Interview _ Dominique Cox

Dominique Cox is a pediatrician who loves to read. She lives and works in Argentina and freelances as a Spanish / English medical translator.

In this interview, Dominique talks about medicine, poetry and Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the work that you do?

I work as a Paediatrician, focused primarily on high-risk populations in Argentina, immersed in the socio-political context that this entails. Alongside clinical work, with a co-worker, we developed TRA-Doctor, a firm specializing in translations within the medical field.

In spite of always being an avid reader, it was only through my experience as a doctor that I fully discovered the value of words. I realized that words could dramatically change the meaning and the impact of whatever it was I might be trying to convey, as well as my patients´ reactions. Sometimes language was the only barrier to be broken to ensure treatment adherence, reassure distraught parents or bring comfort to a suffering child.

Who or what has had the most influence on you especially as a reader, a writer and a translator? 

People, our humanness, have always fascinated me. Books have been the means by which I was allowed, from as far as I can remember, to enter the lives of people from different times, geographical locations, religions, etc. With a simple turning of a page I could find myself immersed in someone’s life, thoughts and experiences. I read whatever book I came across, undiscriminating.

To my understanding, books and an open-minded family upbringing have been the tools that enabled me to develop an ability to step out of my own reality into someone else’s without a second thought. A skill I have found essential as a physician.

Carol Leeming’s “Song for Guests”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.92. Translated into Spanish by Dominique Cox.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I was invited to participate in this project by Laura Chalar, a very passionate Uruguayan lawyer, writer, translator and mother, who also happens to be family. We have always shared our passion for books, and in many ways she has been a link to the literary life that sometimes seems forgotten in the midst of work and motherhood.

Up until now, I had never attempted translations outside the medical field, so in a sense this has been my most significant challenge, having stepped out of my comfort zone.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project? And, which were the most challenging?

I was not sure I was up for the challenge. In spite of being truly motivated, I had never attempted to translate poetry before, and my medical translation plus reader experience somehow seemed lacking. I wanted to be as faithful as possible to the original versions, whilst adapting to the Spanish grammatical structure. The effort to do so was fully rewarding.

As a reader I felt it was easy to empathise with what was being conveyed by each poem, and thereafter immerse myself in the writer’s mind-set, speculating about their particular choice of words.

Kathleen Bell’s “Waiting”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.62. Translated into Spanish by Dominique Cox.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

There is great value in the power of words as a means to break barriers, yet language is sometimes the only hurdle. This initiative exponentially multiplies each poem's effect by means of translation, broadening their possibility to reach out to as many people as possible.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Elvire Roberts

Elvire Roberts was born in Yorkshire, spent her early childhood in Zambia and now lives in Nottingham.

She studied Chinese at the University of Cambridge, later pursuing her passion for language to train as a British Sign Language (BSL)/ English Interpreter. She has taught interpreting, and now works primarily in forensic, mental health, academic and arts settings at a senior level. She also assesses and audits interpreting services.

Elvire has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She writes poetry and short stories and her poetry has been shortlisted and placed in national competitions. Elvire is actively involved in the local poetry community in Nottingham (UNESCO City of Literature) and regularly performs her work.

In this interview, Elvire Roberts talks about British Sign Language, Journeys in Translation, and poetry.

How would you describe the work that you do?

As an interpreter, I see my work extending in two parallel planes: the creative act of replicating a person’s utterance with all its emotional and contextual meaning, alongside the socio-political act of empowering and facilitating communication.

The deaf people I meet, whether as tutors, colleagues, clients or friends, have a lifetime’s experience of being silenced, of their language being disrespected and their requests for access to communication being seen as ‘difficult’ and costly. From my own life experiences as a woman, I believe whole-heartedly in enabling others to speak their truth, whether I agree with what they say or not.

When you are interpreting, what would you say you are doing?

Interpreting is immediate and in the moment; it may not convey 100% of the content, but often holds more of the perlocutionary force and intonation of the original than a translation does.

I usually interpret simultaneously, so as the person speaks or signs, I am just a few seconds behind them. This enables me to channel more of the person’s character and attitude, as expressed in their intonation and body language.

A complete interpretation requires a degree of performance in order to fully ‘be’ that person in the other language.

And when you are translating a text?

When I translate, I can take time to get inside the text. Translating feels like a luxury, as when I am working as an interpreter I have to search for meaning instantaneously and reproduce natural-looking or sounding language on the spot.

