John Burns to translate Amado Carballo and Manuel Antonio

American poet and translator John Burns will translate the poems by Luis Amado Carballo and Manuel Antonio for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Xerais and Galaxia in spring 2010. These two texts were specially chosen for the anthology by Luis Alonso Girgado and Domingo García-Sabell respectively.

John holds a degree in Spanish, English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine, where he studied with Kathleen March (another translator in the anthology) and was named the outstanding graduate in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. During this course he spent a year in Santiago, studying medieval and Latin American literature, and returned to Santiago a year later to take a summer course in Galician at the Institute of the Galician Language. His doctorate, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was on Imagining the Poet: Strategies of Contemporary Spanish-Language Poets in the Era of Globalization. He is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish at Rockford College in Illinois.

John is responsible for two of the 32 books of Galician literature so far published in English – a translation of From Four to Four by the avant-garde poet Manuel Antonio (his undergraduate thesis) and an anthology of contemporary Galician poetry published by the Galician PEN Club, Poetry Is the World’s Great Miracle. He also translated a chapbook of María do Cebreiro’s poetry for the series Backwoods Broadsides. His most recent project is an anthology of Beat poetry, which he co-translated with the Mexican poet Rubén Medina. He has published two chapbooks of his own poetry with Pine Press, The Sand Between Aphrodite’s Toes and The Nearing Notebooks.

We are delighted that John will bring his rich experience as poet and translator to bear on this anthology!

Interview with Craig Patterson (translator of Forever in Galicia)

Was your first interest in Galicia as a place or as a culture?
I was vaguely aware of Galicia as a corner of Spain from the late 1980s and early 1990s, from my studies at school and into the summer of 1992 before I went to university. I can remember reading Ian Gibson’s Fire in the Blood and seeing a beautiful colour photograph of the bateas in some ría, probably Vigo, and thinking how beautiful the image was. Within months of starting the degree at Birmingham, we had all identified David Mackenzie as some sort of Galicianist ambassador. He seemed to be permanently escorted everywhere by two Galicians, who were lectores rather than bodyguards in the employ of the Xunta, and was always making references to that quirky, rainy place up there by the Atlantic. I was encouraged to spend my Erasmus year, or third year of my undergraduate degree, in Santiago de Compostela by my best friend, who then as now knew me better than I knew myself. I went to Salamanca instead, because of love. Only that love didn’t last, and into 1995 I had more time on my hands, and so with the same best friend drove up to Santiago one bright February day. The photograph of us stood outside the cathedral as the last rays of the autumn sun strike its facade is a cherished possession, and memory. I think it was then that I fell in love with at least one love of my life. A brief three-day tour followed, and we wound our way down through the Rías Baixas, leaving Galicia via Vigo. I knew that something had irrevocably changed in my life. Back in Birmingham to finish off my degree and hopefully launch into doctoral research, a meeting with Derek Flitter, who by then I am proud to say had begun to play the role of an intellectual mentor, furnished my first contact with Ramón Otero Pedrayo. And barely an hour after that meeting I met a girl from Vigo with whom I fell in love, and that took me through my years in Oxford under the kind, wise and generous guidance of John Rutherford. Galicia, more than any other place with which I have been associated in my life, has provided me with the greatest number of moments when you are undoubtedly aware of your life changing in front of you, as you speak, xa! It’s what I call ‘accidental destiny’, and I am proud to be a sufferer.

How much does the cultural thinking of people like Castelao and Ramón Otero Pedrayo bear on the Galicia of today?
I think a lot less than their champions would have us believe, and a lot more than their critics would care or dare to recognise. They are a reference point, to state the obvious, and cannot be ignored. They constructed, literally and literarily, the cultural coordinates for an updated reading of Galician identity, but did so of course through the medium of their own aesthetic and political codes of preference, and prejudice. We owe them a great deal, but it is healthy to deconstruct all things, and they should not be an exception to that rule: modern Galician culture will be all the more robust for casting a cold eye upon sacred cows, and possibly for making the odd parrillada out of one or two.

What is the role of Galician Studies in places like Cardiff?
Wales is a periphery, and Cardiff its capital. The presence of Galicia, another Atlantic periphery, in the university and the city is testament to both the appeal of Galician culture, and the need for broad representation of the cultural and linguistic diversity to be found under the umbrella of nation states. Wales and Galicia have much to learn from each other, and I am delighted to play an ongoing role in that process whose promise is immense.

