2 and 2

As a continuation of yesterday’s post: today an interview with Alex Epstein, author of Blue Has No South, conducted by A’Dora Phillips.

A’DORA: Is Hebrew your mother tongue?

ALEX: I was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel with my family when I was eight, without knowing a word in Hebrew. So, I don’t really have a mother tongue—in order to write in Hebrew I had during the years, in a way, to forget my Russian.  I guess that Hebrew “adopted” me—I write in Hebrew, I “live” in Hebrew, I dream in Hebrew, but since it’s not my first language, it’s more an adoptive tongue than a mother tongue.

Your stories are wonderfully complex—in their wide range of reference, their tone, their blend of genres and mix of registers.  I imagine that for both you as writer and Becka as translator this must have raised even more concern than usual about what might be lost in translation?

This is exactly why I am so grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Becka: she always tried to find the best solution possible to keep the “lost in translation” effect to a minimum. She is a poet, and consequently has a sharp eye for the single word, for the meaning of a single word in a very short prose piece.

It was important to me and to Becka to try to maintain the same poetics that my stories have in Hebrew: for example, the relationship between the story and the margins surrounding it, the white page.

Can you say a little about your involvement in the translation process?

I read all the translations, and provided some comments during the process. But the most important thing to say here is that eventually I was just a reader, and writers are not the best readers of their work, of course: the final decision is always made by the translator. On a few occasions Becka asked me to make alterations to the original, so that the story would work in English in the same way it does in Hebrew.

Becka mentioned that the English version of Blue Has No South is not an exact representation of the original.  Why did you make the decision not to include some stories and to add others?

We decided to make the book a better representation of my short work, and so a few of the longer stories were left out and replaced by newer short-short ones. But even with these changes, more than one hundred stories appear in both the Hebrew and English versions of the text, so ultimately they are very much alike.

Beyond the changes you made to the collection, how does the English translation of Blue Has No South “feel” to you?  Some writers, for instance, say they have no relationship to their work when it appears in another language and others say that it gives them a fresh perspective on their writing.  Any thoughts about this?

I do feel that it’s definitely my book, and part of what makes it feel that way is the process, seeing one version of the translation of a single story, and then seeing a new version, and yet again: that is exactly how I write, draft after draft after draft, so the shortest story can take months to write (and now, to translate).

Do you live full-time in Israel?  And, big question—one that ultimately may not be answerable—how would you characterize the current climate of Hebrew-language literature?

I do live in Israel, in Tel Aviv. Israeli contemporary literature is very hard to characterize—one thing that’s obvious, though, is that we have a lot of exciting voices, in different styles, exploring different themes. As everywhere, in the last years we have seen a shift from the short form towards the novel. But it seems that I am going in the opposite direction.

The Center for the Art of Translation has sent out a plea for donations to their Poetry Inside Out program. The CAT does a lot of wonderful programming, and this is another example—read more (from Scott Esposito at Two Words):

This week, we’re starting a campaign to raise $15,000 to bring Poetry Inside out to 250 new students this fall. We’d like to ask all the translators, publishers, writers, and readers out there to help us. If you love world lit, this is your chance to help bring that literature to young readers.

This is what we do: since 2000 PIO has worked with more than 5,000 students through residencies that place poet-translators in Bay Area classrooms. Our program inspires children from the inside out. They learn to take risks, be creative, and use imagination and critical thinking skills as they read, write, and translate poems by the world’s great poets. Our curriculum includes poems in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Latvian, Italian, and Japanese–children are introduced to writing from all around the world, and hopefully they go on to love translated literature for the rest of their lives!

Over the past decade we’ve forged strong partnerships with schools, but these ties are being threatened. Like many other states, California is out of money. When these cuts take effect, arts-enrichment programs–even ones as rigorous and clearly beneficial as Poetry Inside Out–are often the first things that are eliminated.

That’s why we’re reaching out to the community to offset these budget cuts and continue to offer Poetry Inside Out residencies in Bay Area classrooms. School program fees cover only one third of the cost of the program, and even that is uncertain for the fall.

The $15,000 we’re hoping to raise before June 18 will support 10 in-school residencies–that’s teachers for more than 250 Bay Area kids, who will learn to love translations, world literature, and creative writing.

If you can help, click the link to make a donation. All donations–no matter the size–will help us reach our goal and bring poetry and translation to students.

Click here to see an example of some of the great work these students do. And you can find even more with posts by the PIO instructors right here on this blog.

