Arabic Literature (in English): Translating Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

Last week I went to one of the Poetry Translation Centre's collaborative translation workshops, where we translated one of Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's mesmerizing, labyrinthine poems - with the poet himself present.

I wrote about the experience for M Lynx Qualey's blog Arabic Literature (in English), which is known to be an absolutely essential resource for people interested in just that. If you click on the "poetry" tag, it will bring up a wealth of interesting stories about the translation of Arabic-language poetry.

You can read my writeup about the workshop here: http://arablit.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/in-the-room-at-the-poetry-translation-centre-reading-al-saddiq-al-raddi-2/

Here's a excerpt:

"The translator who had produced the literal English version, Samuel Wilder, had selected a sequence of poems from which Saddiq had deduced that he was a) a bit of a romantic and b) possibly interested in Sufism, which is a huge influence on Sudanese poetry and was especially evident in these poems. The other poems were shorter, had charming details about butterflies, and while also complex were probably a little more straightforward. So, naturally, the group chose to go for the long, extremely difficult poem…"

Spain and Poetry 1: Poetry of the Alhambra

I just spent almost ten days back in Andalucia, where I sojourned (seems like the right word) with a friend almost two years ago. No real change; it's still one of my favourite places in the entire world. This time I travelled with my friend M (I'll call her that for privacy, and it sounds James Bond-ish.) It was one of her lifelong dreams to travel in this part of Spain and see dancing horses and flamenco, among other delights, so our first few days in Jerez de la Frontera were particularly wonderful. We also took a day trip to Cadiz, where I swam in the warm Atlantic, and then travelled on to Cordoba, and finally to Granada, mainly to visit the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a dream. I'm not sure I've ever visited a place which so deserves the title. It really is all that the hype says it's going to be, and considerably more. M and I went there in the morning expecting to spend about three, maybe four hours...we were there for five and a half, and only left because we really had seen just about everything and were getting tired. When we left and descended the hill on which it stands, back down into Granada, it was like waking up. The gardens and palaces instantly felt dreamlike. Pictures can't really do it justice, though they provide a clue, and I don't have words poetic enough for it (though I may try...) At one and the same time, it felt like a fairytale but you could also imagine real people living there, moving through its hallways and gorgeous rooms, breathing in the impossibly fragrant air of the Generalife. As well as its extreme beauty, the Alhambra has incredible historic significance. The "Reyes Católicos", Ferdinand and Isabella, completed the Reconquista of the Muslim kingdoms here, and flags were raised from one of the fortified towers to signal the victory. Many writers have stayed and walked there, including Washington Irving, who wrote his Tales of the Alhambra and revived interest in the place.

Al-Andalus - Islamic Spain - was a society where poetry was pre-eminent, and poetry has always been incredibly significant in the Muslim and Arabic worlds. It is now known that many of the walls of the Alhambra are covered with poetry. This link to an Alhambra website, and this article on The Alhambra: Poetry, Calligraphy and Arabesque are particularly useful, with many translations and examples of the lush, beautiful poetry on its walls. I don't read Arabic and I don't speak more than a few words, so in the place itself, most of it was lost on me. It certainly feeds into my love of poetry in public places and poetry as public art, though. Arabic script is extremely beautiful and can be admired even if you don't know its meaning.

These photos are from the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Nasrid Palaces:

Some of the script is a poem celebrating the victory of Muhammad V at Algeciras in 1369.

In the Courtyard of the Lions, poetry appears on the edge of the lion basin:

In part, this poem reads:


For, are there not in this garden wonders
that God has made incomparable in their beauty,
and a sculpture of pearls with a transparent light,
the borders of which are trimmed with seed pearl?
Melted silver flows through the pearls,
which it resembles in its pure dawn beauty.
Apparently, water and marble seem to be one,
without letting us know which of them is flowing.