Translating poetry is the ultimate challenge, particularly when working between two languages which occupy different modalities – BSL is a visual-spatial language with a completely different structure from English. Facial expression and body movement are essential parts of its grammar. Rhyming in BSL poetry is seen in repetition or mirroring of space, handshapes, eyegaze, or simply the way a hand is turned.

As a translator-poet, I can have two different approaches to translating a text – a faithful version that replicates as closely as possible the poet’s original intended meaning and rhythms, or a freer version that incorporates my personal response and understanding of the text.

I’ve been intrigued to see the variety of approaches in the Journeys in Translation texts, some of them much looser translations than others.

Elvire Roberts and Trevor Wright at the Quiet Riot disability Poetry event that was held on 21 April 2017 as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival which was also the first outing of the British Sign Language translation of "Yalla".

How have your own experiences informed the approach you've taken with Journeys in Translation?

Many years ago, I translated Tang Dynasty poetry and had to guess at an 8th Century Chinese scholar’s vision of the world. So it was a delight to be able to talk to the Over Land, Over Sea poets Pam Thompson and Trevor Wright, check my understanding with them and ask about intended effects.

With Pam’s poem, I knew immediately how the handshapes would work, that repetition and rhythm were particularly important, as well as keeping the vocabulary true to the original. However, with Trevor I needed to hear from him about the pictures he saw in his mind’s eye so that I could re-create them in BSL’s inherent filmic mode.

An additional challenge with translating into BSL is that it has no written form. There are complex methods of linguistic coding to represent the language for research purposes, but these would not be accessible to non-linguists. Accordingly, I had to write notes of my translation, then memorise these before signing the final version to camera. A final translated text in BSL is always on film rather than on paper. You can see the translations for "Dislocation" and "Yalla" on YouTube.

In your opinion, what effect does your being a non-native BSL user have on your rendition of the Journeys in Translation poems? 

I’m not entirely satisfied with my translations due to the fact that BSL is my second language: the filmed BSL translation is rendered with the articulation of a non-native BSL user. In my experience, native BSL users have both more pronounced and varied facial expressions, with a more sophisticated use of eyegaze.

To see poetry created and performed by Deaf BSL poets, you can look on the YouTube channel signmetaphor: Paul Scott’s "Tree" is one of my favourites.

What effect do the various roles you play have on each other?

Interestingly, my role as an interpreter has been one of the obstacles in my transition to being a writer. As an interpreter, my aim is to be impartial, to talk only about issues of communication, and not to give my personal views on the matter in hand.

As a writer, I express my views, use autobiographical elements, allow my own self to form and originate the text. This is testing enough as a woman in any role, where we are still encouraged to be ‘angels’, to put the needs and voices of other people first.

I have, however, benefitted enormously from being multi-lingual and from having learned British Sign Language and Mandarin Chinese, languages which are so very different in form and culture from British English. They stretch my brain to alternative connections and ways of creating meaning, giving me a wider range of lenses on the world.

I wonder if perhaps the acts of attention and interrogation that I bring to translation are also those same acts which I bring to forming a poem.

I also believe that there is interaction between the visual-spatial nature of BSL, my interest in art, and my delight in how space is used in poetry. I remember having a eureka moment when I first picked up The Ground Aslant: an anthology of radical landscape poetry, edited by Harriet Tarlo, where white space is a much-flexed muscle of the poem’s environment. This is something that I am exploring in my own poetry and I have just been introduced to the work of Caroline Bergvall, whose playful and linguistically experimental poetry works across other art forms, addressing difficult issues such as migrancy and disappearance.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

I often meet people who are surprised that there isn’t just one signed language, that each country has its own and that within that national signed language there are regional dialects.

From my perspective as a poet, as an interpreter working with disenfranchised communities, and as a feminist, the Journeys in Translation project encapsulates the value of diversity, a value not expressed in economics but in the opening of our minds to the experiences and perspectives of others. At the same time, it speaks of compassion and of sameness, and of the importance of communicating that across barriers. The richness of being human is our obdurate creativity and individuality, and in that we are all the same.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Flair Donglai Shi

Flair Donglai Shi 施東來 is a DPhil in English candidate at Oxford University, a critic in comparative literature (Chinese and English), an occasional short story writer, and a translator.

When did you start writing?

This simple question is also perhaps the hardest. Since I started my university journey, my academic language has always been English. Yet before that I was living in my hometown, a somewhat remote small city deep in the mountainous province of Zhejiang 浙江, China, and my only language was Chinese.

