Welcome, everyone, to Big Tent. Live events. The Lockdown Live Online event series brought to you by Torch,
the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities as part of the humanities cultural programme itself, one of the founding stones for the future.
Stephen Schwarzman, Centre for the Humanities here in Oxford.
My name is Wes Williams and I'm a professor of French literature and also a fellow as an Edmund Hall.
And I'm also the knowledge exchange champion here at Torch.
The Big Tent Live event series is our way of bringing together once a week researchers and students,
performers and practitioners from across the different humanities disciplines.
We will explore important subjects and ask challenging questions about areas such as the environment,
medical, humanities, ethics and A.I., the public, the private and the common good.
And we will celebrate storytelling and music, performance, poetry and identity.
We're bringing you this event programme online to complement social distancing with creative connexion.
We hope that you're all safe and well during this difficult time and everyone is welcome in now big tent.
So please make yourself metaphorically as well as literally at home this evening as we explore poetry,
performance and translation on and off the page.
And as we listen to voices from the wings, I'll embarrass both our speakers who you're really here to listen to by saying a little more morbid,
but about them, about their work and why we thought it'd be good to bring them together this evening before we start.
But before doing that, I'd like to remind you that if you'd like to put forward any questions to us,
because during the event tonight, please put them in the comments box on YouTube.
We encourage you to meet these as early as possible so that we have time to answer as many as possible in the Q&A,
which will follow our initial discussion in about 40 minutes or so.
Now onto our excellent speakers tonight.
It's an honour to host and to welcome all Hegar Sandidge, poet, novelist and performer extraordinaire and Professor Karen leader,
scholar, translator and writer, also extraordinaire based here in Oxford.
New College. And in the modern languages faculty. Born in rural Galson, Hyne in former East Germany will take a Sunday.
Now an award winning poet with a whole shelf full of prises to her name began life as a kind of guerrilla poet,
pasting poems onto lampposts on the streets of Leipzig with friends and handing them out on flyers and free postcards.
Two books of stories and full volumes of her poetry have been published since then, and her first novel will appear this autumn.
Performance is a key part of Sunday's work. She's frequently collaborates with filmmakers,
sand artists and musicians taking poetry to the audiences the poetry doesn't usually reach and translation.
This week's theme is a vital part of this, not only at the most fundamental level of turning a feeling,
an image or an idea into a poem on the page, but also carrying over that into impetus that that energy,
whether it's of rage or of consolation into performance, whether it's on the page or on screen,
in front of a classical orchestra or in front of an electronic hip hop band.
Well, Rick has recently undertaken a tour of India and Kashmir where working with English
translations itself enabled further transposition of the poems into other languages,
other styles. She also often performs here in the UK from the Edinburgh Festival and the Hay Festival to the Poetry Festival stanza.
She was together with our other guest, Karen. And the poetry band Lent chuffed due to perform in our actual big tent last month before lockdown.
We have here the two of them, not instead, but as well as Karen started her academic life researching the summer's backed poetry,
art and music scene that existed in East Germany before the fall of Berlin Berlin Wall.
She's continued her interest in GDR and has published widely on modern German culture, especially if the boast 45 and contemporary periods.
She's also prise winning translator of contemporary German literature with Fulker,
Bon, Evelin Schlag and Gruen Byrn all finding their English voice through her work.
Her translation of all League of Spandex Thick of It, published by Seagull Books in 2018,
won an English pen award along with a whole bunch of other awards around the world.
And Oleg and Karen's collection of newly fashioned Grimm tales appeared in a special, limited edition with her strict books.
Also in 2018, hotly anticipated by The New York Times, their latest collection, due later this summer, is when we get a sneak preview of here.
I am a full of rapes. I'm a field full of rapeseed give cover to deer and shine like 13 oil paintings laid one on top of the other.
We are, in other words, in for a treat. Karen was a tortured knowledge exchange fellow with the Southbank Centre in London
way back in 2014 when knowledge exchange here in Oxford was just kicking off.
And that early work has now blossomed into the ongoing multimedia project that is mediating modern poetry.
We've put links to this and the other work in the chat discussion as we go along.
It's a great honour, as I said, to have both Karen and Audrey Kahir and on metaphorical online tenth this afternoon and I for one,
am Frick's and excited to see and hear as they explore the ways in which creative forms of translation can come
to exemplify the ways in which poetry that voice from the wings is itself part of an inclusive political project.
So without further delay, I'm delighted to hand over to Leaker to get the conversation started.
Thank you. Gordon Adams. Good evening.
Hello, everyone. Take the following poem as a little welcome from my side.
Mine lifestyle, they stopped, allowed us to let eggs.
Ben. Show me. I love fly in here.
Is schmoe. Gus's kind of Mallea ish, but schmeer.