As well as the Islamic poetry, there were other traces. This plaque quotes the great Andalucian poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, writing in tribute to the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, who lived for a few years on one of the streets of the Alhambra. I hope I am correctly translating this as "He went to Granada for silence and time,/and Granada gave him even more, harmony and eternity."

In the Generalife gardens, I came across this plaque, quoting a letter written by a poet - I haven't quite puzzled this one out yet.

Whether you're there for the architecture, the gardens, the history, the poetry, or all of these, I can't recommend the Alhambra too highly. I hope to go back some day.

There was more poetry for me to encounter in Spain, of course, and a blog post or two to come will deal with the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, and other moments where I crossed paths with poetry and poets.



All photos ©  Clarissa Aykroyd 2013

...And Then One Day I Realised That I Loved Sudanese Poetry

I recently attended another Poetry Translation Centre workshop, which I've just occasionally been able to go to, where we (poets, translators, poet translators) translate a poem collaboratively. This time it was a poem by Ateif Khieri, an important Sudanese poet writing in Arabic (and now sadly exiled in Australia).

It was a fun evening. We ended up laughing quite a lot, which was a surprise, as it's not a particularly humorous poem. You can judge for yourself and read the poem, 'Exhortation to the Village (8)', on this link. (This is the final translated version, but there are also links to the original Arabic, and to the more literal early translation which we worked from.


EXHORTATION TO THE VILLAGE (8) (Ateif Khieri)


There were a number of things about this poem which really got under my skin. The literal translation, which I had looked at quickly before the workshop, had something about it that reminded me of Paul Celan. I think it was the element of the surreal, and the sense that a really deep engagement with the original language and the meaning of the words, and some background about the poem's cultural roots, would help immensely. I mean, all of this is probably very much the case for most translation of poetry - but more so in some cases.

Sarah Maguire led the workshop as usual (I also love her own poetry), and we were really fortunate to have Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi there, who is friends with Ateif Khieri and whose own Sudanese Arabic-language poetry is, I hope, just about to take...everyone by storm. He and the first translator Samuel Wilder, and others in the workshop with a knowledge of Arabic, were able to help us with a closer engagement. The depth of meaning in many of the Arabic words is remarkable and this made the translation very challenging, but very interesting and rewarding.

The other thing that got me about 'Exhortation to the Village (8)' was simply a very, very strong feeling of familiarity. It came over me particularly with these lines:


After two streets of grief
I know
Angels
and treacherous paths toward the lord


The whole poem seems to find an intense, almost traumatized meaning (either positive or negative) in the details that surround the poet, in everyday life. And I still don't know what is familiar about it - whether it reminds me of another poem, or whether it is a less specific emotional familiarity.

Poetry Parnassus: 'Alternative Geographies' of Middle Eastern Poets

I went to my first Poetry Parnassus event tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, which was 'Alternative Geographies', an evening of Middle Eastern poets reading their works in Arabic and French, with English translations. The poets included the following:

Iman Mersal (Egypt)
Vénus Khoury-Ghata (Lebanon)
Amjad Nasser (Jordan)
Amina Saïd (Tunisia)
Qassim Haddad (Bahrain)
Hassan El Ouazzani (Morocco)

Some of the poems had been translated by Marilyn Hacker, who also read her translations in the course of the evening.

This was a pretty wonderful event. I was able to understand the poems in French (by Khoury-Ghata and Saïd), as French is my second language. For the Arabic poems, I had to rely entirely on the English translations, but Arabic is an incredibly resonant language and it was a pleasure just to listen even without comprehension, knowing that the excellent translations would help me to grasp the meaning and emotion.

These poets read with so much passion. I feel that many Western poets could learn something from their unabashed emotion and their dark/bright chiaroscuro of language. I was nearly moved to tears at some point during every poet's reading. One of the highlights was Amjad Nasser's poem 'The Phases of the Moon In London', where he finds the gulf between himself and one of his English neighbours hard to bridge:


I wanted to tell her that the skies of eastern cities, bent under military rule and corruption, are also blotted out, and that the stars that freckled our childhood with comets have also disappeared, but I feared to lose the only gift for which she envied me.


