two, but the differing contexts for abstraction are equally the point. Eurocentric modernism is in transition, refunctioned as a global cosmopolitanism, which arrives with the breakthrough moment of Adnan’s painting at dOCUMENTA 13 (2012) at what I have described as a “global archive.”

The occasion itself was compelling and bittersweet. Etel herself could not attend the opening but was represented by her partner, Simone Fattal—whose solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London was also on the global agenda. With Carla Harryman, we made plans to meet in Paris in November; we would have a French Thanksgiving, the day after the American one. Etel Adnan died on November 14, a Saturday. The news came through friends the next day. From all corners and all kinds of people the reaction was profound: the passing of a figure who had touched many, over many decades. We would still be coming to Paris as travel was arranged and plans had been made; the Omicron curtain had not yet come down. Everything was up in the air, suspended. Simone texted after we arrived; will you still be coming to dinner? Meetings with a remarkable woman on the rue Madame. We discussed everything and nothing as friends came and went. One resonant detail concerned Etel’s daily attention to events in Beirut, from economic collapse to the 2020 explosion. Not coincidentally, the Institut du Monde Arabe was exhibiting visual art referencing Beirut before and after the explosion under the title “Lumières du Liban,” in which Etel and Simone were both strongly present. We told Simone we would attend, and reported back after we did.

The museum bookstore stocks an impressive array of titles by Adnan, in many languages. I was immediately taken by Galerie Lelong’s 2021 publication of L’Express Beirut–Enfer, which brought together three texts, the first originally written in French and then later published in her English version. Meanwhile, plans that had been under way at the Guggenheim Museum were also up in the air, with the news of Etel’s passing, the onset of the Omicron surge, and the Guggenheim’s new partnership with the Academy of American Poets. In the end, I would agree to provide a written work, on commission, for the tribute to Etel, to be published online in conjunction with a virtual reading by poets who could perform in New York. Both events took place: the reading, while impeded by some gapping due to bandwidth issues, features an epochal performance by Anne Waldman along with tributes by Ammiel Alcalay, Omar Berrada, Stephen Motika, and Asiya Wadud, made available on Vimeo. And my text, “The Beirut–Hell Remix (After Etel Adnan),” along with an explanatory note that appears at the end of the poem, is published at the link below. One can only hope that, in future days, the many facets of this event for Etel Adnan will be seen together.

“The Beirut–Hell Remix (After Etel Adnan)” [link]
Original by Etel Adnan composed 1970; first published 1971
Adaptation/translation by Barrett Watten; completed January 2022
Online publication by The Guggenheim Museum, January 2022

Notes and links

[t/k]

March 14, 2015

Document 34: Les Revues

The following is Martin Richet’s translation of “Magazines,” the first prose poem in Opera—Works (1975); it appears in the first issue of his handsomely produced translation journal Jongler (ordering information below). It does not address the question of whiteness, which has been preoccupying us, but does address feeling states around the possibility of being a poet.

Les Revues

Tu es dans un bâtiment puis à l’extérieur. À seize kilomètres de là, tu le visualises à peine — tu vois le sol depuis le ciel au ralenti. En même temps tu sens l’hélicoptère qui s’enfonce dans la rue. L’avion fend un nuage.

Le simultané comme attribut du non ressenti. Le littéral comme attribut du ressenti. Un simple intérêt littéral pour la diversité du monde et les implications des choses.

Un abonnement à une revue que l’on considère vaguement divertissante et complètement dispensable. Un carnet de correspondance — une bénédiction — un baiser mérité. L’horticulture variégée vue à la lumière ambiante. Les petites boîtes de plantes, les pots en céramique, les tiges vertes coupées, des tâches simples.

La gestion compliquée des tâches simples. Tu t’abonnes à une revue, la revue arrive, tu y jettes un oeil et tu t’inquiètes.

Les revues, c’est possible ?

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August 6, 2011

Document 14: Nowa Poezja Amerykansky (Anthology)

Nowa poezja amerykanska (New American Poetry), special issue of Literatura na swiecie (Warsaw) no. 11–12 (2010). Featuring poetry translated into Polish by Lyn Hejinian, Tony Hoagland, Elizabeth Willis, Peter Gizzi, Lisa Jarnot, Harryette Mullen, Forrest Gander, Cole Swensen, Barrett Watten, John Yau, and David Schubert; with essays, reviews, and interviews; www.literaturanaswiecie.art.pl.

