Translation Duel!

Poet-translators Olivia McCannon and Susan Wicks are en garde to fight a Modern Poetry Translation duel at Ledbury Festival 2017.

Olivia and Susan will be discussing their different translations of a single poem: ‘Rien n’empêche d’autres oiseaux’ by contemporary French poet Ariane Dreyfus.

Open this booklet to compare and contrast the two translators’ approaches to a single poem. You’ll find a sensual and striking poem by one of France’s most singular poets reflected and refracted in the English of two great poet-translators.

Join us on Sunday 9 July at 12.45pm at the Ledbury Festival to watch Olivia and Susan cross swords and join in the conversation: what makes a translation ‘work’ as English-language poetry? Book tickets at poetry-festival.cloudvenue.co.uk Comment on the translations @mptmagazine with the hashtag #translationduel

Modern Poetry in Translation thanks Ledbury Festival and The Stephen Spender Trust for their support for the Translation Duel.

TRANSLATION DUEL

BIOGRAPHIES

RIEN N’EMPÊCHE D’AUTRES OISEAUX ARIANE DREYFUS

ARIANE DREYFUS (b.1958) has published thirteen collections of poetry, including La durée des plantes (Tarabuste, 1998), L’in-

habitable (Flammarion, 2006, awarded the Prix des Découvreurs in 2007), and Iris, c’est votre bleu (Le Castor Astral, 2008). The poem translated here is from her latest collection Le dernier livre

des enfants (Flammarion, 2016).

OLIVIA MCCANNON’S poetry collection Exactly My Own

Length (Carcanet/OxfordPoets, 2011) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and won the 2012 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. She lived for nine years in France and her translations include Balzac’s Old Man Goriot (Penguin Classics, 2011), medieval to contemporary poetry, and drama.

Elle s’arrête quand l’eau lui arrive à la taille Regarde, avance à nouveau, et la mer infinie La suit, traîne qu’elle sent à peine, la robe elle l’imagine S’effacent ses omoplates de petite fille À chaque fois qu’elle lève les coudes et se hausse Car il fait froid Mais l’eau est calme, pas embêtante Frileux les autres sont restés derrière C’est donc un instant de princesse Elle baisse les yeux, mais pas la tête À cause de sa couronne qui pourrait tomber Regarde comment ses pieds glissent Sur le sable Parce qu’il est très loin les jambes ont grandi Elles se tordent à plein de reflets Le soleil y va, en profondeur Et plus en profondeur la pointe des pieds Pour aller jusqu’au sol intouché

SUSAN WICKS is a poet and fiction writer. Her translations of Valérie Rouzeau, Cold Spring in Winter and Talking Vrouz (Arc), have won the Scott Moncrieff and Oxford-Weidenfeld Prizes

L’eau presqu’à la poitrine, elle étire ses bras Ainsi flottent les mains

and been shortlisted for the Popescu Prize and the International Griffin Prize for Poetry. Her own seventh collection, The Months (Bloodaxe, 2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Puis s’allonger, sinon comment voir que le ciel Donne un si grand vertige, et les nuages en forme de personne ?

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATIONS

by Olivia McCannon

by Susan Wicks

A girl, alone, nameless, walks out into the sea. ‘The others’ stay behind on the beach.

This poem is taken from Ariane Dreyfus’s most recent collection, Le dernier livre

Who are they? Male, or male and female, lurking in the masculine plural restés. The

des enfants (The Children’s Last Book), where it finds itself in the company of other

water is cold, but not embêtante, a childish word which here suggests relief: the sea

poems seamlessly leaping between childhood and sexual intimacy, sea voyages and

gives her no unwanted attention.

stationary objects, dancers and acrobats, dream and death. Like most of the poems in the book, it presents a narrative – though here the narrative isn’t attributed to a

Her princesse is not that dolled-up fairy-tale cipher for female submission, with its

film, book or choreography, as it often is elsewhere.

corsets and whalebone hoops. This girl – heading out of her depth, drawing a wake of glittering water – channels the grandeur of the deep feminine mysteries of the sea,

At first glance, the language looks simple. In general, Dreyfus’s language is a spoken,

and the sun, source of creation: Le soleil y va, en profondeur.

idiomatic one, sometimes apparently caught on the run and left unfinished, in mid-thought. Line- and stanza-breaks occasionally fragment or delay meaning.

