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FOUR WAY REVIEW

INTERVIEW with Khairani Barokka

Sunday, 11 August 2024 by Khairani Barokka
A black and white photo of an Indonesian woman with black hair tied back. She is wearing lipstick, and a black and white daster, and is smiling to the camera against a white background.

FWR: “To enter the indonesian language is a science fictional enterprise,” you write in the first section of amuk. Reading forward, you show readers how Indonesian tenses permit a simultaneity of temporal possibilities not included within the narrower scope of English; traveling through time or existing beyond the limits of time altogether. What does it mean to you to move into and through languages, recognizing how structures and concepts so often cannot map directly? How do you feel through and comprehend the idea of translation, knowing it as something different from and more than the word-to-word equation of which one (at least in the Anglo-American context) is often trained to think it? 

KB: Firstly, thank you for having me in this space, and for the time you’ve given to the work. I see the whole of the book amuk as my translation of the word. A strong interest of mine over the past years has been to query what the west thinks of as objective ‘truth’ and expose it to be fiction, and also giving encouraging people to provide the grace of truthfulness to what is called ‘fiction’. amuk highlights what is ultimately speculative non-fiction, and the infinite possibilities that affords, in terms of so many languages (including Indonesian) not having time tenses. And isn’t it strange that innumerable translations from languages without time tenses, like Indonesian and Malay, pin down just one time tense for verbs? So, as the titular poem says, each translation from these languages is both right and always wrong.

The book is a way of elucidating how moving through languages is equivalent through moving between differing cosmologies, psychogeographies. Any translator who really understands two or more languages will know that translation is not at all a word for word equation, especially considering differing grammar rules—and again, it’s about moving away from that deeply colonial understanding, that there is only one kind of English rather than different Englishes, that there is an ‘objectively right’ translation at all. Translation is an art form, and is a form of creative writing, no two translators will translate the same poetry collection the same way.

FWR: The body and body parts arise frequently over the course of amuk. What, to you, does it mean to understand the body as implicated in language—beyond simply the mechanics of its production? On the other end, thinking of lines like “language cosmologies […] hunted at the throat,” what does it mean to you to configure language itself as a mode of embodiment, with all of its potentials and vulnerabilities? 

KB: Thank you for pointing this out, I suppose the bodily is a preoccupation. I think that each bodymind being so unique means each interpretation of language is uniquely ours, and the beauty of language is communication being potentially misunderstood in so many ways, as well as the hope of being potentially understood in so many ways as well. It is the hope for community, in a sense. Just as, in the book, rage is a prayer, is a manifestation of hope.

FWR: On the note of embodiment: among the multiplicitous ways in which amuk exists, it declares itself very early on as being a performance. We are even told what voice-voices we are switching into at various points, from that of amuk to one that is human. Have you performed this work before? If you have, what was that experience like? If you haven’t, how do you imagine it being performed—especially when it comes to facets, like the brackets, that cannot be communicated using the voice, or parts like the wall of texts pronouncing “I love your rage”? What does it mean to you for this work to exist as or be understood as a piece lived bodily, viewed bodily, and not encountered only in the context of the page?

KB: Yes, the long poem ‘amuk’, that forms half of the book, was originally a performance lecture on climate justice commissioned by Edinburgh University. I’ve been fortunate enough to perform excerpts from it, as well as the entirety of the poem, since the book was published, as well. Each performance is different, as a big fan of improvisation, and I make use of the voices by using different accents. I recently performed that wall of ‘I love your rage’ by asking the audience to yell it with me—and they did! The beauty of poetry always existing in different sensorial states—audio, visual performance, text—is part of an ethic of disability justice, to me, and access as translation. I love how seemingly singular texts reveal different aspects of themselves in different mediums, and I certainly have a different relationship to the text each time I translate it, so to speak, through my body. And therefore a different relationship each time to the audience I’m trying to connect with. That’s a really astute observation that the bodily connection is foregrounded intentionally, because I hope this understanding of ‘amuk’ is felt bodily by others, as I feel it within myself. I think the work as text is just as bodily received as the work as audible performance—how you read visually is always very much your bodymind involved in the art.

FWR: Much of the book discusses the “mistranslations” (if one can call them that) wrought by colonial/hegemonic ignorance and arrogance, from “run amuck” to the poetic genre of the pantoum. What was your intention behind giving voice to human and nonhuman alike in this work—and particularly giving voice to an act of language itself? How did you first land on the term amuk to be the word at the heart of your collection?

KB: I’ve been thinking about the mistranslation of ‘amuk’ for years… To me, it encapsulates the history of colonialism, to mistranslate ‘rage’ into psychopathy or a ‘culture-bound’ homicidal syndrome or a ‘running amuck’ of chaos. It’s the theft of rage, by Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, English, and these languages deliberately mistranslated the word in the late 17th century, during violent colonisation. Criminalising and pathologising the rage of colonised peoples has been going on for centuries, as a very specific tool of oppressors. The history of this one word ‘amuk’ stretches all the way into what’s happening in the present, with the multiple genocides ongoing in Palestine, Papua, Sudan, Congo, and elsewhere. And with regards to the nonhuman, all of these continued colonial genocides are also environmental genocides, as I’m glad the book makes clear

To answer your first questions, I suppose voices are important to me because I felt the original and persistent soul of the word ‘amuk’ contains hundreds of millions of lives. In each word’s etymology in mis/translation is the history of so many voices.

