Edition #1 (oct 05-jan 06): theme : in translation

The Birthing of Words

Words, Anne Carson has said, bounce. Words, left to their own devices, will do “what they want to do and what they have to do.” This agency, or power, of words is their needing to be said. Often a thing will occur only because words preceded it, creating the conditions for its existence. But experience can also transcend its skin, and cause the birth of words where there had been none. This is the opportunity that translation presents. Disparate experiences will find congruence in a new, hybrid language when they seek to inhabit the vessel of each other’s words. Wherever two traditions rub up against each other, this will be what words must do. There is always the borderless imperative of words.

For this edition of the mollusca chain, you are invited to inhabit translation: birth new words, and some new way to hold them together. Taste-test an unwieldy translation schema. Homophonic. Lexical. Homolinguistic.* Is residing within an interlanguage ever residing comfortably? Is there such a thing as a private, inner 'language of thought' to which we are all confined? If interpretation is near enough, is it good enough? Chop some words up, or chop something up with words. Parsi into French, Spanish into Hebrew, Yeat's English into Forbes' English. Japanese hiragana to invented hiragana. Play multilingually. Transliterate your favourite poem, your failed poem. Be strict with yourself. Be disciplined. Then indulge in slabs of poetic licence. Let words do what words will do.

Preserve your wordbaby. Snail-mail it gently on to the poets on your list.

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*Homophonic: translate the sound of a foreign language poem into your own language. *Lexical: translate a foreign language poem word by word into your own language. *Homlinguistic: translate a poem of your own language into a new poem of your own language, word by word, or phrase by phrase, or trope by trope, etc. for more ideas try these on for size.
[Image 'familial' by Joel Bombardier.]