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July 11, 2011

Document 13: Multi-Language Poetry After 2001

At our recent conference in Mainz, Germany, on collectivity and literature, David Simpson (a critic of romanticism who made the theory/cultural studies turn in the 70s and has produced a number of significant and wide-ranging works since then) presented a keynote lecture titled “After 9/11: The Fate of Strangers,” on the position of the foreigner (stranger; étranger; Fremde) in writing. Simpson cited a range of post–9/11 fiction and the spontaneous outpouring of poetry opposed to American military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mentioned that, through the last decade, poets had also been interested in the status of other languages in their work as foreign and strange, and were investigating questions of alterity, opacity, and mistranslation through a range of experimental strategies. An example of the preservation of an individual word as “stranger” in a language appears with the German context of Fremdwörter, which are generally pronounced as closely to their original language as possible. Adorno had written, suggestively, on this embedding of the other in German: “Die Fremdwörter sind die Jüde der Sprache” (Foreign words are the Jews of language). A bit later, Simpson asked me for particulars of this practice (Cary Nelson also wondered what the hell was interesting about opacity and mistranslation; I responded that it was a site of cultural learning). I had just seen three readers in Berlin exploring the poetics of multi-languaged embedding and mis/translation (Eugene Ostashevsky, Uljana Wolf, and Christian Hawkey, with the texts by recently deceased Russian poet Alexei Parshchikov added to the mix) at an art space in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, named (significantly) “Ausland.” Not feeling that all the examples I knew of were coming to mind readily, I took the question to Facebook and have started a short bibliography. The criteria for inclusion here are: investigatng the opacity and otherness of multiple languages using experimental techniques; interrogating translation as a cultural politics; and publishing the results after 2001 (with a few exceptions). The list will be updated as more titles become available (contact b/c at barrett.watten@gmail.com).

Multi-Language Poetry After 2001
(compiled by Barrett Watten and friends; in process)

Dorantes, Dolores. SexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre. Trans. Jen Hofer. Kenning Editions, 2008. “Translator’s Note.” Other language (OL): Spanish.

Funkhouser, Chris. “perdido em transcreation: chuck(l)in’ globalization.” OL: French, Spanish, Portuguese. Available here.

Hadley, Jozuf Bradajo. 2 Poems. With CD. Tinfish, 2006. OL: Hawaiian Pidgin.

Iijima, Brenda. Glossematics, Thus. Least Weasel, 2011. OL: t/k.

Kanae, Lisa Linn. Sista Tongue. Tinfish, 2001. OL: Hawaiian Pidgin.

Karasick, Adeena. The House that Hijack Built. Talonbooks, 2004. “Phat Freitag” and  the homolinguistic translation of the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Letters). OL: Hebrew, German.

———. Amuse Bouche. Talonbooks, 2009. “What Have You Done with My Cabbala?” OL: Hebrew.

Kim, Myung Mi. Commons. U California P, 2002. “Works.” OL: Korean.

Lang, Abigail, and Thalia Field. A Prank of Georges. Essay Press, 2010. “From a poetry translation workshop hosted by Tamara Foundation in Paris, 2008. OL: French.

Stalling, Jonathan. Yingeleshi: Sinophonic English Poetry and Poetics. Denver: Counterpath, 2011. OL: Chinese.

Torres, Edwin. The All-Union Day of the Shock Worker. Roof, 2001. “A Nuyo-Futurist’s Manifestiny.” OL: Spanish.

———. The Popedology of an Ambient Language. Atelos, 2007. “The Impossible Sentence”; “Transla-lation-tion.” OL: Spanish.  

Tuntha-obas, Padcha. composite. diplomacy. Tinfish, 2005. OL: Thai.

Zolf, Rachel. Neighbour Procedure. Coach House, 2010. “Innocent Abroad.” OL: Hebrew, Arabic.

[More entries t/k]

 

April 15, 2010

Link 13: Slechte Geschiedinis (Bad History)

Selections from Slechte Geschiedinis (Bad History), trans. Samuel Vriezen, Parmentier 19, no. 1, special issue on “Documentaire poëzie” (Documentary Poetics; March 2010), 48-56.

http://www.literairtijdschriftparmentier.nl

De eerste Parmentier van dit jaar staat grotendeels in het teken van hedendaagse ‘documentaire poëzie’ uit Amerika. Documentaire poëzie is poëzie die zich nadrukkelijk presenteert als een vorm van documentatie en zich plaatst te midden van allerhande nieuwsfeiten, historische gebeurtenissen en situaties. In het door hen samengestelde en ingeleide dossier laten Arnoud van Adrichem, Frank Keizer en Samuel Vriezen zien wat er gebeurt wanneer documentaire vormen als krantenberichten, wetteksten en beleidsrapporten onderdak krijgen in de poëzie.

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January 22, 2010

Link 05: Plasma in Italian

“Plasma,” the lead poem in Plasma/Paralleles/”X” (Tuumba, 1979), has been translated into Italian by Gherardo Bortolotti in the online journal G A M M M (joining previous translations into French, Dutch, and site-specific sculpture). The text and link are provided below. The next thing for me to do, clearly, is to attempt a homophonic translation!

Plasma

Un paradosso è mangiato dallo spazio che gli sta attorno.

Ripeterò ciò che ho detto.

Far diventare una città una stagione è come indossare occhiali da sole dentro un vulcano.

Non dimentica mai i suoi sogni.

L’effetto della mancanza d’effetto.

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