FWR: One of the many innovative aspects of this collection is the way it uses punctuation, and specifically brackets. Brackets even open the book—framing the incantation of “bahasaku” and then filling, in various sizes and formats, the otherwise empty space of “In Praise Of.” In a book so much about both the idea of alternate possibilities of seeing or understanding and about what it means for such possibilities to be hidden or devalued, among other subjects, what led your decision of how you use brackets? Do the meanings and motives behind this punctuation change for you as we see them across different poems in the collection?

KB: Yes, it relates to the use of voices, I think—the truth that lies behind each word, and how it’s used in the English language. Saying the quiet part exists, the quiet part is out loud for a lot of people, and having to make it ‘quiet’ does something to you. And also drawing a boundary of respect for language. There is something protective about brackets for me, that the true meanings will always be there, no matter how much people try to obscure them. Protecting from disrespect what needs to be held in secret spaces, to avoid the surveillance of disrespectors. The great thing about brackets is that meanings and motives are also open to interpretation, throughout the book.

FWR: amuk is astounding both for what it communicates and how it communicates it; the stories it tells and the innovative ways in which it tells them. There are many instances of playing with or complicating form, and the book even includes and references work from other art areas like photography and film, as with the photos of hands and in the poem “preceding a prayer for the dead asian men who inspired a nightmare on elm street.” As you were writing this work, who were you looking towards as your models and inspirations (can be writers, musicians, painters, relatives—whomever!)? How would you say your experience in performance and working with artists in other mediums has influenced your work?

KB: Thank you so much. As you say, I come from a performance/interdisciplinary art background as well as a literary one. My PhD was in Visual Cultures. For me, these interests have always been tied to poetry, and to translation, and to a wide range of influences, and to collaboration with other artists. So ‘amuk’ starting out as a performed text—with the words on a screen as I performed it—was just an outpouring of all the different artistic influences I’d accumulated, probably many I’m not even conscious of. Certainly my family, and Minang and Javanese traditions of poetry as communal, as voiced. Certainly artists who use performance, such as Arahmaiani, and the late, great Cok Sawitri, and many musicians I admire. Certainly other disabled and ill artists in the literary and performance world.

FWR: Though a collection of original writing, your background as a translator certainly shines through in amuk, especially in its interest in language and the politics between languages. What do you feel that being a translator as well as a poet gives you access to? How do each of your practices inform the other? What do you feel like is/are the responsibility/ies of translators?

KB: Many thanks, I’m glad the translation background comes through. One understanding being a translator gives me access to is that the notion a translated poem is only good if ‘it reads as though it was first written in English’ is a false colonial paradigm, and again, one that presumes there’s only one kind of English in the world. And using multiple tenses in one verb is definitely something that comes from my understanding of language as a translator—it is actually quite weird that all verbs from non-tense-containing languages are translated in just one tense in English. I started playing with multiple tenses in one in my previous book, Ultimatum Orangutan, and decided to really go in on it for this one. Translators’ responsibilities are manifold, but I feel that ultimately, it is about humility and respect for languages as entire universes and philosophies of thought. I’m so glad you enjoyed the book, thanks again for having me.

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URGENT: NEWS OF THE DEATH OF HIBA ABU NADA by João Melo, trans. G. Holleran

Saturday, 22 June 2024 by João Melo

Excuse my urgency, oh right-thinking beings
especially you translucent
and self-referential poets,
but one of our sisters,
the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada,
has just died in Gaza under the shrapnel of a benevolent bomb,
sent by another God,
different from the one she spoke with
every day.

I hesitated to convey this fateful news
so hastily. Perhaps I should wait
for the leaden grey smoke from the bomb that killed her to dissipate,
while she, surely,
scrutinized the sky for a sliver of light and
maybe even
the last birds.
Or, more convenient yet
it’d be better to say nothing,
until today’s hegemonic oracles,
like all oracles,
circulate an official statement
denying it as usual
without any doubts
or uncomfortable questions.

But when I read
the last words of Hiba Abu Nada before she died,
I was moved to spread this news,
before her banner could be censored
by those who defend selective liberty:
“If we die, know that we are content and steadfast,
and convey on our behalf that we are people of truth!”


Grace Holleran translates literature from Portuguese to English. A PhD candidate in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies & Theory at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Grace holds a Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship with the Center for Portuguese Studies & Culture and Tagus Press. Grace’s research, which has been supported by a FLAD Portuguese Archives Grant, deals with translation and activism in the early Portuguese lesbian press. An editor of Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism & Translation, Grace’s translations of Brazilian, Portuguese, and Angolan authors have been published in Brittle Paper, Gávea-Brown, The Shoutflower, and others.

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FOUR POEMS by Olivia Elias, trans. Jérémy Victor Robert

Tuesday, 18 June 2024 by Olivia Elias
Headshot of Olivia Elias

Day 21, Words Are Too Poor, October 28, 2023

words are too poor        but I have only them
my only wealth
empty my hands       & so great the sufferings

here again       I press my arms around my chest
here again       I get into this old habit of covering the page with little
squares filled with black ink

the little squares of our erasure

/
I write what I see     said Etel Adnan* who knew a lot about
mountains’ strength as well as Catastrophe

I also know the power of this Mount facing the sea
Carmel of my very early days       Mount Fuji of absence
& denial around which I gravitate     above it the
black crows of desolation

as I know all about our Apocalypse which keeps on repeating
repeating       the earth turning on its axis       the sun that veils its face

/
here’s what I see
the madness of the overarmed Occupying State
crushing bodies & souls     live on screens       at least until
night falls       a night of the end of the world       only
pierced by ballistic flashes

in Sabra & Shatila the spotlights
.       illuminated the massacre’s scene
today in this Mediterranean Strip of sand
.       total darkness shields Horror

the sky explodes in a thousand pieces amongst
monstrous mushrooms of black smoke      the time to
count one two three       towers collapse one
after the other   like bowling pins their inhabitants
inside     then get into action the steel monsters

flattening the landscape      they call it
(translation: converting this ghetto sealed off on all sides
into a 21st-century Ground Zero)

everyone wondering       When will my time come?
& parents writing their children’s name on their small wrists
for identification (just in case)

