Modern Poetry in Translation

Introduction to Jacques Tornay by Annie Freud, published in MPT 'Profound Pyromania'. I met Jacques Tornay in 2016 at HeadRead, the International Literary Festival of Estonia. Sitting in the audience, listening to poems in many languages which are foreign to me, I was suddenly transported by the familiar sounds of the French language. Having been brought up on the poems of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Lamartine and de Regnier, I had the sensation of inhabiting that part of myself that breathes, hears and dreams in French. While the poet spoke, the hubbub of chairs and glasses quietened and I was overtaken by an irresistible smile. For those who don’t know him, Tornay is a French-speaking Swiss writer, journalist and translator. His work includes poetry, short stories, aphorisms and biography. He is the author of numerous books and has been the recipient of prestigious prizes. It was no surprise to learn of his love for Rilke, the poet I am most reminded of when reading his work. Set in the stark landscapes of his native country, these are poems of introspection and of the enigma of the self. They explore opposing states of being human: serenity, anxiety; enlightenment, delusion; conviction, uncertainty; mundanity, exaltation – and their ephemeral nature. Yet in spite of their apparent focus on the ‘grand’ themes, these poems are rooted in the everyday. Whether recalling the delight on fi nding a wild plum lying on his path, the smell of pickled cabbage, or a pair of sandals le on a step, the reader is aware not only of a richness of thought but also of their unique quality of stoicism. They off er the reader an ‘arm to steer a path though Winter’. I am proud to call him a friend. Grandeur nature (2003), Gains de causes (2009) and Feuilles de présence (2006) by Jacques Tornay are available from Éditions l’Arrière-Pays. h p://www.larrièrepays.fr/ ____ ANNIE FREUD is the author of three poetry collections published by Picador: The Best Man That Ever Was, The Mirabelles and The Remains. She is one of the Next Generation Poets 2014, named by the Poetry Book Society.

Russian poet Maria Stepanova wrote her epic poem ‘War of the Beasts and the Animals’ in 2015, when the war in the Donbas Region of Ukraine was at its height. Every line in this densely-populated and highly allusive poem emerges from a consciousness of conflict and the martial culture and mythology that allows state-sponsored violence to happen. Stepanova traces the mythmaking culture of war from ballads and films of the Russian Civil War through the Second World War and into the twenty-first century, and Russia’s illegal and covert involvement in a war against Ukraine. ‘War of the Beasts and the Animals’ is impossible to translate in a superficially ‘faithful’ way: the language is so much a captive of the surrounding culture: folk refrains jostle for space against psalms, Silver Age Russian poetry, an Old Russian epic poem ‘The Tale of Igor’s campaign’, pop ballads, phrases from popular culture, Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot – the list is endless. Many of these allusions are simply not accessible to a non-Russian audience and the challenge in translating this extraordinary poem was to fi nd strategies to deal with this super-charged and highly specific ‘modernism’. Maria and I worked on this translation together during her residency at The Queen’s College in Oxford earlier this year and I used her extensive notes and comments to guide me through. Often, where I felt an image wouldn’t work in translation I could return to Maria’s notes on her intended effect and choose a slightly different image, or extend the image in some way. Maria also gave me the freedom to use images with a currency in the UK, and as both Russia and Britain suff er from martial and imperial mythmaking this gave me great satisfaction. Lines from Kipling found their way into the poem, for example, and a pre-battle quote from Anthony and Cleopatra replaced a line from a Russian poem about lovers on the eve of a battle. In the end this text is a triangulation rather than a translation. It is the result of a dance between the original poem, Maria and me, and it has at its heart Russian poet Grigory Dashevsky’s concept of the existence of ‘a poem’s pre-textual body’ from which we can both draw. – Sasha Dugdale

This recording was made on 5th May 2016 at Kings College London, at an event celebrating the launch of MPT's anniversary anthology, Centres of Cataclysm, published by Bloodaxe Books.

Chris Beckett was born in London but grew up mostly in Ethiopia. His poetry been published in Ambit, Envoi, Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London, Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Stand, The North, The Wolf and Wasafiri. www.mptmagazine.com

Destruction of Texts: Yi Sang, translated by Translated by Jack Jung from Korean by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine