too big, too perfect altogether, too much like a song, a poem, and one big translation effort to add anything. a colloquial poem. complete with footnotes, index. of course with characters. all about characters. characters and books. writing, performing.
poetry is a very good way to take part. in life in china. elsewhere. not knowing beforehand.
yi sha looms importantly. i have been taking part in his circles every day for five years. so of course i’m happy. every day means looking up today’s poem. yi sha has presented one poem per day since 2011. almost 900 people, 2500 poems. yi sha said in december my latest chinese poem was #2500. but that seems to have been a mistake. anyway, 8 poems of mine in there until now.
so of course i have to add this. at a reading, when yi sha places an order, it’s for the daily npc, new poetry canon, abbreviated from new century poetry canon, 新世纪诗典. books, yes. my stuff is in there, too. there is npc self-censorship. almost every poem from the daily series on Weibo and WeChat gets printed. but not everything that appears online and is a good poem can appear officially in npc. and it’s all subject to one person’s decisions. to yi sha’s mind, mood, memory.
yi sha looms large in very much of my writing and translating. he translates me, from english. i translate him, but i live in austria. and i am too much online already. so how can i publish poetry in english? i don’t have the discipline. much would get lost if i don’t put it online in the chinese internet and/or outside. if it’s not online, it can get lost. i live in austria, so i publish in germany, austria, switzerland. sometimes translations get published elsewhere, but not poetry. with exceptions. and because of yi sha, my own poetry, written by myself in chinese or translated by yi sha, has been published extensively in chinese.
walk on the wild side. great. so much yi sha and his ilk in there anyway. how can i say anything without stressing myself? so i was silent.
kirk denton’s mclc and yi sha’s npc are very wonderful daily shows. seriously, of course. mclc is older. yi sha’s npc is very strictly daily.
translation. in chinese, as in japanese too, personal pronouns can be omitted. sometimes you don’t know the gender of the protagonists. in a poem in chinese, this is normal. what do i do about this in translation into a language that normally specifies gender? is there a general rule? not to my knowledge. i do like to transport as much as possible. progress. social progress. a recent poem by yi sha. you can see the translation here.
bukowski. important in china, as noted in walk on the wild side. yi sha and his wife (“老G”）have been translating bukowski since 1994. he says they were the first. certainly bukowski is closer to yi sha’s own writing than anything else he has translated. bukowski writes about the drunk when he’s ugly and disgusting. even li bai couldn’t do that. says yi sha. and there is no-one who can express emotion better. or how do you translate 抒情? just as difficult as 江湖, for me.
see here.
my books are published in austria. i have published books in china, long time ago. my book from 2016 SHE MUST BE PERFECT is trilingual. very irregularly so. not every poem appears in three languages. but the book is a very good source for yi sha’s translation practice. around 30 poems are translated by yi sha, and they are very diverse. IMAGINE is my favorite one from the point of every day politics. the publisher’s web site is in german, but you can write them an email and order in english. my own trilingual book was reviewed first on fixpoetry, although the first volume of yi sha in german came out a little earlier. but my own book is the key, in many ways.
the first volume of an anthology of mostly npc will come out in fall. chinese-german, for now.
how do you translate “light”? what is 第一现场语言, what is 第二现场语言? I don’t really know. But Yi Sha and I have talked about it, see here.
cheers,
martin winter <dujuan99@gmail.com>
P.S. Have you seen this one?
Yi Sha
LONELY BOMB
International Poetry Week in Xichang.
At Zhaojue Center,
main auditorium,
Qinglang Lihan holds his speech.
Speaks of Akhmatova
and her tragic fate,
as when her first husband
Gumilev was shot
for “counterrevolution”.
Right after this
a high school student
from the Yi nationality
in modern dress
jumps on the stage.
He stands there contorted,
staring with rage,
spitting his words:
“You fart-head poets,
faced with the people’s misery
you are unable to raise your pens
and demand justice!
Then you run away
to a small place
to talk about counterrevolution…”
We are all baffled,
don’t know what to do
or what just happened.
Later
when our bus
drives through the town on our way out
I see that high school student
alone
on the street,
still foaming
and puffing.
Like a lonely
walking bomb.
October 2017
Translated by MW, 12/31/17
Chinese here.