When I was young I was definitely more interested in writing than reading. I got top scores in my Chinese language and literature class but I rarely read outside the curricula. At that time, around the early 2000s, there was a culture of increasing openness in China, and the sentimental, individualistic and urban popular writing was having its moment in the country. So I started writing around themes of loneliness, isolation and dislocation and published a number of short stories in newspapers and anthologies with the help of my teacher. Most of them are lost now but I still have the original manuscripts in my old notebook.

After I started studying in the UK around 2012 I started writing in English, but mainly for an academic audience as that is the mode of writing in English I am most familiar with. I published a couple of short stories in English also, one called “Strawberry Candy” and the other called “China Boy”, in which I play around themes about sexuality and disempowerment. It is really much harder for me to write beautifully in English than in Chinese and sometimes I would just translate my creative writing from Chinese to English in order to preserve that original sentimentality, because I find that I always become too concerned about getting the sentence “right” in English to be able to prioritize my creativity.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

There is a trend in academia nowadays to challenge the divide between creative writing and academic prose, but in practice this remains unwelcomed. As graduate students we do not have the freedom to write without the standard restrictions on style and structure, and very few academics nowadays produce essays in the manner of George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence or even Virginia Woolf. Most of our essays are so jargon heavy and ideologically entrenched they stop being accessible and influential and become some kind of self-indulgent soliloquy instead. Sometimes I would think the people in the humanities in Western higher education today are like construction workers trapped in a room they built around them, and now all they do is try very hard to find cracks in the wall so that they can write something to fill that blank, and thus to make the room more sealed off from the world. I find this very suffocating sometimes, especially when the election of Trump and Brexit explicitly tell us how higher education has failed to take into action what it preaches.

As a literary scholar, I perceive two kinds of criticism to be worth doing. The first is theoretically informed political reading, such as postcolonial, feminist, or queer readings of the classics, which can offer new perspectives for us to see the structures built around a cultural product. This is more of a cultural history kind of reading. The second form of reading is perhaps a traditional one, which is that we should also read what we perceive to be good literature and promote it by making a sound case for its unique contribution to the wider world. These two modes of reading and essay-writing may sound quite commonsensical, but I think in this era of niche-market obsession, many of us under institutionalized pressure tend to forget about why we entered the field in the first place and choose to prioritize the theories over the literary works themselves.

As for my occasional creative writing, I view them in an old fashioned Freudian way. They are the excesses of the Repressed that I cannot control through rationalization. They are the spills of your carbonated drink that just have to come out when you shake the bottle too hard. I only write short stories when real life interactions with people get too boring and unfulfilling; I only write poems when I want to make a negative comment on something but cannot do so in “normal” language. Literature, in this sense, is exactly what cannot be spoken or written.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

My favorite Anglophone writers are George Orwell and J. M. Coetzee, and my favorite Chinese writer is Yu Dafu 郁達夫. Orwell is just a genius. He uses very comprehensible language to tell very clear stories that are easy to follow, and yet every time you finish them you literally feel there is something larger climbing out of the book to challenge your world views. J. M. Coetzee is similarly simple but his writing presents much more ambiguous ideological positions and do not read as sharp as Orwell’s, due to the lack of satire I suppose. As a non-native speaker of English I find these writers really easy to read, and the easy language actually helps with clarifying some of the bigger thematic concerns of the stories for me.

Yu Dafu was a writer from my province writing in the 1920s and 1930s when China was in a semi-colonial semi-feudal state. I like many writers from the Republican era in China (1912-1949) since many of them come from the South and the overseas experiences they had in the UK or Japan really speak to me. I find this transhistorical resonance really striking and sometimes unsettling, as it always propels me to think whether we have really made any progress at all.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

Ultimately, literature as cultural products and literary criticism as processes of critical thinking are all very subjective practices. My transnational journey between East Asia and the Anglophone world has increased my sensitivity to themes of movement, displacement and isolation, whereas my queer identity and the alienation and discrimination I suffered because of it implanted in me a spirit of rebellion that is quite hard to control. Yet I think what literature does is much more than this self-centric mode of identity politics. It is about empathy and transcendence. Solidarity cannot be built by an emphasis of the self.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

I wouldn’t even consider myself a writer. I have won a small prize for my story “Strawberry Candy” and that’s pretty much all of the external recognition I have got so far in terms of creative writing. For me, a writer is someone who is writing for a living, or someone for whom creative writing is one of the many important professions they do to engage with larger society. While my original idea about entering academia was indeed to give myself a foothold in a university environment so that I can have the stable income to be able to write creatively, now the pressure in academia to keep up with new developments in the field and article publishing has pushed me out of that romantic dream of writing. Maybe one day I will be less stressed and more able to pick up that passion for creative writing again.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I saw the project on Facebook, and was especially attracted to the form of “but one country”. The theme of the collection is topical and powerful and since there was no Chinese translation, I thought I would give it a go.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project? 