/
no water      no food      no fuel & electricity       & no medicine
decided the Annexationist Government’s Chief

let’s finish this        once & for all & forever       they shout
relying on the unconditional support of
their powerful         Allies the ones primarily responsible
for our fate by writing it off on the bloody chessboard
of their best interests

as if their contribution to our erasure redeemed their crimes

Hear Ye       Hear Ye
proclaims America’s great Chief, waving his veto-rattle
Absolute safety for the Conquerors

Hear Ye       Hear Ye
chorus the mighty Allies

/
Gaza / 400 square kilometers/not a single safe place /2.3 million people /half of them children / hungry /thirsty/injured /desperately searching for missing family members dying under the rubble

& Death  the  big  winner

/
they should know that souls cannot
be imprisoned     no matter how tight the rope
around the neck      & how strong
the acid rains & firestorms

One day, however, one day will come the color of orange/
/a day like a bird on the highest branch**

where we will sit
in the place                       left empty
in our name
in the great human House

————
*Etel Adnan, “I write what I see,” in Journey to Mount Tamalpais (Sausalito: Post-Apollo Press, 1986; Brooklyn: Litmus Press, 2021).

**“One Day, However, One Day,” from Louis Aragon’s homage in Le Fou d’Elsa (1963) to Federico García Lorca, who was murdered, in August 1936, by Franco’s militias.


DAY 74, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE POETS, December 20, 2023    


instability   a general rule
it seems a new ocean’s on the verge
of emerging  in
        Africa
& floating between
        here
                    &
                          there
could affect not only people or land
but also the seasons     I experienced it 

of fall I didn’t see a single thing
this year   the acacia’s
color even changed without
my noticing 

one morning    looking through
the window    I realized
it was there
                 naked
at its feet a carpet of yellow
leaves littered the ground 

nothing to keep it warm
        exposed
to the cold   icy rain   missiles 

& here I was    & still I am
glued to the screen
startled by every explosion
of the red-little-ball
clinging to the glittering
garlands

as soon as one of the
flesh-eating-red-balls hits
the ground a sheaf of fire
bursts   followed
by a huge black smoke
cloud 

then
screams
cries
panic
agony
day & night (even
more so at night) keeps on
going the hypnotic
ballet

today
Day 74
74 days of this 

will spring come back
or only   a long winter
of ignominy   cold   hunger 

history will remember
there will always be poets
to tell the martyrdom
of the Ghetto People 

NOTE: An earlier version of this translation appeared on 128 Lit website, December 28, 2023.


HEAR YE, HEAR YE!

At regular intervals shaking his rattle   carved with the word veto   the Grand Chief of America takes the floor for an urbi et orbi statement

With the utmost firmness

broadcast on a loop
in newspapers on screens
around the world

withwithwithwithwithwithwith
thethethethethethethe
utmostutmostutmostutmostutmost
utmostutmost

FIR/MNESS
like
FER/OCITY
growing
exponentially

utmostutmostutmostutmosT

exceptionallyFirm  

FIR/MNESS
FIRE/MESS

Iron balls blazing
in the sky
black & read whirls

it’s raining
black ashes
east bank not west

with the utmost
firmness

We support the Conquerors’
Right to Security


COLIN POWELL. GUERNICA. SCULPTURE

1

The devil is in the detail. Colin Powell–former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State to the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, between 2001 and 2005–was said to have placed great importance on this. Unfortunately for him and the legacy he leaves to history, he broke that rule on one memorable occasion

It was on February 5, 2003, when he called for a military crusade against Iraq on the podium of the United Nations, based on false evidence of weapons of mass destruction. His effort resulted in the very thing it was supposed to prevent–the deaths of hundreds/hundreds of thousands of Iraqis–& plunged the country into widespread chaos, which is still unfolding today

That day, UN officials covered with a blue veil a tapestry hanging at the entrance of the Security Council representing Guernica, the monumental work painted by Picasso at the request of the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War. Twenty-seven square meters commemorating the stormy & total destruction of the small town of the same name by the German & Italian air force, on April 26, 1937

2

In March 2021, the tapestry was returned to the Rockefeller family who had loaned it for 35 years & wanted it back. Has it been replaced? With what work? I don’t know, but I’ve got an idea. Let’s offer a cubist sculpture/assemblage of 550 stones extracted from our lands on which Settlers, protected by militias/soldiers & courts, are having a great time

Upon each of these stones
that capture the light so
beautifully
is an inscription: the name of
a village
from yesterday and today
that was
razed/ablaze

May a blue veil cover it when the Guardians of the ghetto & the bantustans take the floor


JÉRÉMY VICTOR ROBERT is a translator between English and French who works and lives in his native Réunion Island. He published French translations of Sarah Riggs’s Murmurations (APIC, 2021, with Marie Borel), Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (joca seria, 2020), and Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (L’Attente, 2015). He recently translated Bhion Achimba’s poem, “a sonnet: a slaughter field,” which was published on Poezibao’s website, and Michael Palmer’s Little Elegies for Sister Satan, excerpts of which were posted online by Revue Catastrophes. Together with Sarah Riggs, he translated Olivia Elias’ Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry Books, 2023).