That's kind on the house, most then does best known as the ELSS.
Red rover, red rover, let all my friends come over.
Let them all come. Just stay. Not go away.
Not a single one leave before the parties then.
Let there be no more fast growing inside us.
Only round us. Let there be wind in the trees, games in the shade.
Parties like these until like children and the blue of night.
We are taken home, tucked up tight.
But she made this kind of the house moves, then this fist knocked me out, says.
It's Vernon Schmidt, invented in the Esther de Spieler Shop.
The oh Shandon fest, the. The stuff blowing that one silly windows be now.
Howser, Haim, Buck. Oh, hi, Karen.
Hello. Hello. That was amazing.
And it was lovely to hear the English and the Germans together and to get a taste of you moving between those languages.
So thank you very, very much for that. And in it, you welcome everyone into your world of poetry, all your friends.
And I wanted to pick up and start a conversation with something West said about your things in poetry,
where you took poetry out into the streets in a kind of urban intervention.
And I wondered how that it influenced your take on poetry now, the desire to reach people.
Indeed, when you were touring India recently, I'm fortunate I couldn't come with you and I saw wonderful pictures of you with megaphones.
Yes. Yes. And so can you tell me a little bit about how healthy you hope is about reaching those people, welcome the men or going out to meet them?
Well, when I started this street literature project, Alden paused in English.
This would be a male, I suppose. I didn't see it specifically as a literature project.
I thought of myself as a street artist and student of Indian Indian languages.
So but I didn't see myself as a writer.
These back then, and only through the reactions that I got by these poster.
By the people who saw these posters and wanted more of them.
And asked for them every month when the new edition edition would come out.
Only by these audiences. I got through the Open Post project.
I learnt how it felt, how that literature is probably something that addresses to an audience that you don't know,
perhaps that it's not your friends and not your family,
just an audience that you don't know, but that you hope, but that you hope that its brain works in a similar way as yours.
So you you hope that you can make yourself understand by some understood by someone that you
don't even know everything that gives you an idea of what literature in general could be.
But also, it's, of course, as being when you start thinking about literature, not through books, but through other means, self or other art forms.
And that is that is of point of view from which I.
I still write. I think I still I still love to to work in literally literary fields and different art forms,
not only for the book, but also for the book, of course, and also for the reader.
And speaking of that, Karen, it comes to my mind that now as I have a little bit more time at home that I usually have I in April,
I had finally time to to bring some order into my stuff and and and look under my piles
of books and were not as high as Wesa's pilots that we have seen and the beginning.
But I guess I found finally some of these posters of these Ogan cause I made posters which I thought I'd long like years ago, thrown away.
So this is what it looks like. That simple? It couldn't be more simple.
There was just the logo and the poem and and the name, which was a bit of a risky thing because it's,
of course, not allowed to paste your stuff on to every word you like.
But yeah, I wanted to show you this. Isn't that nice?
It's still there. Faces a museum piece.
Now, that's because it's so old now.
You talked about writing the page, but also writing poems that move off the page.
And you've collaborated with, course, a number of people. We're going to talk about some of those collaborations.
But one of the first ones, I think one of the last and most important ones is with Sebastian Reutter, who's a musician and sound artist.
Yes. Yeah. Sebastian Goitre called him and said the sound cosmonaut Declan Cossman out.
That's him. As he is just.
And yeah. And Sebastian is my partner in life, but also the sound composer that I often work with, together with four radio pieces.
And sometimes we do like small pieces, which are of course sometimes we broadcast them with radio stations,
but mostly it's for SoundCloud or for Facebook or for my Web site, like small pieces of of like poetry pieces, audible poetry.
That's how we call it. And that's how we put it.
And one of his compositions is not funded.
Deutche Inch. This is my the title of my German poem that it's based on in English and your English translation.
It's news about the German language as a use of oxygen news.
France news about Germany was from the German language.
And the nice thing is when when you work with him in the studio, of course,
it feels like a very humble and small thing that with that we can't even imagine that someone would look like that at.
Impact outside of our studio walls. And but it does have an impact and sometimes it makes me really proud and happy to be like with.
To see what these pieces turn into.
And the nice thing about the news from the German language poetry piece is that it got picked up by a by a Dutch orchestra.
The metal pool orchestra. And they put it into an orchestra or like transformed it into an they orchestrated it.
Basically, it's not really. It's not very many poets get to work with a full scale orchestra.
So let's have a let's have a look at that now. This. Funded nights and spa.
Spight, Tolleson, Don Zech, some I domine. Venice, Skillings, 10 feet below.
Amanda, you the under by name. Yes, Chillun Gillings shows Shozo.
To Jim Hall and to sue the [INAUDIBLE]. I know this Schlissel Makale made this show.