Since I could pick any number of the 13 poems in the collection, I deliberately picked the ones with simpler language and more straightforward themes. I left out the ones with a lot of technical terms or foreign words since they demand the translator to actually know more than English and the target language. The poems are relatively short and their clear structures made it much easier to translate.

“but one country” is no doubt my favorite but also the most challenging, mainly because of its form. The grammatical genius embedded in the symmetrical visualization of the earth presents a particular problem for Chinese grammar, which often lacks the relational clarity of European languages and their numerous inflectional schemes. However, I suppose the loose grammatical structures of the Chinese sentence makes it easier than English to construct this symmetrical continuity. My method is really to prioritize the form of the original because that was what caught my eye in the first place, so I made sure each line should have one more character than the previous one. Apart from this, I have also tried to build more rhyme into the Chinese translation compared to the English original, such as the ending sounds of guo 國 and wo 窩, li 裡 and li 裡, nu 怒 and fu 覆, which I hope improves the readability and thus affective power of the poem. Yet I still think my translation has not reached the level of visual magic that the original has, and I would love to see a different Chinese translation of the poem.

As for the other ones, particularly “Children of War” and “Come In”, I have tried to create more rhyming effects for the Chinese versions as well. This search for rhyme often led me to look for the right character in a list of homophones for a particular translation, and sometimes I do sacrifice fidelity and choose words that are quite different from the original. For example, in “Come In”, I found the Chinese word for “blanket”, maotan毛毯 especially jarring in the stanza and opted for “warm curtain”, nuanlian 暖簾 instead, so that it can rhyme with “shoes”, xie 鞋. So these translating experiences actually made me realize how much prioritization translators have to perform in their job, and aspects of the original always have to be sacrificed in order for creative energy to grow in the translated version.

Rod Duncan’s “but one country”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.123. Translated into Chinese by Flair Donglai Shi.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

It is immensely valuable as it opens up space for global circulations of politically informed aesthetic practices. It effectively appropriates poetic power for an affective form of activism that pushes people to think critically about the roots of suffering in our world.

I find the first person point of view of “Children of War” very powerful, especially when combined with its resignation about the perpetuation of violence as it enables a possibility of identification through shared memories about entrapment and disempowerment. In a way, initiatives like this are really demonstrations of applied poetics, applied translation studies and applied theory. However, there is also a very obvious drawback to this project due to its Anglophone centric modus operandi—English poetry being translated into less powerful languages, and thus securing its hierarchical power as the centripetal source; I hope our journeys in translation should be larger and more diverse than that.

I am currently editing an academic book called World Literature in Motion, in which we devote an entire section to studies on markets of translations between languages other than English and French, for example, from Korean to Russian, from Chinese to Hindi and etc. For me, merely critiquing Eurocentrism does not go beyond Eurocentrism, only by bringing in other languages and literary traditions can we really provincialize Europe at a deeper level.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Ursula Kapferer

Ursula Kapferer was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1989 and currently lives in Freiburg (Germany). She studied German and English to become a teacher and is currently writing her PhD thesis on German-English poetry translation. She is also presently writing an article about translating the German poet Christian Morgenstern forthcoming in the traductology series ECHO.

In this interview, Ursula Kapferer talks about writing, poetry and poetry in translation.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I write poetry in German and English and translate poetry in both directions.

Currently, I am working on my PhD thesis about poetry translation, where I combine poetry translation practice and theoretical work.

I have always been fascinated with sound and rhythm which greatly influences both my writing and research interests and I am also interested in the different advantages and challenges when translating both from German to English and vice versa.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

The two greatest influences on my writing are my family and the poets I admire.

Some of my earliest memories are my father carrying me around in the kitchen, while reciting Latin poetry. I remember being fascinated with the enchanting rhythms and sounds, even though I did not understand a word. Poetry was always part of our everyday life during my childhood: My grandfather recorded ballads for me and my parents used to read to me and each other while going on holiday. I think these childhood experiences shaped my love for poetry and especially for sound and rhythm.

My own writing has always been greatly influenced by the poets I was reading at a time. Leafing through my older poems, I can see the different poets who influenced me at the time shining through. It has always been easier for me to get a feel for a poem than finding my own voice. This is probably also why I started translating poetry.