Reading Edith Grossman’s engaging new Why Translation Matters on the plane back from Miami last week led me back to Jose Ortega y Gasset’s essay “The Misery and the Splendor of Translation.” Grossman’s neat summary: Ortega y Gasset calls “translation a utopian enterprise, but, he said, so too is any human undertaking, even the effort to communicate with another human being in the same language.” (Endearing, isn’t it?)

From the essay, translated by Elizabeth Gamble Miller:

To write well is to make continual incursions into grammar, into established usage, and into accepted linguistic norms. It is an act of permanent rebellion against the social environs, a subversion. To write well is to employ a certain radical courage.

Or, as Hilary and I often sign our emails to each other, Resist!

For those of you in the Valley, the Juniper Literary Festival is this weekend, with a great program honoring the ten-year anniversary of jubilat. Clockroot will have a wee bit of a table, honored to be elbow to elbow with a selection of truly fantastic poetry presses & magazines (see below), and other UMass MFA-program-related endeavors (one teaser: Microfilme magazine, dedicated to the preservation of writing that shouldn’t be read with the naked eye…). Come by!

Friday April 23

3:30 pm Eric Carle Museum: Antonio Frasconi Exhibit Tour: curator tours of the internationally acclaimed artist’s woodcuts, including works inspired by Pablo Neruda and W.S. Merwin

4:30 pm: Eric Carle Museum: Roundtable: On Poetry & The Visual Arts: Jen Bervin, Terrance Hayes, & Matthea Harvey, moderated by Jane Curley

6 pm: Fine Arts Center Lobby: Independent Journal & Book Fair Opening Reception

7:30 pm: University Gallery: Reading & Performance: Jen Bervin, Christian Hawkey, & Michael Teig, followed by the premier of a performance based on Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno,” staged by Missoula Oblongata

Saturday April 24

10:30 am: Fine Arts Center Lobby: Journal & Book Fair Continues

11 am: University Gallery: Roundtable: Poetry, Publishing, & the Pioneer Valley : the dreaming up, creating, & evolving of jubilat, Verse Press/Wave Books & Rain Taxi with Rob N. Casper, Matthew Zapruder, & Eric Lorberer, moderated by Dara Wier

12:30 pm: University Gallery: Roundtable: The Future of Poetry, Part II with Heather Christle, Cathy Park Hong, Evie Shockley, & Rebecca Wolff, moderated by Rob N. Casper

3 pm: Amherst Cinema Arts Center: Reading: Terrance Hayes, Caroline Knox, Dean Young, & Matthew Zapruder

Journal and Book Fair Participants Include

A Public Space, Action, Amherst Books, Adventures in Poetry, Aufgabe, Bateau, Black Ocean, Boston Review, The Canary, Canarium, Clockroot, Conjunctions, Factory Hollow Press, Forklift, Ohio, H_NGM_N, Hobart, Jellyfish, jubilat, Kelly Writers’ House, Kenyon Review, Magic Helicopter, Massachusetts Review, Microfilme, Noo, Nor by Press, notnostrums, Now Culture, Open City, Paris Press, PennSound, Pilot Press, Pocket Myths, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Society of America, Publishing Genius, Rain Taxi, Schoen Books, Slope Editions, Small Beer Press, Thermos, Ugly Duckling Presse, Walser Society, Wave Books, Zephyr Press

As per our earlier post, and this update, Adania Shibli cannot be in Beirut for the Beirut 39 festival, but she is participating in a number of wonderful events surrounding the London Book Fair. Those of you in the UK, be sure to check them out:

Join Adania and many other superb festival writers at International PEN’s Free the Word! literary lunch, Sunday, April 18, at the Young Vic.

And on April 19 at the London Book Fair, see the panel “Why Does Translation into English Matter?”, with Adania, Bill Swainson (senior editor, Bloomsbury), Amanda Hopkinson (professor, University of East Anglia), Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, and Marlene Van Niekerk, moderated by Ros Schwartz:

What does it mean to an international writer to be translated into the English language? An increased readership, certainly, and a moment of recognition. But what are the wider artistic implications?

How do translators interpret their role and responsibility? What are the rewards of translating literature into English, and how central is contemporary literature in translation to the cultural consciousness of this country? What is its significance for the UK publishing industry?

English PEN brings together an international panel to discuss the literary, personal, and cultural importance of being translated into English.