A bit less in Deschene and Schmetzer, lucky again, she Yong's Ryan Elstein unsaddle The Bomb Goes.
Kind of late here in the loft. I was at Intel.
Venus, Michigan, linked, then minus managed, but I guess it was just three unfaithful and monochord to I think of the Schmiel.
Believe me, I was just finished the man.
That was great. Thank you for that monoculture against monoculture.
And what a brilliant way to do that. That's really yes, because I mean, because of course it's not.
It's not. I don't want to, like, show off.
Oh, no. I worked with the I worked with a orchestra.
I haven't. But but the nice thing about about collaborations like that is that you get the chance to
to be heard with your ideas about society and that you kind of contribute to an ongoing,
ongoing struggle to change, to make the world a better place.
It's I can't I can't I can't find better words in English to put it.
But I hope I mean, you know what? You know what I mean.
It's not it's not just the art. It's it's it's.
It's a means of communication, basically. Yeah.
Yeah. And you see it once when we were performing some poems.
It takes you a long time before you know how they can be performed and you don't perform them.
And then years later, you suddenly understand how they will come.
It's like they've got a kind of third dimension implicit in them. But you've got to find it.
Yes. And isn't is it your collaborators who help you find it?
Or is it a process within you develops and allows it to come into being.
Well, I think it's more a process within me because I wouldn't show ponies that I don't
have an idea of their audibility yet to collaborators such as Sebastian or Cody,
whom we will talk about later on. I think it's also the idea that some homes are not meant to be audible at all, some or well, or if audible at all.
Then with your inner voice. I guess so sometimes.
But sometimes there is a poem that I wrote, for instance, the first poem in my latest volume.
It it looks very audible when you read it reads very audible because it deals
with a Latin song that is very well known in Germany for political reasons.
This don't know this, but some.
But some you know that. Some. And and but it took me years until I finally like last year,
I think finally found a way to perform this properly because it felt like people should
hear this song with my which I changed all instruments in my poem with their inner voice.
But but last year, suddenly I was I found myself on a festival in southern Germany and it was a very light summer atmosphere.
And suddenly I changed my setlist in my reading and my reading for my reading and started to perform this poem.
This poem to the audience and made them sing along with me, which was a surprise for myself and for them as well.
But sometimes it just did. Yeah. Sometimes these poems, like they take independent ways from from what you actually thought them to be.
Yeah. How scary for your audience. They'll be very worried Americans will come.
Yeah. Yeah. They won't dare go into my readings again ever.
Yeah. But was it was it what I always ask myself what I wonder as how poems like the novelist funded Deutsche Pather.
The news from the German language and poems German poems in your English translation in general.
How are they received by the English audience, by your.
By your readership? How? That doesn't make a difference for English readers.
When you when you show them a peloton and you say, OK, that's not my own poem, that's a poem by, for instance,
will be kind with this Ordos queen when you have translated quite a range of of German poets like Polish.
What does good man woke up on and doesn't make a difference to them,
especially specifically when it's a Pelon that deals with language such as the last one?
Well, I speak you're speaking to a kind of self-selecting audience in some ways.
I interviewed him quite long ago, Michel Kleeger,
and he told this brilliant anecdote about how there's always one thousand three hundred and seventy six people in any country that read poetry.
And that doesn't matter if it's tiny country or huge country 1371 people you're you're talking to.
And so I think it's people that are ready to have their language stretched and be open to something that is outside their language, but not beyond it.
And I and your poetry does that. I mean, I think that's what fascinates me in it, in that I don't think it exists in the English language.
And why I wanted to translate it was because I wanted to create barge's,
shoved aside things and make a place for it in English, because it seemed to me it wasn't a voice, it was an English.
And I think I mean, I've had you know, we both had very good reception to that.
And I think that's what people recognised, that something new, a voice from the wings was from outside.
Our language is coming in and claiming you're mistaking its own place in the language and changing the language because of it.
I mean, that reminds me, you mentioned Gregory earlier that squiggly some cheque who were just more poetry bombs, lunch trusts.
That's him. Yes, that is referring here. And he's Ukrainian.
And the main land trust, in a sense, is programatic, isn't it, of the kind of project of the poetry band.
And yes, it is was interacting. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Yeah. Well, hurry, Sam and Chuck. He is not only a poet, but also a musician.
He's into hip hop a lot. But his roots are in punk and punk music and.
And. Yeah. And I met him in two thousand and fifteen.
I know he's watching. So I'm just say I agree it's.
And. Yeah. And we started. We started as sort of blind date in Kiev and Kiev.
There was a there is a book fair which is very young. An arsenal in a special place.
And in a special place in Kiev.
And we were put together by the Good Institute, actually, as a blind date for.
For one. Poetry performance. Improvisation, actually.
