It’s never very nice to be told that your work has failed, that your scansion is all to pot and that your grammar and spelling need major revisions. But how are we to improve if no one points out the weaknesses in our work that we are too blind to see for ourselves?
Continue reading “pussyfooting”
This time, although I had the right format number, I had to fill in a ten page questionnaire with all sorts of slightly bizarre questions. The one that caught my attention most was:
If someone cares for you, what is their name and telephone number?
There’s no poetry
in traffic jams:
we edge forward
foot by foot. Caught
behind a juggernaut
with no opportunity
to scan ahead for a turn,
we’re stressing
in the fast lane,
going oh
so
slow,
syncopated with
the nearside flow;
we can’t even
reverse.
Three – four – nine – two; three – one:
random magpies map my life
in black and white.
I started tinkering with one of the pieces he had there, making a translation based on La Barceloneta, an original by Alexandre Plana; Ben has now added my draft translation to his blog as a guest post. (You can also read the original and Ben’s translation)
I’ve always thought that you need to feel some empathy with a poem to make a good translation. But now I’m beginning to wonder what happens if you feel too much empathy.
Continue reading “transcreation”
don't confuse the narrator 