I was also deeply moved by Amina Saïd's incredibly beautiful, transcendent poems, delicately translated by Marilyn Hacker. And Moroccan poet Hassan El Ouazzani read with incredible verve and excitement. All of these poets ventured deep into difficult and dangerous territory, such as the ravaging of their countries by invasion and conflict, family relationships, and the quest for self-knowledge.

Here are a few pictures from the evening (lousy ones - I really need a new camera). First, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, who recently received the prestigious Prix Goncourt in France:

Amina Saïd:

And Hassan El Ouazzani:

The audience was a pleasant mix of nationalities and knowledge of languages, but there was an air of excitement and pleasure throughout the evening from pretty much everyone.

This was an awesome start to my Poetry Parnassus experience. More to come!

(Incidentally, the Guardian has provided an excellent interactive poetry map with selections from all the Olympic countries and the poets attending Poetry Parnassus. This is extremely helpful if you want to get a taste of the amazing range of international work on hand this week.)

Poetry Parnassus: The Poetry World Comes to London

One of the biggest poetry festivals ever staged and part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Poetry Parnassus kicked off today in London, with the star event of the evening being the Rain of Poems staged by Casagrande. I had to miss this due to another commitment, but it sounds as though it went off well and no doubt provided an incredible start to this festival.

I'll be going to several ticketed Poetry Parnassus events this week, and generally taking in the atmosphere and the poetry freebies at Southbank when I can, so I can't really complain. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing some of the greatest poets of our time, along with lesser-known but brilliant writers, but I think what really thrills me about the whole event is its international scope, and the way it is bringing poetry into the public eye. Poetry seems to be pretty hot right now, relatively speaking, though that probably still makes it a brave candle flame.

I'll be writing some more about the events that I've attended at some point, but I've also been reflecting on poetry as a public art form and on its place in other parts of the world. For most of my poetry-reading life (which has now been actively for more than fifteen years) I've thought of it as a more private art form - not just because it tends to be quite "specialized" and "niche", but because it is a very personal and individual experience. The poems that I love, not unlike my other passions, are tied in to all sorts of events and memories in my life, past, present and future. Poetry strikes so deep into the subconscious and the inner person that it can be even more individual than other art forms.

At the same time, there are many parts of the world where poets are the figureheads and spokesmen or spokeswomen for artists, rebels, oppressed groups, and others. The English-speaking world has probably lost sight of this in many ways, but it's notable that a great many of the Poetry Parnassus events revolve around poets in exile, or from war-torn countries, or who are somehow disenfranchised or fighting non-violent battles. Even without specific response to conflict, there are many non-English-speaking countries where poetry has traditionally been the number one form of literature. When you look for poetry pages on Facebook, an enormous number are dedicated to Arabic poetry, and perhaps even more are dedicated to Urdu (Pakistani and Indian) poetry. In other words, those who call poetry a dead art form haven't got a clue; it's far from that in the Western world, but it is particularly alive in huge areas of the world such as the Middle East and Central Asia.

Beyond this, I'm just very interested in poetry as public art in the most literal sense: whether it's the Rain of Poems where tens of thousands of bookmark-poems fall from a helicopter onto the waiting crowds in cities around the world, or the Wall-to-Wall Poetry project in Sofia, or the poem by Carla Funk which I saw in the park in my hometown of Victoria, carrying on a great tradition of garden poems, or the extraordinary poem in the tunnel by Waterloo station in my adopted town of London. I've developed a radar for anything that might be called poetry in public places, and it's great if I have a chance to take a picture.

Some of the above rambling might provide matter for some further posts. But for now, I'm more than ready to enjoy Poetry Parnassus, and I'll be writing about it again in the pretty near future.