Or concept impro. So and we met with literally one hour before going on stage.
But we had exchanged some music and poetry and Ukrainian and English translation before.
So. But the thing is, when we went on stage together, sometimes I like improvise.
I like improvisation a lot, but I mostly. Intro is great for just the show.
And then that's it. And you can never hold onto it because it really lives in the moment.
But this time it was a little bit different because we as we were ourselves and as well as the public, a little bit blown away.
But bit of what actually happened on stage, because it wasn't just only the two of us.
There was something that was we can't be we could connect so easily together
that we felt like we do something really together that goes beyond improv.
And so since then, we've been making music based on poetry together.
And and you mentioned the programatic title name, Land Shaft, because I when I found this name, when I was in another year in Kiev,
again, to to record some poems with him, with his music and to develop art in the studio, some new poetry songs with him.
And in the middle of one poem, I listen to his Ukrainian wrapped version of my permanent list.
And and I found myself recognising a couple of words because Ukraine Ukraine has,
of course, has a strong influence by the Russian language, but also is Ukraine.
The language itself was influenced by Polish and also by the German language and land chef is is a Ukrainian word.
So it's a. Yeah, it derives from German, but it's an it's a Ukrainian word in English.
It's landscape. So and and I found and I thought, OK, so I thought, OK, this is exactly what I want to do.
I want to think of poetry together with grades as something that has a lot to do with where we're from.
But that is freer than our nations are allowed to be.
So I went to be freer than the nation. I'm accidentally born in.
And so. Yeah. And we found that.
Yeah. And so that's what we kind of stick to that name.
Even our album is called Landshark. So we need to find a new one for the next album because we're planning the next EPEAT.
But the next year or so. Yeah. But I think sort of moving beyond the nation, Eurex that you're born into is is a wonderful utopian project,
especially for us here in these Brexit times. So, yeah, we're going to hear a clear sign that you've done in just a second.
But in this poem, you also bring in. Third element.
Which is a yes from an English poem, and so actually it's it really is an amalgam of nationalities and voices.
Yes. The next poem of poetry song, however you want to put it.
We don't really care about the names of what we do. The next the next piece, basically a tour into nature,
is based on three lines of a made garden of a poem by Islamic Garden because we were supposed to perform with her in Lancaster.
For the Lankester Latricia Fest Lit festival, Lankester, I think is called last year in March and 2019.
But since the since the process of Brexit has been like on the way has been going on.
It's very hard for for non e, as you all know, I suppose it's very hard for a non EU residents to to get a visa.
So so in the end, everybody was and wasn't allowed to come to perform with me in Lankester.
So but what we would so he stayed, he stayed in La VIF where he lives in western Ukraine.
But I flew over to Lankester and performed this poem alone with him, but knowing that he wouldn't be there.
We had already prepared something that I could do myself. And this is an MMO.
Gordon was there as well.
So and to as a tribute to to our collaboration with her and to her great verses and and to the joy of being with her on stage.
We made this piece based on her lines and I took her lot.
What I did is I took our alliance, her last three lines, which are very short.
Put them into one line and made an anagram out of that, a German anagram.
And and this anagram sort of mirrors her reflections by chance, I guess, by the glory of language itself.
It mirrors her reflections of her own power poem.
Because in her poem, she. She reflects her upbringing in a certain area in in England.
And and and what and which is which is an area close to the coast.
And and and this poem also deals with coasts and with oceans.
And what what the what then climate change does to these coasts.
Yeah. Let's hear it. Yes. It's a needle.
And I am true, not telling lies. And I choose.
I also. There's a need to.
At times, I wonder. I look at, oh, I.
Hottest good team player in the league in the league dues league, and then they got to start on.
Oh. Disney chose.
Ling Lei. Is a need.
City high schools. Dr. Yes.
And let me tell you so much. Hi. Hi there.
Good to see you in on Tienda here.
Scott. The the.
I Googled Lisa Mensah, Sunny Day, Tyler. Decompensate and.
Says there's a need to know.
Standing by. At least to me, the choo choo no.
Telling lies. Yeah.
Karen, I wonder if you can tell the audience a bit about how you managed to translate the anagram sort of back into English.
What is the eagle eyed bilingual watches?
The viewers would have noticed that the English isn't a direct translation of the German because I took this is to teach you
riff in the same way that Reika had by taking the exact letters of the line and then reproducing those exact letters no more,
no less in every line and trying to translate not so much the words, but a kind of mood.
Yes.
And the only thing that I knew I had to get him there was the Gilly Isles, which are Indonesian atoll, which is sinking where turtles lay their eggs.
And so that was my only fixed point. And actually, the further away I went from the poor and the more I came back to it.
So I hope it is. Is that but it did take some I think I sent you about 10 versions.
