Stingy Kids

The Spirit of Multiplicity

Blurring Boundaries: A Conversation on the Art of Translation with Rosa Alcalá, Ryoko Sekiguchi, and Cole Swensen (Poets House, 11/17/06)

Last night, I attended the closing event of the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets, which was organized by belladonna*, Poets House and the Bowery Poetry Club. The conversation began between Alcalá, Sekiguchi and Swensen and continued with a Q&A. I was introduced to Sekiguchi's work on Wednesday but last night she elaborated further on her experiences in and thoughts on self-translation. Swensen, also a well-regarded poet, translated into English Sekiguchi's Japanese to English self-translations and has translated a number of French works, focusing in particular on cross-genres. She currently teaches at the University of Iowa. Her comments addressed the role and influence of translation on a poet's "original writing." Rosa Alcalá is a poet and translator who teaches in a bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas, El Paso. She opened the conversation with an observation on borders:

Notes on "Crossing Currents"

Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets:
November 15-17, 2006 at Poets House and Bowery Poetry Club

Day 1:

Cross Currents and Innovation in Japanese Poetry, A Panel Discussion

With Ryoko Sekiguchi, Takako Arai, Kiriu Minashita, Kyong-Mi Park, and Sawako Nakayasu. Moderated by Rachel Levitsky, co-curator and founder of Belladonna*.

Rachel: Each of you write in a personal language but ultimately writing in a language that is "socially criticized" and localized.

Ryoko: Japanese poet living in France. Now writes in French and Japanese. Self-translates. Relation of poetic identity to native culture shifts with each book. The shift itself is a choice, a project. Wanted to write a book that explored how one finds a place as a minor sexuality, so assumed that position. Writer can assume positions they do not personally hold.

Kyong-Mi: Korean-Japanese poet whose native tongue is Japanese. Was encouraged to write from a Korean-Japanese perspective in order to "get more attention." Realized then that positions can be enforced from teh outside. What identity might be broken down in the process of figuring it out.

Takako: Her identity position has changed along with her poetry, has been informed and shaped by the writing of poetry. Growing up in a textile town, on the periphery/margins of Tokyo, became something she thought about more and more as she continued to write. Remarked that immigration laws in Japan changed in 1990 to allow Japanese-Brazilians to settle there. Before that Koreans were the primary outsiders in Japan.

Kiriu: Interested in the illusion of monoculturalism. Monoculturalism has developed in Japan over time; Japan's beginnings are highly multicultural, a beginning that has been glossed over by the myth of monoculturalism.

Takako: 150 years ago Japan was less linguistically unified. Tries to incorporate older forms of Japanese into her work to reflect and engage these linguistic layers.

Ryoko: Need to go back to the past to uncover these layers, to discern our multiplicity. Challenges the myopia of the present.

Kyong-Mi: Written Japanese also has an extremely layered history, has been genderized since the 12th century. (a lot of discussion on how writing in kanji, Chinese characters, was reserved for men, but that women developed their own form of writing; ideas on proper women's writing, which emphasizes sentiment and elegance, continue to have hold)

Ryoko: Often asked, why are you writing in French, Japan wasn't a colony of France. The question becomes: what is wrong with engaging in a language to which you have no historical connection?

Kiriu: The Tale of the Genji was written in a period when the Japanese were no longer going into China to study--when contacts with other countries are cut off that's when we start to go inward. In Japan, there is currently an emphasis on "beautiful Japanese" in literature. Her experimental verse challenges the relation between "the beautiful and elegant in poetry" and femininity. She also deliberately gave herself a name that is androgynous. "Kiriu" has a rich etymology and could mean "jet stream energy."

(Discussion turned to Gertrude Stein, breaking down language replaces breaking down identity in Modernism but the anthology on hand shows that both are occurring simultaneously. Ryoko Sekiguchi has translated Stein into Japanese.)

Ryoko: Rephrasing Stein: "I am me because my reader know me." I am someone standing in the background of my own work, its language. It's a tenuous position. It's easier to write towards an idea of your reader, but now, in translation, it is open to a reader I never anticipated. So in an age of translation, how flexible should this make your stance vis-à-vis the reader?