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SLUMROYAL by Yahya Hassan, trans. Jordan Barger

Tuesday, 18 June 2024 by Yahya Hassan

INFECTIOUS INSANITY AMONG TODAY’S MEN AND WOMEN 

WORRYFREE FARMERS ENTWINE THEMSELVES 

WITH DIRT CATTLE AND COUNTRY WIVES 

NEPOTISM AND INBREEDING GO HAND IN HAND  

NOT JUST WITH THE ROYAL POLICE BUT ALSO 

RECRUITING OFFICERS AND MARINE MINISTERS AND CORVETTE CAPTAINS  

AND FIELD MARSHALS AND FIELD MISTRESSES 

REQUISITIONED FROM THE RESERVES  

MISERABLE SOULS DIG THEIR OWN GRAVES  

ALL FOR A GUN SALUTE AND LULLABY  

SLEEP AND HUNGER PREVAIL  

THE MONARCH LOSES TRACK OF TIME  

AND IS OVERRUN BY HIS OWN COURT  

MANSIONS AND PALACES ARE PERFORATED  

THE VATICAN VACILLATES 

CHINESE ROYAL DAUGHTERS SMUGGLE THEIR VIRGINITY 

OUT OF THEIR ROYAL LANDS 

ACCOMPANIED BY SILK BUTTERFLIES  

THE STRONGEST TREES BREAK FREE FROM THE UNDERGROWTH 

SWELLS OF CLOUDS BILLOW SKYWARD  

THE SEA SWALLOWS THE CONTINENTS  

WHILE BIRDS DRAG THE HORIZON ALONG 

SKIFFS ARE OVERTAKEN IN A STORM  

FORCING THEM OFF THEIR SMUGGLING ROUTES  

QUARTERDECKS ARE CLEARED OF SAILORS  

AND LOADED WITH PIGS AND FAIR MAIDENS  

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIVES ARE CAST OUT  

AND SKINNED ON THE STERN WITH THE BIRDS AND FISH 

THEIR FATHERS GET THEIR HEADS CAVED IN 

IF THEY ARE TOO STUPID OR TOO CLEVER  

A BLOODBATH SOUNDS BEST AT SEA 

HER MAJESTY COULD SHARPEN A KNIFE  

AND JOIN THE BRAWL 

SPEWING POISON AND HACKING AWAY  

THE MOATS ARE OVERFLOWING  

WITH COLD SWEAT  

PESSIMISM REIGNS FROM THE STALLS  

ALL THE WAY TO THE BALLS  

MECHANICAL WARFARE SHOOK ENEMIES AND ALLIES ALIKE 

NOW ANYONE COULD GO TO WAR ON A WILD HORSE   

AND DEFEAT A WHOLE REGIMENT  

ALL TO BE STABBED IN THE BACK BY A CHAPLAIN  

ANYONE CAN TAKE UP THE CROSS  

EVEN JESUS STUCK HIMSELF UP THERE  

THEN SKIPPED AWAY  

ACROSS THE ATMOSPHERE 

THE TITANIC WAS PACKED WITH REFUGEES  

THE ARISTOCRATS’ CHILDREN FLOATED TOPSIDE  

BUT THEIR FORTUNES SANK  

THE WEARIEST WIDOWS FOUND ROOM IN THE LIFEBOATS 

LAND DEEDS AND TRAVELLERS’ CHEQUES STICKING OUT OF THEIR TITS 

PROUD FRIGATES LAY SIDEWAYS ON THE WAVES  

LEAVE ME A CESSPOOL IN DENMARK  

IF THAT’S WHERE I BELONG 

THE QUEEN HAS YET TO LEAVE HER OWN HEIR  

SO MUCH AS A BARREL OF SAND  

MERCENARIES AND DAY LABORERS CROSS THE CHANNEL 

FEELINGS OF SOLIDARITY AND SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES 

MASQUERADES AND TIRADES  

ALL THE TRAITORS TEARS 

ON THE ROYAL STAGE  

THIS TIME WE’LL SPAR WITH BEAUTY AND WIT  

OR RAW POWER AND PERVERSITY 

I SHALL OUTDO ALL MY KIND  

AND FORCE THEM TO LIVE A HUMBLE AND RELIGIOUS LIFE  

I’M CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO MEN WITH BAD BREATH 

THERE IS A DEVILISH AURA AROUND ME 

WHIRRING AND BAROQUE IN THE BACKGROUND 

WE DRANK WINE WITH THE SAME URGENCY 

THAT SOBER PEOPLE DRINK WATER  

AND I FELT PURSUED BY MY OWN WAYS 

IT WON’T BE THE COMMON MAN’S CENTURY ANYWAY   

SO GET OUT OF THE WAY 

AND DON’T RUN INTO THE FIELDS   

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HARVEST 


Jordan Barger is a translator of Norwegian and Danish, with an MFA in Literary Translation from The University of Iowa. Translations have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review UK, FENCE and Sleepingfish XX. Their translation of Sigbjørn Obstfelder’s The Red Drops appeared onstage in Philadelphia thanks to Sewer Rats Productions.

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JUNE MONTHLY: In Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Tuesday, 18 June 2024 by Four Way Review

Nearly a year after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and Israel’s subsequent escalation of a decades-long project of state-sponsored genocide of the Palestinian people, Gaza continues to face deadly bombings and attacks from Israel. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the death toll of Palestinians is in the tens of thousands, with no sign of Israel relenting.

In response to the death and destruction in Palestine, Barricade and Four Way Review joined together to raise the voices of Palestinian poets and others from around the world standing in solidarity with them. While we stand fervently against Anti-Semitism, we also resist its false equation to anti-Zionism; we equally condemn Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and xenophobia, and imperialism, all of which function together to murder and oppress the poor and working classes and to legitimize expropriation and forced displacement.

