When is a translation not a translation? When it’s a version. Or “poems after.” I like that. They’re definitely after, as Dafydd ap Gwilym was writing poems seven centuries ago. Now Matthew Francis has written those new versions. He compares…
Blog Archives
The Green Month
Tagged with: books, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Faber, Kishan Rajani, Matthew Francis, Poetry, Translation, Welsh
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
The love story of the century
Three years shy of its fiftieth anniversary, this book still bites. Märta Tikkanen’s Århundradets kärlekssaga came out with S&S in 1978. I read Eila Pennanen’s Finnish translation, Vuosisadan rakkaustarina published by Tammi in the same year. In English, Stina Katchadourian’s…
Tagged with: books, Deep Vellum, Eila Pennanen, Finnish, Märta Tikkanen, Poetry, Stina Katchadourian, Swedish, Translation
Posted in books
Posted in books
Waiting for translation: where the rivers run
Spring starts in the cellar. It’s still cold, the snow is deep, the light, fitful. The potato feels it first. And slowly extends a pale, tentative root. Downward, between its siblings, looking for the earth below. It’s time to grow…
Tagged with: Aviador, books, Finnish, Mari Laaksonen, Missä joet juoksevat, Poetry, Translation, Where the rivers run
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Heaven’s salt lake
Tiny languages need books like this. If your language is a bigger sibling to a tiny language, you could help your smaller sibling reach more readers through a bilingual edition. Poetry needs more bilingual editions like this. Even if you’ve…
Tagged with: Aviador, Baiba Damberg, books, English, Finnish, Kerran olin taivaan suolajärvi, Kōrd vóļ minā touvõs sūoljõraks, Language, Livonian, Olli Heikkonen, Poetry, Renāte Blumberga, Ryan Van Winkle, Salaca, Translation, Trillium, Uldis Balodis, Valt Ernštreit, Ķempi Kārl
Posted in books, language, translation
Posted in books, language, translation
Ædnan
I was in two minds about this picture, but I think it fits. I took it on the ferry home from Stockholm. Behind the book, you can glimpse the old royal centre of the self-styled “capital of Scandinavia.” That phrase…
Tagged with: Ædnan, books, Linnea Axelsson, Northern Sámi, Poetry, Saskia Vogel, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
The Book of Desire
The Book of Desire is a thing of beauty. It arrived wrapped in white and gold tissue, tied with natural string, packed in cardboard. These things matter. I thought someone had sent me a gift. Opening it was a ceremony.…
Tagged with: Galley Beggar Press, Kāmattu-p-pāl, Meena Kandasamy, Meena Kandasamz, Poetry, Tamil, Tiruvaḷḷuvar, Translation
Posted in poetry, translation
Posted in poetry, translation
Words of Welsh Women
Gwerful Mechain was writing in the 1400s but I only discovered her in 2019, in Zoë Brigley Thompson’s glorious, full-on rendering of I’r Cedor for Modern Poetry in Translation. That poem opens this collection of half a millennium of Welsh…
Walesland/Gwaliadir
I bought this because of the translator. Caryl Lewis’s writing is tense and spare and true. I loved Y Gemydd which I read as The Jeweller in Gwen Davies’s translation, and Drift, her first novel in English. Then I found…
Tagged with: Caryl Lewis, Gwaliadir, Nigel Wells, Poetry, Translation, Walesland, Welsh, Y Lolfa
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
Lament for the Fallen
I am writing this as Afghanistan descends once more into horror. A tiny Welsh part of me still thinks “the bloody English colonials, look what they started and didn’t finish – again.” And you could read the Gododdin this way,…
Tagged with: Aneirin, books, Cynghanedd, Faber, Gillian Clarke, Gododdin, Hay Festival, Poetry, Translation, Welsh
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Monsters and heroes: Beowulf
Dragons, magic, heaps of gold and jewels, superhuman strength, slaying monsters – both monsters who are slain and monsters who slay. In the ancient and modern senses of the word. It’s fun. It’s fantasy. It’s the perfect read for a…
Tagged with: Beowulf, books, Grendel's mother, Maria Dahvana Headley, Old English, Poetry, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