Are there other ways in which your personal experiences have influenced your writing?

Poetry for me is closely connected to emotion. I would even say the two are inseparable in my experience. Strong feelings often bring poems to mind and also have resulted in several of my poems. Also, I still have great difficulties translating poetry which I do not have an emotional connection with.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

The encouraging feedback of my private and professional environment is especially significant to me, for instance that I was invited to read one of my poetry translations at the T & R (Theories and Realities in Translation and wRiting) conference in Naples (Italy) in 2016.

Another significant achievement for me is that I managed to obtain two scholarships (first the “Landesgraduiertenförderung” and then the “Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes Promotionsstipendium”) for my PhD project (which includes my translations as well as theoretical work on translation I mentioned above).

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

Especially since my work as a German as a Second Language teacher for Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Freiburg (Germany), refugee experience and integration have become personal matters for me. I think that poetry is able to play a significant role in the integration process which begins with mutual understanding, I believe. So, when I heard about the project via an email bulletin from EACLALS (The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), I started translating “but one country” by Rod Duncan the same day.

Rod Duncan's poem, "but one country, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015), on the pavement at the Leicester Against War / Leicester for Peace vigil that is held every Friday at the Clock Tower in Leicester in solidarity with people bearing the brunt of war and those seeking refuge.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

The easiest step to me always is the first one, the reading, listening and then beginning the literal surface translation before dealing with formal and other constraints. Surprisingly, also, problem solving can sometimes be easy if I do not try too hard.

If I do not find a solution straight away, I found that getting up, going for a short walk or even only to the fridge often clears my mind so that when I return to the desk, sometimes there is a solution – seemingly out of nowhere.

Which were the most challenging?

I love challenges of poetic form. In the case of Rod Duncan’s “but one country”, such a challenge was the shape of the poem in the form of a globe and the syntactic challenges in ensuring that the poem can be read in both directions, the two halves making contradictory statements.

I find it fascinating that it is often especially poems that pose (formal) challenges, such as this one, where I like my solutions best in the end. Straight forward, literal solutions usually do not work in such cases and force me to “go deeper into” the poem and come up with creative solutions.

This experience also influenced my interest in the constraint and creativity I work on in my dissertation project.

Ursula Kapferer's translation into German of “but one country”, a poem by Rod Duncan which is one of the poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being translated from English into other languages as part of Journeys in Translation.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

I think the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation is - to use a poetry metaphor - that its form mirrors its content: The poems taken from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge express solidarity with refugees and can be described as transcending barriers between cultures and individuals on the level of content.

Journeys in Translation takes this one step further: It does not only overcome the monolingual barrier, but its open form (translation workshops and the use of social media like Facebook) enables a broadness and diversity that could not be achieved in conventional translation projects. The use of Facebook and the translation of the poems into many languages also make the poems accessible to a widespread audience and might be a valuable part of bringing the refugee experience closer to a larger number of people.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Antonella Delmestri

Antonella Delmestri was born in Trieste, Italy, where she began her education in Classical Studies before moving to Computer Science. Holder of a PhD in Information and Communication Technologies, she is author or co-author of a number of scientific publications.

In 2004 her first collection of Italian poems, Stanze dove non eri stato mai, was published by Ibiskos. In 2016 her second collection, Il respiro del drago (The breath of the dragon), including an English translation by Anne Lloyd-Williams, was published by Battello Stampatore.

Antonella has also published in Italian a short story “E questo fu solo l’inizio!” and has won various literary awards with her poems. Since 2006, she has lived in the UK, and works at the University of Oxford in medical research.

In this interview, Antonella Delmestri talks about her poetry.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

My personal experiences have entirely influenced my writing, even its very start and existence. I love T. S. Eliot’s definition of poetry:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

Which authors influenced you most?

What has most influenced my writing is my classical background, especially Greek and Latin mythology. I am fascinated by the power of this psychologically evocative cultural expression, which remains significant through the ages in representing universal human emotions. Myths, archetypes and metaphors are symbolic ways of conveying deeper truths about ourselves and the world around us.

How would you describe Stanze dove non eri stato mai?

Stanze is a journey through different emotional states represented by the book's sections: "Ombre" (Shades), "Attimi" (Moments), "Sorrisi" (Smiles), "Miraggi" (Mirages) and "Catene" (Chains).