The poems you will read here have been previously published in Barricade and represent a desire to use our platforms to uplift and disseminate translations from and in solidarity with Palestinians. Barricade shares contributions on its forum Ramparts, a makeshift oppositional online space founded on the basis of urgency and necessity; Four Way Review has compiled a selection of Ramparts posts here, with the aim of expanding the reach of these writings and giving them a more permanent home.

Four Poems, Olivia Elias (trans. Jérémy Victor Robert)

SLUMROYAL, Yahya Hassan (trans. Jordan Barger)

Urgent: News of the Death of Hiba Abu Nada, João Melo (trans. G. Holleran)

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ECOPOETRY FROM JAPAN with Ryoichi Wago and Rumiko Kora, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

Thursday, 15 February 2024 by Four Way Review

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
by Judy Halebsky

THREE POEMS
by Rumiko Kora, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

FOUR POEMS
by Ryoichi Wago, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

THREE POEMS by Rumiko Kora,
trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi
FIVE POEMS by Ryoichi Wago,
trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
by Judy Halebksy
TRANSLATOR
Ayako Takahashi
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INTRODUCTION TO KORA RUMIKO & WAGO RYOICHI by Judy Halebsky

Thursday, 15 February 2024 by Judy Halebsky

THREE POEMS
by Rumiko Kora, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

FIVE POEMS
by Ryoichi Wago, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

This folio shares recent translations from two Japanese poets, Kora Rumiko (1932-2021) and Wago Ryoichi (1968-). Kora’s poems are from the second half and 20th century, and Wago’s were written following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that devastated his home region. Writing in different times and from different perspectives, these poets overlap in that their writing draws attention to environmental degradation and inequality while simultaneously voicing a strong sense of place.

Kora was born and raised in Tokyo. Her childhood was shaped by the Second World War and the devastation of the Tokyo fire bombings that she witnessed as a thirteen-year-old. In the changes of the post-war era and the rapid industrialization of the 1970s, her neighborhood grew from a small community to a bustling urban area. Her writing speaks against capitalism and colonialism. At a time when many Japanese writers were influenced by European literary forms, Kora looked toward writers from Asia and Africa, all while drawing inspiration from mythology, envisioning matriarchy, and speaking to the harms and costs of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. 

These themes are evident in her poem, A Mother Speaks, which is set within the Noh play A Killing Stone (Sesshôseki). Noh is a somber, serious theatre tradition that has been in living practice for more than six hundred years. Plays often have themes of connecting the dead with the living and of vanquishing evil spirits.  A Killing Stone references the legend of the fox spirit and Lady Tamamo’s attempt to use her supernatural power to kill the emperor. As the story goes, her plans fails and her spirit is relegated to a stone that kills any living thing that passes over it. Kora’s poem envisions Tamamo’s power, fertility, and the potential of transformation, offering an embodied, feminist perspective on the Noh play and the legend more broadly.   

Wago is a high school teacher and has lived in Fukushima prefecture his whole life. In March 2011, when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant failed, he did not evacuate, but sheltered in place in his apartment in Fukushima City, 50 miles away from the powerplant. He started a Twitter feed of thoughts and observations, which soon had thousands of followers. Pebbles of Poetry 1, from Macrh 16, 2011, marks the very beginning of his posts and the moment when people were just becoming aware of the radiation leaks. On several occasions, Wago visited areas inside the evacuation zone, a 12-mile radius of the power plant. He wore a protective suit and a radiation monitor. His poem Screening Time was written after one of those visits. Wago’s writing addresses environmental degradation with an ecopoetics that not only explores the human toll of this catastrophe, but also includes the perspectives of cows abandoned in the fields; the fruits and crops left to waste; the once vibrant towns that now stand empty; and the soil, the ocean, and the air.

January 7, 2021, is one of a series of poems that Wago wrote marking ten years since the nuclear meltdown. It voices a more composed perspective on the memories and experiences of his earlier writings. It opens with a description of flying above the evacuation zone and includes a conversation with a dairy farmer forced to evacuate the area and abandon his herd. The poem integrates quotes from Wago’s twitter feed on March 22, 2011 in the first days following the meltdown; contextualizing, in this way, the original posts, integrating them with images and details to create an immersive sense of presence. Much of Wago’s work is dedicated to restoring Fukushima prefecture, not just in terms of environmental restoration, but also of the culture and lifestyle of the region and the well-being of future generations.

Ayako Takahashi and I have translated these poems collaboratively, working together weekly over video chat since 2017. Ayako tends to favor a more literal translation, while I am often most concerned that the translations work as poems. Our hope is that we have landed someplace in the middle, maintaining with fidelity the vitality of the original works.

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FOUR POEMS by Ryoichi Wago, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

Thursday, 15 February 2024 by Four Way Review

Wago, Ryoichi. Since Fukushima. Trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi. Vagabond Press, 2023. Print.
Purchase the book here.

Screening Time

November 26th, 2011
                    —exiting the restricted area, a 20 km radius of the power station

     screening     palms
     screening     the back of my hands
     screening     with my hands up
     screening     with my hands down
     screening     over my head
     screening     the back of my head
     screening     the sole of my left shoe
     screening     the sole of my right shoe
     screening     my entire body

screening     what is outer space
screening     what is a hometown
screening     what is life
screening     what is radiation
to us 
what is most precious
what     cannot be measured

 

You

(no date)

precious 
you

what are you 
doing now

you are me 
I am you

from the obsidian depths of night
it’s you I am thinking about

     and for me
     from me

     you
     I won’t give up on

     for you
     I won’t give up

 

 

JANUARY 7th, 2021

     I swooned
     reeled
     reeling.

it was spring, one year after the disaster.
I boarded a helicopter and traveled into the restricted zone,
the 20 km surrounding the nuclear power station, 
high above, looking over the land below.

from a perfectly kept beach,
we crossed into the forbidden sky,
as though we were trespassing.

the land left just as it was that day. 

     huge, concrete wave-breaks strewn on the beach.
     houses, cars, and boats hit by the tsunami, scattered everywhere. 
     mud and stones spread across roads and fields, electric poles keeled over.
     dogs chained at front doors and left behind….

time stopped.

no.

time doesn’t exist.