Pam and I are just back from an excellent AWP that hit all the notes (warm embraces of, cold drinks with those we’d only known virtually—readings at which we grinned and others cringed, hands over their faces—mysteriously missing books—bureaucratic red tape and the trials of the little man in the face of UPS—glimpses of adored writers of our pasts, writers to be newly adored in our futures—snarkiness, sentiment, tears, chase scenes)—there will be plenty to say of it, but this quickly: I had the pleasure of being someone’s “first fan” (I hope, first at the fair, not ever so encountered)—I spotted the amazing Nina Shope at the Starcherone table, and stopped to tell her how much I had loved her Hangings and how I always stopped at Starcherone at whichever fair to see if there was anything forthcoming from her.  I’m waiting for the new book, I said.  My first fan! she said.  I read the stunning three novellas in Hangings three years ago, and had one of those glorious moments where you realize, Ah, so this is possible.  At a lovely dinner that evening with Pam and Jed Berry (also of the fantastic Valley-based Small Beer Press), I recounted my fandom, and how inspiring it had been especially compared to the glummer moments of the conference (the aftermath of the economic downturn, the occasional sinking feeling that somehow there may be more writers than readers…).  Jed said that he too had just gotten to meet someone and in expressing his admiration, be their first fan.  (The writer’s name, like too much else right now, escapes me.)

And so I thought, a goal for times & book fairs to come: To be someone’s first fan.  Loudly, sweetly, embarrassingly, pushily, humbly—as readers and writers, to keep the myriad paths of fandom well trod.

More soon!  Good to see you all in Denver—

After flying across the country and arriving in Denver for one big gathering of writers, we just learned the distressing news that Adania Shibli and Ala Hlehel, both Israeli Arab writers, won’t be allowed to travel to Beirut next week to participate in the Beirut39 festival, where their writing is being honored. (They’ll receive their awards in London instead, on April 15.)

This isn’t the first time this has happened to Adania. We’ll post later the wonderful essay she wrote the last time this happened to her —it seems to have been taken off the web. Not to attribute anything sinister.

Now we’ve got a bookfair to attend, where  our complaints about sketchy internet connections and smashed cartons of books now seem small.

Come visit us this week in Denver at AWP 2010!  Exhibit hall A, table D14.  You may even catch Alex Epstein and Becka McKay signing Blue Has No South.  (And we’ll be featuring a special guest appearance from Akashic Books.)

On Saturday, April 10th, Alex is giving the introduction at the Denver Film Society’s Evening with Etgar Keret.  Hope to see you there—

***

(OK, a few minutes on Wikipedia educates me that “Mile-High” isn’t high altitude. So I can’t prove my title claim yet. But I can say that we will have truly stunning literature in translation, one heck of a banner, and we would love to see you.)

“Karapanou is one of Greece’s most beloved novelists, yet she remains relatively unknown in the US, despite having fans like John Updike and Jonathan Safran Foer. Rien ne va plus, originally published in 1991, has only now been translated into English, just one year after Karapanou’s death. A gesture toward the author’s continued legacy, this translation delivers the essence of the author’s style, a delicate balance between dark and light, haunting scenes cut with sharp ironic wit. Rien ne va plus, the phrase that is delivered in roulette when ‘the game becomes fate,’ is a central metaphor for Karapanou because her novel tells the story of the dissolution of a marriage twice: first from the point of view of the wife, the second using a rearrangement of themes from the first. Karapanou’s concern is the pain of love—the trauma of giving oneself over to another and the fear of trust—though Karapanou’s pleasure is analyzing how these emotions affect the subconscious depths of her characters. These feelings reverberate deeply in Rien ne va plus as the threads that lead the reader from one chapter to the next, wherein the history of the marriage she has created is playfully jumbled. As rien ne va plus connotes this feeling of either/or, win or lose, Karapanou’s treatment of fear and love worms its way into the reader’s memory with its suggestion that it is emotions that are sturdy, while our lives are what is left to chance.”

—Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2010

Greek News Online offers an interview with Ersi Sotiropoulos and Karen Emmerich on the stories in Landscape with Dog (conducted while Ersi was a guest at the sixth International Poetry Festival in Granada, Nicaragua).

Greek News: What do you think is most significant about [the stories] as works of art? What is significant about Ersi as a Greek writer/international writer?

Karen Emmerich: It’s hard for me to think about Ersi’s work in those terms; I just think of her as a writer.  She cares so deeply about language –and not just the Greek language.  Yes, she can spend months writing and rewriting the same paragraph in Greek until it’s just right, just how she wants it.  But she also cares just as deeply about her works as they move into other languages, of which she happens to speak many.

For me it sometimes seems like this impulse to think of writers as representatives of their language or literary tradition — Ersi as a literary ambassador of Greece, in a way — confines them to too small and constricting a box.  For sure, Ersi’s writing is often wrapped up in the lived reality of Greece.  But she also reads widely in many languages, travels widely, and is part of literary conversations that are happening across languages as well.