The reader is invited to discover different rooms (stanze in Italian) of a virtual house, which symbolises one's inner self and identity. This is what the book's title refers to (Rooms where you had never been in English), and is a line in one of the poems, "La vergogna" (Shame). The fact that Stanza has an additional meaning in poetry makes the title more evocative.

How did the collection come about?

I started writing poetry when I was in my early 30s and it was a complete surprise to me. One day I woke up and I just had to write.

Initially, everything I produced was in rhyme, and the rhymes were ready to come out effortlessly. It was an unsettling experience, because I was not used to it and I did not understand where it came from. Probably to give it some direction, I got into the habit of writing in the morning and editing the result later in the day. This activity of dreamy writing and file-editing went on for a few years undisturbed and solitary.

One day I heard of a publisher, Ibiskos, running a competition for poetry collections, and I began to consider sharing my writing with the outside world. I started selecting the poems that I thought might be suitable, and grouped them into sections. My collection was shortlisted in the competition and Ibiskos offered to publish it.

Antonella Delmestri's first poetry collection Stanze dove non eri stato mai was published in 2004 by Ibiskos Editrice. 

What were the easiest aspects of the work that went into the collection? And which where the most challenging?

The creation of the poems themselves was the easiest part of the work. But my writing is very deep, and I am always worried that it could be too intense for people to enjoy. I found it challenging to choose what to include in a collection, as I had to overcome this concern and try to focus on the quality of the poems instead. I asked a few trusted friends for their opinion and comments before reaching a final decision.

I received good feedback for the book. People seemed to connect with and relate to the poems, which was encouraging. Of course, the market for poetry is so small that it is difficult to have good distribution and advertising if you are not an established author, but I expected this difficulty.

In what way is your second collection similar to Stanze dove non eri stato mai? And, conversely, what sets Il respiro del drago apart from your first collection?

There are several similarities between the two collections. In both books, the poems are accessible, short, deep and sharp. Another similarity is the virtual journey offered to the reader through very different emotional atmospheres.

However, although the first collection accompanies the traveller through rooms of a symbolic house where the sequence of the passage is irrelevant, in The breath of the dragon, the exploration of human emotions follows a specific course with a higher degree of awareness. "Sparks", "Flames", "Embers" and "Smoke" track sequential stages of fire, as in a process of completion. This reflects a deeper and more mature understanding of emotions and their mechanisms.

Antonella Delmestri's second poetry collection, Il respiro del drago / The breath of the dragon (Battello Stampatore, 2016) is bilingual and includes Anne Lloyd-Williams' English translation of the poems. 

How did the bilingual edition of Il respiro del drago come about?

Il respiro del drago has been nearly ready for some time and, after several years of being overwhelmed at work, I felt I was ready to allocate again more attention and energy to my writing. When the draft was ready, I sent it to Battello Stampatore, a small publisher in Trieste who might have been interested. When I met the owner, he suggested producing an Italian/English edition, considering that English could give the poems more visibility.

One of my good friends in Oxford, Anne Lloyd-Williams, who has an interest in poetry and is an Italian speaker, was happy to collaborate on this project. The experience was fascinating for me, and it made me even more aware of the cultural differences between Italy and the UK, which are reflected in their languages' capabilities and richness.

Interestingly, after having read the English translation of Il respiro del drago, an American poet, David Olsen, expressed his interest in translating the poems of my previous book, Stanze, and we are now collaborating.

How would you describe the nature of your involvement with Journeys in Translation?

A friend of mine, who works at the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University, knowing my interest in poetry and humanitarian initiatives, forwarded an email regarding Journeys in Translation, which was seeking translators.

I was delighted to hear about the initiative, and to be able to contribute to an important project that will raise awareness on such a serious and current topic. Our society has become far too blind and deaf to our fellow human beings’ painful destinies. We, authors, should use our skills to help them.

I have translated into Italian nine of the 13 poems - those with which I felt confident, and which had not been previously translated into my mother tongue. Moreover, I am organizing a poetry reading in Oxford for late May for The breath of the dragon, and I am very excited about having different readers giving their voices to four of the poems from Journeys in Translation.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the initiative?

This has been my first experience of translating poetry into Italian. The easiest aspect was to get into the poems, as they were very meaningful and powerful.

What I found complicated sometimes was, how to be faithful to the original poem, while giving a poetic structure to the translation. After writing the first draft, I reviewed it several times while trying to keep an open mind, and finally I sent it to a friend for his opinion and suggestions.

"but one country" also had the extra challenge of having an earth shape, which is so visually expressive.