     I remembered that.

dizzy. still now. 

could be. the aftershocks.

which continue even now, I think. 

the other day, I heard a story 

from a dairy farmer living within 20 km of the power station.

 “the cows were so hungry

there were teeth marks all through the barn and along the fences.

until the end, trying to find something to eat.

they wasted to skin and bones then fell over…”

*

“tomorrow, what will you be doing? tomorrow, like today, getting by. an aftershock.

tomorrow, what will you be doing? tomorrow, like today, standing here. an aftershock.

a local broadcaster says, now everyone has heard of Fukushima. if we can recover, it’s an opportunity for us, he says. we’re known all over the world. an aftershock.

we clung to hope. tried to be grateful. is there a reward? maybe. but.
our families and our roots are here. famous around the world? I’ll burn the map.

an aftershock.

it’s calm. the night air, radiation. an aftershock.”
                                           (March 22, 2011)




PEBBLES OF POETRY

                 Part 1: March 16th, 2011, 4:23 am —March 17th, 2011, 12:24 am

Such a huge catastrophe. I was staying at an evacuation center but I’ve now pulled myself together and returned home to work. Thank you for worrying about me and encouraging me, everyone. 
March 16th, 2011. 4:23 a.m.

Today, it is six days since the earthquake. My way of thinking has completely changed. 
March 16th, 2011. 4:29 a.m.

I finally got to a place where all I could do was cry. My plan now is to write poetry in a wild frenzy.
March 16th, 2011. 4:30 a.m.

Radiation is falling. It is a quiet night. 
March 16th, 2011. 4:30 a.m.

This catastrophe is so painful, and for what?
March 16th, 2011. 4:31 a.m.

Whatever meaning we can find in all this might come out in the aftermath. If so, what is the meaning of aftermath? Does this mean anything at all?
March 16th, 2011. 4:33 a.m.

What does this catastrophe want to teach us? If there’s nothing to learn from this, what should I believe in?
March 16th, 2011. 4:34 a.m.

Radiation is falling. A quiet quiet night.
March 16th, 2011. 4:35 a.m.

I was taught, “wash your hands before coming in the house.” But there isn’t any water for us to use.
March 16th, 2011. 4:37 a.m.

Relief supplies haven’t arrived in Minamisôma. I’ve heard that the delivery people don’t want to enter the town. Please save Minamisôma.
March 16th, 2011. 4:40 a.m.

For you, where do you call home? I’ll never abandon this place. It’s everything to me.
March 16th, 2011. 4:44 a.m.

I’m worried about my family’s health. They say that this amount of radiation won’t affect us very soon. Is “not very soon” the opposite of “soon”? 
March 16th, 2011. 4:53 a.m.

Well, yes, there’s clearly a border between fact and meaning. Some say that they are opposites.
March 16th, 2011. 5:32 a.m.

On a hot summer day, I like to go to a beach on the Minami-sanriku coast. On that exact spot, the day before yesterday, a hundred thousand bodies washed ashore.
March 16th, 2011. 5:34 a.m.

In a quiet moment, when I try to understand the meaning of this catastrophe, when I try to see it clearly there’s nothing, it’s meaningless, something close to darkness, that’s all.
March 16th, 2011. 10:43 p.m.

Just now, while writing, I heard a rumbling underground. Felt the tremors. I held my breath, kneeled down, and scowled at everything swinging. My life or this tragedy. In the radiation, in the rain, no one but me.
March 16th, 2011. 10:46 p.m.

Do you love someone? If it’s possible that everything we have can be lost in an instant, then all we need to do is to find some other way not to be robbed by the world. 
March 16th, 2011. 10:52 p.m.

The world has repeated both its birth and death, sustained by some celestial spirit which defies all meaning.
March 16th, 2011. 10:54 p.m.

My favorite high school gym is being used as a morgue for unidentified bodies. The high school nearby, too. 
March 16th, 2011. 10:56 p.m.

I asked my mother and father to evacuate but they couldn’t stand to leave their home. “You should go,” they said to me. I choose them. 
March 16th, 2011. 11:10 p.m.

My wife and son have already evacuated. My son calls me. As a father, do I have to decide?
March 16th, 2011. 11:11 p.m.

More and more people are evacuating from this town. I know it’s hard to leave. You can do it.
March 16th, 2011. 11:39 p.m.

Having evacuated to a safe place, the young man, twenty-something, is looking at the monitor and crying, “Don’t give up on our dear Minamisôma,” he says. What’s the sense of things in your hometown? Our hometown now, overcome with suffering, faces distorted by tears.
March 16th, 2011. 11:48 p.m.

Again, big tremors. The aftershocks we were expecting finally came. I was wondering if I should shelter under the stairs or just open the front door. Outside, in the rain, radiation is falling.
March 16th, 2011. 11:50 p.m.

The gas is on empty. Out of water, out of food, out of my mind. Alone in this apartment.
March 16th, 2011. 11:53 p.m.

A long rolling tremor. Let’s place our bets, do you win or do I win? This time I lost but next time, I’ll come out fighting.
March 16th, 2011. 11:54 p.m.