But actually I look back at twenty five. There's a host of different different anagram items it spawned.
We're racing through time and I want to make sure that we do cover everything that, you know, people have asked us to talk about.
And so I want to talk quickly about also another kind of source that you used,
which is the Grimm's Fairy Tales, which are best known to us in in Britain through Disney.
But I think anybody coming to your modern contemporary reanimation of them would be would not recognise much from Disney,
not only because it's not so well-known in this country, but also because you play on the title game.
Which also means rage. Yes, it's German.
And I wondered if you've also working with him on this grim cycle.
Also, I had said the word reanimation, but you've also literally worked with animators on it and taken your course of treatment.
All of a literary heritage into a new realm in these homes have been animated by biotics.
Nothing. Eleanora Rohter. Yes. Colluding the English.
Now, there's a lot we could talk about that, but perhaps we could focus,
first of all on why just before we b we and I should say sorry, and I should say they've been set to music by Landshark to get.
Let's take a quick look at that wonderful image of the lunch cover.
It goes a sort of grim kind of it's a very crazy sort of grim I assume.
But just before we listen to one of those tracks,
can you talk a little bit about what attracted you to going back to these old ancient stories in order to sing about contemporary world?
Yes. Well, it started.
It started with a love of four. These collection of Grimm fairy tales,
which which I was quite afraid of when I was a kid because of their coolness and and the and their strangeness of language.
They're nuts. The one the ones everyone who has ever read the like more than the five famous simplified fairy tales that we all know.
Everyone who has had a closer look on that will easily see that these that they have a very special language, which is hard to read, even in German.
And they have a complicated history of editions which were changed first, but by the brothers themselves,
and then later on by by parents who were afraid that these fairy tales could frighten that children.
So. So it's a very complicated story. And. And I was I was fascinated by that.
That's how it started. But I wanted to work on them.
But when I started working on them on the news about the sinking ships and the Mediterranean Sea, I started to spread.
And I was following on that for I had been following on that for some years already.
But but suddenly in 2014, I think it was all it it it was like it was like the journalists had finally understood that
there has to be written about this because it's been going on for such a long time already.
The dying. And I was totally I could I could not concentrate on anything else because I was so full of fury and grim indeed.
And so and I found I found myself not having the words to express what I think a true
expert to express my my feelings and my yet not having the language for some way.
And and this is something which so.
And and and in this in this period, these grim very tales kind of provided me with words that I didn't have before.
And with images to express my fury, my grim. So what I basically did in the end was laying under it, laying a second layer,
a second contemporary layer of thoughts and and images of cruelness on like on on the transfer, like like a transparent foil on these fairy tales.
And that's how this cycle developed this graphic. Let's hear one of them now.
Despite an order to benefit, you had to be very smooth to stick by.
But in a shooting game between. Inordinate in stature, Ashraf.
We do not see. Untimely end, and one side denies us.
Asylum's, even Delphin decoding zulily, Snowden, does writing songs stay?
Emma, I thought this. In an. Neck and neck, deep sand, see my Dubofsky.
Dear. Tonight.
As Viacom's even Balfa, Steve.
Despite being less than of six.
Come on. I'm sick of Mashu ten as I was standing.
That was great. And, you know, I'm enjoying this so much that we could go on for hours.
But I've never seen the time and I do want to tax our viewers too much.
I hope it means the torch invites us back to the big tent next year to really perform.
And so I want to cut. So take the hint.
Say I want to cut to a kind of final further step in collaborative poetry making that you've made recently with the wonderful filmmaker Sasha Conrads,
who we've got a picture of a guy in. That's for sure.
And we might introduce the most recent kind of collaboration you've done, which is, again, takes a text from the German Kamman.
But this time of great 18th century part freedom for the.
But you're working with a film kind of move beyond animation now to film.
And what is more? In a recent very recent in fact, a couple of days ago, we saw a new version that was in English as well.
Can you we're going to cut out and sort of finish with this and we might talk about it a little bit in the Q&A.
But can you give us just a little insight into what you're hoping to do?
This was presumably a commission for the 250 front of us free of Muslims that this year.
Yes, specifically, this was a commission to go to the herding tower in in Tubingen, where he where herding has lived,
has spent the last three decades of his life in someone else's house,
not really leading an independent life like us, like a humble person living in someone else's house.
And the last three decades of his life. And and now it's a beautiful museum.
And and they wanted to open up a new a new permanent exhibition and ask me to just recite a poem, hoteling poem and then put it into a poetry form.
And I said, no,
I wouldn't just recite it because I find totally and truly difficult to recite and to read and to understand because he had this very special tactics,
which is how to put it.
It's it's always like as he looks at the word from from from the outside, he's on here.