Antonella Delmestri's translation, into Italian of Rod Duncan's "but one country", one of the 13 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being used as part of Journeys in Translation.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Irena Ioannou

Irena Ioannou’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Wild Word, S/tick, Literary Mama, Eyedrum Periodically and Shipwrights. She writes from Crete, Greece where she lives with her husband and four children.

In this interview, Irena Ioannou talks about her writing, translation and poetry.

When did you start writing?

My first efforts were in Greek and were meant for my eyes only, too many years ago to be able to pin it down. Then I stumbled upon some creating writing courses at Malmo University, or they stumbled upon me, I can’t tell for sure.

My first poems were published online in 2013 and ever since I’ve been taking my writing one step forward, the past months more steadily and decisively so.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I write narrative, confessional poetry, more often than not with a feminist-political bent. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the flash fiction and the short story form. Writing constantly offers new opportunities to learn and evolve, or sometimes you find that a medium cannot deliver the intended meaning adequately. But poetry is the guide to everything else: it taught me to pay attention to every single word, which is a big step into writing.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

I am Greek and I have attended Greek school which means that I’ve studied the Classics. Having also studied English Literature though, a new window opened when I came across contemporary female poets.

I chose to do my Bachelor Thesis on Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife, and, well, nobody can remain unaffected by that. Questions about the truth of representation and the reinvention of history still haunt my writing.

In general, I am drawn to poems with a strong voice. Poets like Sharon Olds and Adrienne Rich — and others less known who use poetry to bare their soul — are my soft spot.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

Your experiences make you who you are, and your writing reflects it. I’ve been influenced by two countries: Sweden, where I was born, and Greece, where I’ve grown up.

Studies have also the habit of messing with your head, and at times I enroll in foreign language courses trying to decode the way of thinking behind them. And of course, my job in the Greek Fire Brigade offers new angles of interpreting the human condition.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

I consider my best achievement that I continue writing while working and being a mother of four.

I cannot single any of my pieces out as they all carry a piece of me in their words. But of course I value the magazines that treat my work with respect, like The Wild Word did with my poem "It’s Only Human Nature" and my personal essay "On Country And Shared Blood", and the Mortar Magazine did with my short story "St. George".

The publishing world is still a puzzle to me, though every time a total stranger chooses my work among hundreds I call it a small miracle, and marvel at the way poetry unites us all.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I answered to an open call for volunteer translators posted in my university’s online writing community.

I have translated eight of the poems into Greek, and I am working on the rest. So far, it’s been a very rewarding experience. I can’t help but admire such initiatives; we’re all so caught up in our lives that we don’t even allow sidelong glances to anything that doesn't directly concern us.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

It’s natural to identify more with certain poems than with others, which make their reading and translation an easier task. It’s like reading a poem and thinking, "Yeah, I've been there." I could refer here to Kathleen Bell’s "Waiting". That peeking out through the window felt quite intimate.

Irena Ioannou's translation, into Greek of Kathleen Bell's "Waiting", one of the 13 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being used as part of Journeys in Translation, a project that aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations on the themes of home, belonging and refuge.  

Which were the most challenging?

Words come in different hues and there is always the fear that, as a translator, you’ll assign a meaning to a word not intended by its first creator. I treated some of the poets as witnesses, as though offering them a medium to share their experiences and I would hate to alter these experiences in any way, as in assigning to emotionally charged words lesser meaning. But in the end, poetry is deeply felt and you just put on the paper what your heart dictates.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

The value of such an initiative is that it is not another product of MFA graduates, neatly arranged words in projected structures — at least that’s not the way I viewed it. I felt some of the poems literally singing to me, I could see the rhythm of escaping behind them, this sense of people caught in midair. I don’t know what else can touch us anymore, but poetry — our eyes have long been trained to stop seeing.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Laura Chalar

Laura Chalar was born in 1976 in Uruguay, where she trained as a lawyer. She is the author of six books, most recently Midnight at the Law Firm (Coal City Press, 2015), a chapbook of poetry, and Líber Andacalles (Topito Ediciones, 2016), a Spanish-language short story for children.

She has also published numerous translations from and into Spanish, including Touching the Light of Day: Six Uruguayan Poets (Veliz Books, 2016) and Uruguayan poetry dossiers in Modern Poetry in Translation and other literary journals. The recipient of various literary awards as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee, she is currently at work on several simultaneous projects. Laura is married and has a daughter.

In this interview, Laura Chalar talks about her writing.