Until now, we carried on the daily lives of generation after generation, we searched for happiness, sincerity, I think.
March 16th, 2011. 11:56 p.m.

My elderly neighbor gave me a box full of onions. He grew them himself. Sadly, I’m not much for onions. The box sits in the entryway, I stare at it silently. A few days ago, I was living my ordinary life.
March 16th, 2011. 11:59 p.m.

12 am. Six days since the disaster. A sick joke! Six days since and for five days, I’ve wanted this all to be fixed.
March 17th, 2011. 12:03 a.m.

In the kitchen. Cleaning up scattered, broken dishes. Aching as I put them one by one into the garbage. Me and the kitchen and the world.
March 17th, 2011. 12:05 a.m.

No night no dawn.
March 17th, 2011. 12:24 a.m.




Ryoichi WAGO (1968–) is a poet and high school Japanese literature teacher from Fukushima City, Japan. In 2017, the French translation of his book, Pebbles of Poetry, won the Nunc Magazine award for best foreign-language poetry collection. Since March 2011, his writing has focused on the ecological devastation of the areas affected by the Tôhoku earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power station. Choirs across Japan sing his poem Abandoned Fukushima as a prayer for hope and renewal.

Ayako Takahashi and Judy Halebsky work collaboratively to translate poetry between English and Japanese.

Ayako TAKAHASHI is a scholar and translator teaching at University of Hyogo in Japan. Her recent scholarship includes the books Ambience: Ecopoetics in the Anthropocene (Shichosha, 2022) and Reading Gary Snyder (Shichosha 2018). She has published translations of many American poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Anne Waldman, and Joanne Kyger, among others (Anthology of Contemporary American Women Poets, Shichosha 2012).

Judy HALEBSKY is a poet. She is the author of Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) (University of Arkansas Press, 2020) Tree Line (New Issues 2014) and Sky=Empty, winner of the New Issue Prize (New Issues, 2010). She has also published articles on cultural translation and noh theatre. She is a professor of Literature and Language and the director of the MFA program at Dominican University of California. Ayako and Judy have been working together for several years and have previously published articles in ecopoetry and English language haiku.

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THREE POEMS by Rumiko Kora, trans. Judy Halebsky & Ayako Takahashi

Thursday, 15 February 2024 by Four Way Review

Alive, the wind

 

lifts seeds 
and carries them away
spider eggs hatch and depart on the wind
over years the wind breaks down plants into soil
we are of the wind and all of our senses
the wind breathing 
through us

 

 

Within the Trees, A Universe

                     -Sacred Forest of Kinabatangan, Malaysia

people listen to the trees speak
the trees heard the people

there is light in the woods             there was darkness 
both life and death
there are voices              and so there was silence
within the woods a universe

within the trees        a human becomes human 

 

 

A Mother Speaks

                  After seeing the noh play, A Killing Stone, Sesshôseki

 

the play starts in Nasuno province
on the stage      there’s a thick purple silk cloth 
covering a stone that was dropped 
over a field      like a cracked rotten egg 
a bird flies over the stone      and drops 
dead to the ground, any living thing, person 
or animal that touches that stone     dies

a village woman tells the story of this terrifying stone
it starts with her failed attempt      to take the emperor’s life 
which left her spirit captured within the stone 
that now casts spells      on the living

when the stone      splits open
the village woman appears as a ghost 
and the dead return      hatching through the stone
pulsing with energy      stronger than even the living

the woman’s blaring red rage steadies 
and fades to a pale color
the stone again becomes an egg 
the defeated become the victors
the lost become found      the dead revive 

she speaks, the years steal from us
we are robbed of our eggs      and escape to the wilderness
we give birth to stone children
hold them in our arms warming the stone
abreast of the thieves who stole our eggs

her ghostly feet glide      stamp the ground
a voice within the mask      scolds us 
echoing from another world
will you be ruled by this bearing      always

 

Rumiko KORA (1932-2021) was a poet, translator, and critic born and raised in Tokyo. Her book The Voice of a Mask won the Contemporary Poetry Prize in 1988. She also wrote essays and novels and co-translated an anthology of poetry from Asia and Africa. She devoted herself to promoting women’s work and was instrumental in establishing the Award for Women Writers. Much of her writing focuses on identifying the struggles and contradictions of a female gender identity.

Ayako Takahashi and Judy Halebsky work collaboratively to translate poetry between English and Japanese.

Ayako TAKAHASHI is a scholar and translator teaching at University of Hyogo in Japan. Her recent scholarship includes the books Ambience: Ecopoetics in the Anthropocene (Shichosha, 2022) and Reading Gary Snyder (Shichosha 2018). She has published translations of many American poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Anne Waldman, and Joanne Kyger, among others (Anthology of Contemporary American Women Poets, Shichosha 2012).

Judy HALEBSKY is a poet. She is the author of Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) (University of Arkansas Press, 2020) Tree Line (New Issues 2014) and Sky=Empty, winner of the New Issue Prize (New Issues, 2010). She has also published articles on cultural translation and noh theatre. She is a professor of Literature and Language and the director of the MFA program at Dominican University of California. Ayako and Judy have been working together for several years and have previously published articles in ecopoetry and English language haiku.

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SONG FOR AMERICA by Jacques Viau Renaud trans. Ariel Francisco

Tuesday, 14 November 2023 by Ariel Francisco

America, sitting atop the night’s shoulders
singing in the faces of the hungry
deciphering the language of sadness
measuring the modulation of hatred in our children’s stomachs.
America, they’ve stolen your joy
destroying the muscles in your face
tied your heart to the vigil
where thousands of beings wander
inhabited by death,
a death we drag since men, from beyond,
buried his sword, before your name on this earth.
And the dirt
and the mold
and the mud
of our sun-threshed life.