That was also part of his life. He was never part of something, despite his numerous tries to be part of a political and or a atake movement.
And so and so I think, as I said, OK, I'm going to do something.
But just let me try my unstuff and let me write something in between the hardily nine.
So what I did was I calmed my own lines in between his lines,
so I reworked his poem in and found myself to feel like I'm inviting herded in to finally be a part of a scene,
be a part of I of a scene that is politically aware that that takes part in in that takes part in society,
which is, I think, something that he would have liked. I hope so.
And but but yeah. And then I gave this and gave this to Sachar, along with some ideas of like images what I wanted to do with him.
And and yeah, I would make this movie, which I think also has a very elderly NSC aesthetics, but seen from the Sindh sci fi point of view.
Outer space. Yes. Let's watch it. After Friedrich old Ireland has went on holidays to walk out and see the field, he stood behind the house.
So we stand here and then from a night of heat, the cold lightning fell across this heat.
Two fairy lights foran field and the stream returns once more.
Between its banks and I to fall back into bed in a single stroke.
And with the heavens door lighting rain. I still do it when I'm fast asleep again.
In quiet, sunlike stands, the grove of trees clearly audible.
The drying of things in us. Like this, they stand in favourable water as we start forgetting how they must bleed that way,
fall present with a light on race, forgetfulness teaches us to be idiots.
I for one, in certain seasons of the year, nature seems to sleep.
She does not really sleep, but beats the poets, faces also sorrow.
Go on and blab fist at our throat as one beats sheet cheering time for even when she rests, she senses what will be as one rests.
When one forgets as soon as it's done. But now the day breaks.
Waiting I saw. But now it makes me mad.
For she herself, who is older than the oldest sheep older,
and the sharing older even than the sharing blamed nature now has woken with the sound of arms.
Light strings stretched across the night are all the same to her by establish law as in former times dawn from holy chaos,
she shares patterns and logical serious cuts us off in one go creator of all things.
Once more you ask where she is. Ask him stuff. Can you.
Blow after blow. Say shining sheep.
Shining sheep. Shining sheep. Platonist.
And now go to sleep.
And this is also, thanks to your translation herin. I hope you recognise your words.
I do. This has been such fun, but I think it's time.
Let's turn to West now and bring you back in time to join us.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hey. Thank you so much. That was amazing.
We've been on quite a journey there. And actually there's well, there's a host of questions, as you might imagine,
that I'm trying to put together into into an order that would make sense.
And I wonder, actually, if we might start right where you finished, where all a.
You asked Karen whether she recognised herself there.
And a number of people have asked the question, but in reverse, actually, which is do you you recognise yourself in Karen's English voice?
But I might ask the question of both of you. In other words, do you recognise each other's voices?
Yeah, well,
I just thought about that in the very beginning when I recited this poem in which I invite my friends and I recited that in English and German,
and whenever I do that, I feel like I'm into the English version is my own poem.
And as well. Kerans own poem. So it feels like the way Karen would pronounce it is somehow in my ear.
And the way that I am, I recite. I mentioned it as well.
So it feels like it feels like a hybrid between the two of us, I'd say.
And and I noticed that, too.
The more caring, the more you go away from from my from my original version and the closer you get to what I want should do basically.
Yeah. Perhaps like like in the like in the anagram we had before.
Well that's nice. I mean I think it's brilliant to work with who's very generous in that sense.
Because I don't think all poets are, you know, because you have to trust someone with your face.
And and I want you disappearing down different alleyways and stuff at the same place.
But it raises a question about I mean,
I think it's a really interesting question and it raises a question of do you think you're doing when you're translating?
And I know a record also translates. I mean, I don't think I hope I'm not translating the different parts I translate into my voice necessarily.
Isn't a transparent translation, but I don't want to all end up with Karen.
That would be just. No, no. I said it was that was also not what I thought I really meant.
It's it's just like a Chinese through. So it kind of strains through your experience, doesn't it?
And that inevitably it'll be words that mean something to you. And so you're that always.
But I do think if the translator bit as a chameleon, you know, changing colour, changing voice, depending on who they're working with.
You also mentioned anagrams in there.
And again, another thought, really interesting question that came in, which is, how does the formal constraint of,
let's say, an anagram relate to their apparently free form of the music, of the poem, of the performance?
What about of dialectic, if you like? Or maybe it's not a dialectic? What's the relation between those two?
It's hard to say because it depends on the project and and on what was first the music or the poem or the film or whatever.
But but when was when we get back to the anagram, I found my cell.
I found that I needed to lose.
In the end, the dramatic structure when I put it into music with such simple means as and as adding a chorus.
The chorus like as as treating. I make Gordon's initial lines as a chorus, which I then sang again in the middle and then in the end.
But apart from that, I tried to stick to the structure somehow.