What do you hope can be achieved during your time as president of the International Association of Galician Studies?
We seek to make the AIEG a truly international and multidisciplinary organisation in all aspects: membership, practice, scope and of course ambition. As the only overarching association centred upon Galician Studies in the world, the AIEG needs to embrace and champion all intellectual activity that takes place through the medium of Galician, or which relates in some form or other to Galician reality, past, present and future. On a much more practical note, we are carefully revising many of the AIEG’s internal mechanisms and processes, to ensure that the foundations are laid for the organisation to function to the best of its ability throughout the XXI century. One such measure, which may not seem so important, but which has allowed us to communicate with a large amount of people in a short space of time, is the AIEG Facebook site. Finally, I would like to say that if the formidable team that is the current AIEG executive fulfils but half of its goals, then it will have done a magnificent job. The conference in Cardiff, September 2012, will be a celebration open to all.

If you had to choose a Galician town, book and dish, what would they be?
‘And what would yours be…?’ The trickiest question comes at the end, and it’s one of the trickiest that I have ever had to answer. I’m doomed to failure with my answer one way or another, because many friends will be put out with my choices. I love Ribadeo, Betanzos and Vigo passionately, and am increasingly enjoying my time spent in A Coruña. But there can only be one, and all roads lead to Santiago. The book has to be Sempre na Galiza, a ramshackle collage of an opus which is truly unique, if only for its often brief but moving passages about the author’s love of his lost homeland, and its overwhelming moral argument for the right of anyone or anything to determine its own destiny. The dish, to be very specific, has to be polbo á grella in the Dezaseis. I try to go there once every time that I am in town.

Thank you for talking to us!

Craig Patterson to translate Forever in Galicia by Castelao

Craig Patterson, lecturer in Galician and Hispanic Studies at Cardiff University, will translate the text from Forever in Galicia by Castelao for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Xerais and Galaxia in spring 2010. The text was chosen by Xosé Neira Vilas and is one of three essays included in the anthology.

Anyone who knows Craig knows of the labour of love that is his excellent and much-needed translation of Forever in Galicia by Castelao (due out with University of Wales Press in 2011). Craig has a degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Birmingham and a doctorate on Galician Cultural Identity in the Works of Ramón Otero Pedrayo from Queen’s College, Oxford. His doctorate, published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2006, was published in Xabier Cid’s Galician translation as O devalar da idea: Otero Pedrayo e a identidade galega by the Otero Pedrayo Foundation in 2008. He was Sir Henry Thomas Junior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and lecturer in Spanish at the University of Stirling before becoming lecturer in Galician and Hispanic Studies at the School of European Studies in Cardiff.

He contributed to the translation of Things by Castelao and Them and Other Stories by Xosé Luís Méndez Ferrín, both published by Planet Books in Wales. Planet Books will soon bring out his translation of another Galician classic – A esmorga (On a Bender) by Eduardo Blanco Amor.

Craig is president of the International Association of Galician Studies and a corresponding member of the Royal Galician Academy. He contributes a weekly column, Devalar, to the Galician newspaper Galicia Hoxe. We are delighted that his translation of Castelao’s work will appear in the anthology!

Richard Zenith to translate two cantigas

The award-winning translator and Pessoa expert Richard Zenith will translate two medieval poems for the bilingual Anthology of Galician Literature to be published by Xerais and Galaxia in spring 2010.

Born in Washington DC, Richard has lived since 1987 in Lisbon, where he works as a researcher in the Pessoa archives. He has prepared numerous editions of Pessoa’s work, including a seven-volume Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa published in 2006-7 by Assírio & Alvim. His translation Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems won the 1999 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Other translations of work by Pessoa include A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, The Book of Disquiet and The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa.

He has also translated poetry by Luís de Camões, João Cabral de Melo Neto and Sophia de Mello Breyner and novels by António Lobo Antunes, José Luandino Vieira and José Luís Peixoto. His Education by Stone: Selected Poems by João Cabral de Melo Neto won the 2006 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

In 1995, the British publisher Carcanet brought out his landmark 113 Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poems, an edition Richard is in the process of revising and enlarging. Holder of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1988, he has also published his own stories and poems.

We are extremely fortunate, therefore, that Richard will contribute two translations to the anthology: a song of love or cantiga de amor chosen for the anthology by Elsa Gonçalves and a song of Holy Mary or cantiga de Santa María chosen for the anthology by José Ángel Valente.