French has more possessive forms than English, expressing different relationships

Here, in the fourth stanza, where the lines seem so transparent and yet have a kind

with body parts. Consider the strangeness (for English) of son bras, sa jambe, (whose

of persistent strangeness, we come to realise we have entered the child’s own head.

limbs?), and elle lève les coudes (‘she lifts the elbows’). I wanted to play with these

The sun doesn’t ‘pierce’ or ‘penetrate’ the deeper water, it actually does just ‘go there’

possibilities in my translation, thinking about the control and lack of control girls

– this strange, twisting, sunlit place is her world.

have over their maturing bodies, and the embodiment/disembodiment found in the ambiguity of personne (‘somebody/nobody’), the last word in the poem.

For me the main difficulty of translating – and indeed of reading – has to do with Dreyfus’ shifting, ‘filmic’ use of point of view, characteristic of her poetry since

The first (French) word on the page is rien (‘nothing’), and so, in one reading, what

her ‘Western’ collection, ‘Une Histoire passera ici’. At first, we are prevented from

frames the vertiginous sweep of the sky, the endless horizon and bottomless sea –

sharing the child’s viewpoint by seeing her jutting shoulder-blades as she enters the

is nothing, and nobody. The normalising constraint felt in the original title, and

water and, arguably, by the ‘princess moment’: at first we are among the ‘shiverers’

perhaps implicit in the presence of the group back on the beach, is barely sensed by

in this scene. But gradually the child’s perceptions take over, until we are with her,

her, here.

looking down through the ripples at our own twisting legs and feet. By the end,

In the sea, transparency is effortless: it offers a new model for existence. Her royal train, her splendour and power, are fluid, and invisible, as her body becomes weightless, porous – pure being. Here, in the portable form of a poem, Dreyfus opens up a

the poem’s question (‘How else…?’) is the child’s question. It is also the mother’s question, as she watches, understanding, inhabiting the child’s thoughts as if they were her own.

vast, free space, where a girl can connect to the infinite, where she discovers escape as

So is it desire we hear in the title? Is it the watcher’s protectiveness for her child?

a form of resistance.

Or can it be both?

RIEN N’EMPÊCHE D’AUTRES OISEAUX

BY ARIANE DREYFUS

HOW ELSE TO SEE THE SKY

NO REASON WHY OTHER BIRDS

She stops when the water touches her waist Looks out, sets off again, and the limitless sea Trails her, a train she wears lightly, sensing the dress

She stops when the water reaches to her waist And looks, goes on again, and the endless sea Follows her, a train she hardly feels, the dress in her mind’s eye

Gone, her little-girl shoulder-blades Whenever she lifts her elbows to draw herself up Because it’s freezing But the water is calm, it lets her be

Erased her shoulder-blades a little girl’s Each time she lifts her elbows and stands up on tiptoe For it’s cold Though the water’s not unpleasant, calm

Too hot to get cold, the others have stayed behind This, then, is her moment – princess

The other shiverers have stayed behind So it’s a princess moment

She lowers her eyes, but not her head On account of the crown that might fall off Look at the way her feet go gliding Across the sand Because it’s so far down, legs must grow long They twist away, kicking up glitter The sun reaches there, where it’s deep Deeper still, the tips of toes Searching for the untouched ground

She lowers her eyes, but not her head Because of her crown which might fall off And looks at how her feet are sliding On the sand Because it’s very far away her legs have grown They twist inside the ripples Sun goes there, deep down And deeper still her toes Trying to reach the untouched ground

Water almost to her chest, she holds out arms To make floating hands

The water almost to her chest, she spreads her arms So this is how hands float

Then she’s stretching out – how else to see the sky Spinning round, the clouds the shape of somebody, nobody?

Now to stretch out, or else how can you see the sky Makes you so giddy, and the person shapes of clouds?

translation by Olivia McCannon

translation by Susan Wicks