But yeah. And. And still. Yeah.
It's both. It's sticking to the structure and also trying not to see the structure anymore because because it's so,
it's so embodied in, in the piece already that you don't need to think about the structure anymore and feel.
And that feels very free. In the end, there's a huge freedom when you have a tiny compass to me.
Yes. Yes. Around you bends because all kinds of new directions.
And it gives you an enormous movement, or at least it does. So I quite enjoyed.
When I first looked at that poem, I thought, of course, I can't translater its course.
But actually, there are very few things you really can't translate as long as you're working with a poet who allows you that kind of freedom as well.
Okay, that's interesting, because one of the one of the questions was, you know, the untranslatable question or what?
How do you translate a word that has multiple meanings, say, in one language, but doesn't seem to have the same multiple meetings in another?
I mean, Grimm is an example. Grimm means something quite different in English than rage.
And so what do you do with that? Do you carry. Yeah.
What do you do with that multiplicity across languages? That's a really good question.
I think every translator comes up against that.
And I think there are places I'm trying to trying to translate the poem at the moment by a different part was green by where he uses three words moon,
moon and movement, which will sound very similar in German.
But I'm living so living room of one summer living room, poppy and moon in English and he plays I did it.
I don't think I can do it. I've got to find three different words completely and to make a poem at all.
And it reminds me of from did a poem together, Orica and I in the new collection,
which is Germany's call Pizza CATSA, which is and is used when you're doing beatbox in German.
And I started translating it and thinking, this is very fine. And then I realised, of course, that's not what you say for Beatbox and English.
And so there's a different form. There's a different. As it happened, not a pizza cat, a cat in a cage and boots and so on.
And that's a different story in English. So I think it's. If you give him that freedom, you can create a kind of essence, if not the words,
you can sort of translate to feeling, translate to move, translate to an idea or an image.
My sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm wondering then, if that folds back into your own practise.
Well, Baker, what is having been translated changed your understanding of what you're doing as a poet?
Oh, a lot. Just yesterday, I had a Skype talk at a Skype chat with Karen in which I felt the need to admit to her
that I actually understood my own hoteling poem better through a hard translation.
So and so. And that's why that's why, you know,
the film that we have just seen was an English and the first in the first place it
was I recorded the audio is in German and also the automatic voice was in German.
So the the hotel in the automatic voice of her daddy was in German and and, uh, but the way I spoke,
kids in my original version was quite different from the way I spoke it now in English,
because I felt I had understood not only what I'm saying, but also how it feels, what I'm saying and also the impact of what I'm saying.
I felt that more through Kerins translation. OK.
So then it fell flat already. Funny. This often happens. Is that your answering questions that are coming in as we go and somebody is asking about
whether a text that's translated through different languages or through different media,
innocent gains incrementally through that process. And I think you're saying.
Yes. Well, Heeger. And not only does it gain incrementally, but also you go back to the origin and think again about what it was at the beginning.
Is that right? Well, I'd say I'd go further than that, perhaps.
I'd say when you translate a poem into another art form, as is a poetry film or whatever, an installation,
an urban space or whatever, it becomes something else big without losing its its being a poem.
It stays a poem. But at the same time, it's something else.
And this is what I definitely love about poetry, that it has so many that it stretches out to other art forms.
Way more than a novel or prose could ever do.
I think that's so interesting that you said that's about most understanding or because I didn't understand that poem when I translated it.
The translation was part of a fund and reminds me in that same interview I talked about earlier was also with Paul Paul Muldoon,
who was kind of mischievous and said that he wondered if every poem wasn't a translation of the sort of order poem.
And so a translation might actually get closer to that sort of first place without really knowing.
But also kind of interesting, I think, that maybe, you know,
I tapped into something that was the same thing that inspired you way and then the game with the film.
Sasha perhaps recognised something because there is no there's no there's no in your in your poem.
But yeah, they're they're so right. But now a nation has sort of found a different image.
Well, I'm a little bit suspicious. Whenever I hear the word or clause, because it goes back to this 19th century,
I don't know when thinking of of a perfect source of language of it even goes back to the to the strange idea of individual Germanic languages.
And and like in former time, there was the perfect world.
And now we are all have all that comes out of that is generated.
Munster's it's like I found that. I find that very pessimistic and not very humanistic anyway.
But, you know, that's that's a positive that a positive way of maybe thinking about going back to something which again,
one of the questions of your work exposure is to some degree, the archaic roots of modern poetry.
So incorporating media, song and dance and if at all before the page before, if you like,
the shining sheep became vellum and then became something else and so on and so forth.
Would you would you recognise yourself in that perspective with some sort of yes.
Sort of, yes. It's I find my way to to treat treat poet poetry as something off page of the page.