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was very small, copying the printed letters I found in books and newspapers. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write. My father was very proud of a story about a ‘caterpillar woman’, which I must have written when I was about four. Both my parents were readers --- fine examples of that type of cultured, literary-minded lawyer which is now sadly in danger of extinction. We never had much money when I was growing up, but there were always plenty of books around the house.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I am a poet and short-story writer who also wants to become a novelist! Recently, I’ve also started writing for children. And then, of course, I also translate. These different genres often hinge around subjects I keep returning to --- memory, childhood, ‘normal’ people living normal lives, usually in places I happen to know or have lived in.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most and in what way? Why do you think they’ve had this kind of influence?

I wouldn’t know about influence, but there are many writers whose work I admire and which are a quality standard I always try to keep within sight, even if I can’t match it. I’m always discovering poets whose work I love, many of them English!

Among Uruguayan writers, who are perhaps less familiar to English-language readers but definitely worth getting to know, I would mention Julio Herrera y Reissig, Líber Falco, Juan Carlos Onetti, Marosa di Giorgio, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Horacio Quiroga and Juana de Ibarbourou from the ‘classics’ ranks.

Laura Chalar's books include Touching the Light of Day (Veliz Books, 2016) and Líber Andacalles (Topito Ediciones, 2016).

How have your personal experiences influenced the writing you are doing?

My personal experiences are always there, lurking behind the scenes. That is not to say, of course, that my writing is always ‘confessional’ --- I will draw on stories I have heard, the visual arts, places I have never been to --- but there is always something of myself, of my tastes and inclinations, in what I write. I suppose it’s the same with most writers --- your life seeps into your writing, sometimes in ways you can’t recognize.

What are you working on at present?

I am preparing a Spanish-language book of prose poems (or poem-like stories, depending on your view) for the press. It will be published in Uruguay by Irrupciones, a local publisher, perhaps in May.

This year, I also plan to finish a book about reading to (and with) my daughter, and edit the short stories and other writings of my father, who died last year (some of these can be read in the latest issue of Coal City Review, an American literary journal, in my translation).

I’m also looking for a publisher for my translations of the Brontë sisters’ poems, illustrated by a wonderful Uruguayan artist. There are also a couple of translation projects around, involving English-language poets whose work I enjoy ...

And I’m probably still forgetting something.

How do you balance the demands of the various aspects of the work you are doing?

The greatest demands come from motherhood and my work as a lawyer, which is how I make my living. These are both wonderful and challenging but, as you may imagine, take up most of my time! Any free time I find for writing goes to whatever is currently the most ‘urgent’ project, always trying to fit in things that come up and which can be finished relatively quickly.

For you, what connects Law, poetry and literary translation?

Words and ideas ... a passion for them, their possibilities, the worlds they uncover. I suppose I could just as accurately say that in my view they are connected by a deep interest (and involvement) in human lives and human minds.

What would you say is the value of an initiative like Journeys in Translation?

I think if you can make people understand and know about the refugee experience, then tolerance and compassion (both greatly needed in today’s world) will be fostered and enhanced. And you might make people gain a greater appreciation of poetry along the way, which would be an added bonus.

What have been the most interesting aspects of the work you’ve done so far with the initiative?

So far I have only translated a couple of poems, ‘What’s in a Name’ (which offers, in an almost incantatory manner, the names of different people who are suffering, and through naming them brings them closer to us and gives them a voice) and ‘Dislocation’, a very spare poem about disconnectedness and alienation.

The most exciting thing about doing so was the possibility of being a part of a project that will hopefully help people and change lives for the better, hackneyed as these words may seem. Uruguay and Argentina, the countries I divide my time between, are both currently peaceful in the sense that there are no dictatorships, wars or displacement issues (though there is a very concerning streak of totalitarianism alive and kicking in both); for most of us here, having to leave your life, family and possessions behind and start anew, seeking protection in a foreign country, is an ordeal we can’t even begin to imagine. Our ancestors did it when they sailed for this part of the world, usually driven by poverty, two or more generations back --- but it isn’t really a part of our everyday experience. And I don’t want geographical distance and a different life path to prevent me from empathizing with and helping, if I can, those who are going through such misery and misfortune in current times. I want to be a part of the change for the better, part of the good in their lives, and literature seems like the most obvious channel, as writing is what I do best.

Laura Chalar's translations of some of the poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being used as part of Journeys in Translation, a project that aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversation on the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

What has been the most challenging? And, how have you dealt or how are you dealing with these challenges?

I always try to deal with translation challenges with creativity and craftsmanship. I think a translation is successful when it can be read as a poem in its own right.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.