Kiriu: Resumed writing in 200 after a hiatus of 5-6 years.

Takako: "I feel like I'm a mass produced product made in a Tokyo automobile company. The fact that I have no locality is my identity." No sense of a real home. (When she is speaking of the suburbs I hear the words "bad town.")

Kiriu: I change my name with each genre. I can think of seven or eight right now. The pleasure of disguise.

Following the discussion, each poet read a poem. Takako's poem is one that Sawako has not translated so she does so automatically! Takako's poem is about an "empty weaving factory." The image that stands out for me is that of a woman whose hair gets caughts in a machine. "But these are not ghosts." Kiriu reads "Sonic Peace" which is in the anthology. "Under the sun/ Not a single new thing comes to be"

In the Q&A, Takako remarked that "in Japanese one can separate the gender of the writer from the gender of the poetic speaker." When she reaches an impasse in her own writing she switches gender which then changes her relation to her writing and opens up new avenues. That option, she says, "is an interesting element of the Japanese [linguistic] toolbox."

Four From Japan

Belladonna*, Poets House, and the Bowery Poetry Club have organized a three-day festival on "contemporary and innovative" Japanese womens poetry. The impetus for this event is the recent publication of the anthology Four From Japan: Contemporary Poetry & Essays by Women (Litmus/Belladonna), which features the work of Kiriu Minashita, Kyon-Mi Park, Ryoko Sekiguchi, Takako Arai. I purchased a copy last night, the first night of the festival, and devoured most of it on my subway ride home. The translations are spectacular and I admire the decision to include the Japanese originals, even if doing so meant that fewer poems could be included. An essay by each poet follows the selection of poems and these provide a further glimpse into the different ways in which issues of idenitity, language, and representation have affected and shaped their individual work. These essays do some of the work that readers have come to expect from an introduction, but rather than have the translator and/or editor speak for the poets and "group" their work in collective terms, the anthology insists on a multiplicity of voices moving in and out of private and public positions.

I was interested in the decision to present the poems first in translation and follow these with the original Japanese text. I often prefer original and translation to face each other, but letting the translation "speak" first, as it were, is very provocative. I began my reading of these texts in a language that is known to me, even the language tricks and contortions they perform are familiar, so for a moment they belong to me: I can domesticate them, incorporate them, ingest them. I turn the page and, suddenly, I am facing another language and my grasp on these texts begins to slip away. But what also intrigued me is how the translations continued to shadow these originals so that they too could be "read" in a way but without the illusion of fluidity that facing translations encourage. Though this is a spare work, its reach is expansive and aspires "to seep [the work of these poets] out further into a universal poetic" while keeping their individual contexts in view. The prose texts, I would argue, are a defense against the risk of over generalizing and globalizing these works. They give us a glimpse into the influences and experiences that have shaped these authors and further elaborate their individual poetic interests and concerns.

Full volumes of translations of the individual poets are in order and I hope this collection inspires this future work, but last night's dialogue at Poets House also underscored the importance of gathering different voices together. As the conversation progressed it became clear that there were no easy categories in which to collectively position these writers. Even the category "women" found itself challenged and placed under scrutiny.

Taking my lead from Liz Henry, who assiduously publishes her notes of readings, lectures and events, I will share my notes of last night's conversation in a separate post. There are two more events on the schedule, tonight's reading and book release party at Bowery Poetry Club and tomorrow's round table discussion (at Poets House) on "the art of translation poetry" featuring Rosa Alcalá, Cole Swenson, and Ryoko Sekiguchi. Both events begin at 7pm.

A Million Poems

Poet, critic and NYC resident Jordan Davis is doing what I wish more poets and poetry-reading organizers were doing: posting videos of readings on line. Davis has an active YouTube account but you can also access his videos via his blog. He's the founder of The Million Poems Show, which he describes as "poetry's revenge on television." It's held at Bowery Poetry Club once a month (on a Wednesday).

Laura Sims @ The Unassociated Garden Party

Sims reads from "Bank Book," a series of poems from her first collection Practice, Restraint. jordandavis at YouTube posted several videos of poetry readings at this gathering, which took place in March 2006 in Austin, TX.