Interview with Carys Evans-Corrales (translator of Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño)

You were born in London, raised in Singapore and Malaysia and currently live in the States. Do you consider that you have a nationality?
In some way moving to the States, where so many people cherish bits and pieces of their family’s heritage from other parts of the world, finally settled for me the nagging feeling of wishing I had a nationality that suited who I was. I realized finally that it didn’t really matter, that I would be who I was regardless of what my passport said. But when I was younger the nationality issue was huge. As a teenager in Kuala Lumpur, for example, I felt completely identified with my Malaysian neighbors and schoolmates, much more so than with any British youngsters I happened to meet, mainly because they were usually either people who were growing up in UK boarding schools and happened to be visiting their parents for the holidays, or they were the children of the British Armed Forces who had a school of their own and a milieu very much to themselves. So I tagged the Brits as a very practical, down-to-earth people who spoke in a very direct idiom, so unlike the Malay that I was learning at school, a language that seemed so very cool and elegant. And as a teenager at the time I did so want to be cool and elegant!

The same sort of thing happened in Seville, where I first lived as a student in Spain. I was already bowled over by the sounds and flexibility of Spanish at school in Jamaica, and when this combined with the flair and wit of Andalusian Spanish I was totally seduced by it. Later, of course, after I moved to Santiago de Compostela, Galician played various notes in myself that were waiting to develop.

You were in Santiago at the end of Franco’s dictatorship. What do you remember most about those years?
Goodness! I hardly know where to start! People had expected that an explosion of long-repressed freedom in every arena of life (and perhaps a harsh corresponding backlash) would occur immediately after Franco’s death, and this liberation did in fact occur despite the variety, strength and complexity of reactions to the dictator’s demise. But any significant, lasting backlash was averted owing in part to the fact that a few years of rule by Franco’s party continued before democracy could be officially established. Some brave individuals and organizations had for a long time and at great personal risk been working to bring about a political and linguistic rebirth that reflected the wishes of the Galician people more closely, and their plans were therefore already partially established when democracy finally arrived and continued to develop thereafter.

But now that one would not necessarily be seen as a separatist agitator for supporting Galician culture, life in Santiago was like a cross between a kaleidoscope and a jack-in-the box. You never knew which previously reclusive neighbor would announce a run for office under the auspices of a bright, new and outspoken political group, or what previous pillar of society who had never spoken in public in anything but good, conservative Castilian would suddenly surprise the city with political speeches in faultless Galician. Schoolbooks began to be written in the language, with vocabulary that reflected – and gave value to – the world of the children who used them, and there was a blossoming of academic, literary, artistic and musical life at all levels. Above all, people were no longer afraid to implement new ideas, and a certain shame that I had often heard expressed regarding being a nation subjected to a dictatorship seemed to melt away. It was as if people now felt they could truly be considered part of Europe. I remember it all as a time of heady adventure and great hope for the future, and it played a very important part in my personal development.

Which are the Galician poets you have come into contact with? Whose work have you enjoyed most?
The first Galician poet I read was, not surprisingly, Rosalía de Castro, but I was so immediately overwhelmed by the sense of nostalgia and suffering that emanated from her work that I decided to put the poems back on the shelf for another time. Years later, as a graduate student, I began to read them again and have gone back to them at intervals ever since. I also like the work of Miguel-Anxo Murado very much. I found his Bestiario dos descontentos struck a familiar chord – perhaps because it evoked the Welsh hiraeth, a particular sense of loss found in much of traditional Welsh poetry. There have been many Galician poets whose work I am attracted to, but perhaps I should mention above all Pilar Pallarés and Blanca Andreu (for very different reasons), and more recently Álvaro Cunqueiro and Manuel Rivas.

How do you succeed in making an English poem out of a foreign poem? Is it necessary, when translating a poem, to stay close to the poem you are translating from (I avoid the word ‘original’)?
I find I can’t stray very far from my source poem because I am always trying to keep my mind within a funny kind of telepathic communication with it. My first draft is always strictly literal, in order to retain as much of the poem’s thematic and linguistic intent as I possibly can, and after that I work away at key pieces of it until I feel they reflect as much as possible of what the poet is saying. Then I work on the whole translation as a poem within a style that corresponds as much as possible to the poet’s. This part calls for the most drafts, which I reread constantly until I am satisfied that the translation does as much justice to the poet as I am personally capable of. Although I understand that a good translated poem is in itself an original work of art produced by another poet, I feel that a translated poem ‘inspired’ by a work by a foreign author does not help the reader in the second language all that much. If someone acquires a translation of a foreign poet, it is because he or she wants to discover in some way the impact of the work on its first readers – to capture at second hand, if you like, the intent of the first author, to whatever degree may be possible. A version even further removed than that interposes another wall – no matter how well wrought – between the reader and the first poet’s work.

Thank you for talking to us!
It was a pleasure, Jonathan!