De Groene Waterman

Dear Friends,
today is the day that Sven Peeters interviews me in "The green Waterman", the nicest bookshop of Antwerp. He will ask questions about my translation of Sherman Alexie's works from his four first books of poetry. Up to now the book has been well received and people who have seen it like it. So After the interview I will tell you how it went. We will start at 4 o'clock.

Poëzie = Woede x Verbeelding

Sherman Alexie

 Now I am off to the preparation of the interview... More tonight!

Sven is a great interviewer and he was truly well prepared. He asked  questions  about the terminology like what is the correct term for 'Indian'? Is an Indian Nation always called a reservation?
Of course it was the poetry who won the people over. Several people bought the book and I  was practicing finding the right words for each inscription for the enthusiastic buyers. I think the bookshop also was happy. A friend 'Kris' came in late, the train had two long stops on the way to Antwerp. The terror threat not quite over, we are at level three in Brussels now. In Antwerp, nothing bad is happening. In order to make more publicity for the book Kris will approach "The Limmerick" in Ghent and then he will be the interviewer. I am a neophyte at this, so I am learning as I go.

In the discussion after the reading some commented that his poetry is very different, sometimes close to prose. So I decided to read them the following poem:

Een Onvolledige Lijst Mensen waarvan ik Wens dat ze Indiaan Waren

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Adam

Muhammad Ali

Susan B. Anthony

Jimmy Carter

Patsy Cline

D.B. Cooper

Robert DeNiro

Emily Dickinson

Isadora Duncan

Amelia Earhart

Eve

Diane Fossey

Jesus Christ

Robert Johnson

Helen Keller

Billie Jean King

Martin Luther King, Jr.

John Lennon

Maria Magdalena

Pablo Neruda

Flannery O’Connor

Rosa Parks

Wilma Rudolph

Sappho

William Shakespeare

Bruce Springsteen

Meryl Streep

John Steinbeck

Superman

Harriet Tubman

Voltaire

Walt Whitman

And it worked. People were moved by the names, they understood that in the work of a great poet everything can be poetry.

I thank Sherman Alexie for his work, Robert Hershon his publisher for making this publication possible and Leo Peeraer the publisher of poetry in Flanders with the best series of translations.

Sven contacted a friend in the States and was told Sherman Alexie is really big in the States. I hope he will be as well know in Belgium and Holland now.

In gratitude to all,

annmarie

Hanging Loose Press and Robert Hershon.

I got to know of and know Robert Hershon because I had fallen for a poetry book by Sherman Alexie published by Robert Hershon’s Hanging Loose Press and doing what I do I had started translating some of the poems of  ‘First Indian On the Moon’ while in Chloride, Arizona. A coincidence was that I visited two friends living on Staten Island on my way from Chloride, Arizona back to Antwerp Belgium. They gave me a tour of New York. So I had made an appointment to go to Varickstreet, Manhattan to meet with the publisher of the book. I showed up and we went out for a cup of coffee. The conversation flowed easily, I saw a sharp and funny, intelligent and kind man, taking care of Hanging Loose Press, and a great poet in his own right. They published not only now famous poets like Sherman Alexie, Harvey Shapiro, Paul Violi and more… (It is not always easy to follow the contemporary poetry scene from Europe.) Hanging Loose also produced a magazine with the same title. Robert Hershon, doesn’t do this all by himself, originally there were four editors, none taking a salary for their work. I have six issues of the magazine in Europe. The first thing is the visual impact through the care given to the cover, happy, colorful, strikingly beautiful artwork: some names dropping starting with issue 93: George Green, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon, Hal Sirowitz (former poet laureate of Queens, N.Y.) Marc Staman, Joan Larkin, Stephen Lewandowski, Anne Waldman, Breyten Breytenbach, Sherman Alexie, Donna Brook, Kimiko Hahn and in each issue also a section with ‘writers of high school age’ a really interesting feature encouraging young authors.

Robert Hershon, with 13 poetry books out now, was kind enough to mail me his two latest books of his own:

The German Lunatic (2000) and

Calls from the outside world (2006)

Both books contain wonderful, often funny musings stemming from a wry profoundness. A few e-mails and once in a while a telephone call have let me stay in touch. So I learned from “The German Lunatic” (2000) of his love for baseball, a love shared by Sherman Alexie. Luckily I have two baseball fanatic friends who come and stay the winters in Chloride. Coop and Irene have done their utmost best to initiate into the rules of baseball. I now understand the terminology and begin to appreciate the belly cramps at the ninth inning. I took it upon me to translate this section from ‘The German Lunatic”…

The presentation date for the Sherman Alexie translation “On the Backs of Salmon’ is October 2^nd,, , 2015 in the beautiful “Black Panter Gallery”, in Antwerp. This book isn’t the only one being presented: also a translation by Lucienne Stassaert of a book of poetry by Libanese Andrée Chédid. We will introduce each other. No learned professors, just the work we did. Her book is called (in Dutch) Existing is a blessing for me. Of course there will be a party afterwards.

Translation of poetry and of texts from a different culture

Having worked as an interpreter for the European Parliament I have wondered how a Romanian colleague would deal with a Finnish speaker or how a Portuguese interpreter would get the intention of the Hungarian speaker.

It is not about the words flipping them into the target language so that the words would be understandable. Rather in immersing oneself in a language one can grasp the strangeness of the other's circumstances and maybe understand the different cultural contexts, religious concepts and also every thing pertaining to daily and ceremonial life, to the daily hardships and joys. I have translated quite a lot of poetry by Modern Native Americans: Sherman Alexie's translation will be presented October 2nd in Antwerp. Sherman Alexie is Spokane/Coeur D'Alene Indian. His work is modern and deep, funny and ruthlessly honest. He uses irony and old cultural elements. He is a trickster who will confuse you and make you wonder and fill your heart with joy. He writes about pain in his unique way. He is a poet who challenges the translator, using among other techniques Fibonacci series in his rhymes, in another poem he has always the same end rhyme... Impossible in the target language. His world view, his translation of himself in his unique way is quite a gift. I hope the reader will enjoy his work 'On the backs of salmon' the metaphor I use for this translation. I hope you will be deeply touched by Sherman Alixie's poems I have chosen from his four first poetry books, published by Robert Hershon soul and body of Hanging Loose Press. A click on the image will enlarge it, so you can see the beauty of the books.

Sherman Alexie's books in Chronological order:
The Business of Fancydancing, Hanging Loose Press, 1992
First Indian On the Moon, Hanging Loose Press, 1993
The Summer of Black Widows, Hanging Loose Press, 1996
One Stick Song, Hanging Loose Press, 2000