I find that traditional in in the sense of of of poetry being something that was vital
long before there were letters and trends and and and written language and was so popular.
It was of course sung before it was written down. And and so whenever someone tells me that I'm so.
And twenty first century Berlin NSC in my art firm, I find myself a little bit misunderstood because this is what I want to do is as refer.
I see myself in a long line of tradition, which is not only in books of course.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we've got time for maybe two or three more questions. And some of them are very sort of practical questions, if you like,
which are how do we get to a world where translation is more respected, where even poets and aspiring poets and poetry translators.
I mean, you you guys are in there.
How what advice do you have to aspiring poet for poetry translators about how to how to find their voice in the world,
but also how to find public and phone, if any?
Oh, that's hard. That's hot. That's a that's a tricky question because things change so quickly.
And when I started it, I thought I felt the scene very different from as it is now.
But I think I still think it's important.
It's it's important to read your colleagues, not just to read your colleagues, do we not I mean,
don't stop reading at the middle of the twentieth century and try to try to see what's actually being
written as something that as part of a tradition as well as reinventing itself the whole time.
But I don't know about about but it's smart.
The practical technical aspect of this question is it's hard because, of course, it's hard to be paid for your work.
All I can say is respect the works of others as much as you respect your own works and don't stick only to the page in terms of literary magazines,
which are what that is. It's important to publish there, but it's also important to know how tick tock an Instagram works or whatever you like it.
I, I like to follow my the my sympathies when I, when I'm interested in in a certain software.
Then I want to use that software for my art form as well as for my private communication.
I don't. I don't. I try not to think, OK, this is only for art and this is for private like Kolok, because all of this belongs together in Korea.
Translator as well. Well, I was going to say I'm just gonna be very pragmatic as I am.
Read poetry and the pragmatism I read, read, read, read again, Reback, read contemporary's, read everything, read multiple languages.
But I think people tend to be very gloomy about the position of poets and translators now.
But actually one of the things about social media is, is a huge platform out there.
Magazines, online magazines, but also Real's more my magazines and so on.
And of course, you can publish yourself so you can actually get your voice out there in a way that a couple of decades you couldn't.
And then I would say go and hear people meet people and talk to people.
It's a great world of serendipity, I think. And as you say, your, um, your blind date with Gregory has led to this language.
And I think that's happened to me before.
You know, child counts have led to all kinds of things to read so that you're ready and then put yourself out there.
OK, last question. Chance Encounters. How did you guys meet?
How did you start? Oh, it's a long time ago.
What's the what was the start of it? I don't know, Karen. Can you tell?
I do know. Actually, I was asked by somebody in Australia secure rights here.
Magazine of contemporary subsection of contemporary. No, New Zealand.
I'm so embarrassed. New Zealand it was they were the guest country, the Frankfurt Book Fair.
And so they were doing a subsidiary of a magazine of some German poetry.
And I was asked to curate that. I said no because I was overwhelmed with work.
And then I just started reading small magazines and anthologies and finding the poets that really spoke to me.
And I picked six poets, I think. And Errico was the first one.
Erica had to be there because it just as soon as I read her,
I knew that I wanted to translate her and I knew that I wanted to find out what was going on in her poems.
I wanted to know what made them tick. And that's where it started, actually.
And so there was little little anthology. And then I wrote to her and said, Can I play bass?
And do you remember that moment at least? Billerica. Yeah, I remember the email I wrote, you know.
Yes. And and and and the sports magazine, of course, which is somewhere somewhere there.
And yes. And I remember that that I had worked with English translators before, with debt, with when American translators.
You're living in Leipzig and Germany, Bradley Schmidt and.
And then there is different translators for special for for certain projects and that and.
I had always longed for someone who who couldn't give me company.
Through the years to the coming years and that.
And it turned out that we gave each other a good company, caring.
Well, perhaps on that note, we should bring things to a close.
I'd like to thank both of you are brilliant speakers, Karen, on the record for a wonderful session this evening.
And a big thank you to to our viewers at home for watching and for your many comments and questions.
And so for one last time. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Ulrica. Thank you.
Where is he? Thank you, West. And thank you, Torch. You've all given your time.
Everyone here, your thoughts,
your questions and your engagement as we come together online this season of this series would not be possible without the support.
As Karen said of many people in the torch team, as it were backstage.
And we'd like to thank them all, too. Please do come back next week at the same time for a session on the World after Cauvin.
Where there'll be a conversation between Pete and Professor Peter Frank upon, director of the Oxford Centre for Business and Research.
And of course, a historian who's written about the Silk Road, amongst many other things.
And Professor Nyeri Woods, dean of the Catholic School of Government here in Oxford.
But for now, thank you again for coming. Stay safe. Stay well.
And goodbye for now.