America, get up America
shake off the dust and rust inside you.
America reborn
reborn America
American men,
American women and children
listen to the tremor rumbling from the Antilles
from that stone peak giving birth
to the voice of a child singing from a tiny island
from the hammering of the scaffold
whose shoulders are built from the blows of cackles
and courage
the pure orb of “American love.”

Listen
a new howl fills the sails of America
dragged by the enemies of man
capitalists,
proxies of the temples and Bibles
in the courts of peace and death
so the truth does not burn Bolivia into thirst,
strangled with a clay cord
the heir of the Inca’s
dead on an eternal bonfire
so the light won’t awaken the sleeping quetzal
atop the ruins of aboriginal silence,
to Chile, long and vibrant,
a spear pierced through the heart of an Araucanian;
to Central America
massacred by dynamited bananas,
to Venezuela
where the capital houses their steepest gallows
and the hosts of love are an impenetrable bastion.
To Brazil with large land and few people
adorning their rags with diamonds
tears on the soldiers lapels
while in Argentina and Paraguay
blood clots hang from the commanders medals
and from chimneys rise the stench of crushed meat.
Oh America!
Now without sail
without compass
bent from hunger
bitter fruit fallen
from a shadeless tree
under whose ruined structure
the American licks the back of sadness.

Oh America!
Piece of the dissected chant,
America, America,
reborn America
burdened men of America
light your bonfires
and march towards the light that guards history.

March
inheritors of blood
Colombian cowboys
with their enormous stomachs
where sunflowers bloom.
Natives of Peru
and Ecuador sleepy with coca
raise the ancient face of purity
and tell your secrets.

And you, Puerto Rico
nailed to the jaws of hatred
small lump of sugar plagued by vermin
slow assassination 
crushed between masses of metal and glass.
Oh Puerto Rico
I love you more than any other American homeland
because you permanently inhabit the cry
I love you
I love you
I love you from Santo Domingo
dismembered corpse
shout parted in two
but born of a single throat
from a single anguish,
alone.

Oh America
piece of the dissected chant
with a luminous morning
built by the guerillas of love
who have their widest smile in Cuba.

Oh America
for you so many men fight
for you they die
how much love must be housed
to die for you
for an America not yet born
and won’t be for some time.
Americans of the new gospel
hold in your hands
our heart’s clamor
raise high our cry
tighten the knots that tie us to tenderness
the infant dawn of a smile
tied with your veins
wet with your blood
purified by your cry.

Americans of the new gospel
raise high our cry
so it survives the flood
because it will give birth to generations of happiness
an ample mankind
large as the smile of the proletarian sunrise
forever seedlings of vigor
of spilled love
while life edifies
over the debris of a past life.

Americans of 1963, of this century
evangelizers of the new world
raise your heads
raise them high
to see from afar this land that constitutes our future.
With our remains:
with our hands and bones
with our organs,
with all our being,
with this burdened life,
built to survive,
see it
and do not faint
because we are tomorrow’s fire
the eternal youth
the gesture of those who love
giving everything
taking everything
for this life submerged in your voices.

 

Jacques Viau Renaud (1941—1965) was born in Haiti and raised in the Dominican Republic following his father’s exile in 1948. During the Dominican Revolution of 1965, he joined the rebel forces in support of ousted president Juan Bosch, fighting against the US backed dictatorship. He was killed in battle at age 23.

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THE PIER by Judita Vaičiūnaitė trans. Rimas Uzgiris

Tuesday, 14 November 2023 by Rimas Uzgiris

Your torn white shirt lies
            drying on the anchor.
In the hush of my cheek
            I feel your gypsy hair, while husky
voices echo across the water
            and through night’s rusting gear.
Palms timidly touch
            the still aching secret scars.
Dawn breaks, and in its light
            I can see your heart in your eyes,
waiting for me like treasure received…
            O dawn – of boundless brutality and beauty!

 

Judita Vaičiūnaitė (1937-2001) was one of Lithuania’s leading poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She graduated from Vilnius University in 1959, and spent most of her life in Vilnius. She published over twenty books of poetry, as well as translations of poetry, poetry books for children, and plays. She worked as an editor for several leading literary journals in Lithuania.  Her poetry has been translated into English, German, Russian and other languages. Shearsman Books (UK) published a selection of her poems in 2018: Vagabond Sun. Her work has garnered numerous prizes, including the Lithuanian Writer’s Union Prize in 2000, and the national award of the Gediminas Cross in 1997.

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TWO POEMS by Stefano d’Arrigo trans. Joe Gross

Tuesday, 14 November 2023 by Joe Gross

WHEN MEEK & THUNDEROUS

 

When meek & thunderous
spring makes its mooring
& the heart wanes in wax,
honeycomb homilies
flit from fin to wing
of migrant fish & birds
wearing whispers of your name;
we imagine you, because it’s true,
your destination, too, is mystery.

 

 

 

 

OH IN ITALY A MEMORY

 

Oh in Italy a memory of the women
who turtledove-strut the windowsills
suddenly thresh their thighs
pulverizing poppies in secret
red petals of their Saracen dresses
fluttering like lustful oriflamme
in defense of the footsteps scrawled
over the island’s wind-worn cobbles.

 

Stefano D’Arrigo (b. 1919, d. 1992) was born and raised in Alì Terme, Messina, Sicily, but lived and worked in Rome as an art critic much of his life. He is the author of the poetry collection Codice siciliano (Sicilian Code, 1957), the epic Horcynus Orca (1975), the novella Cima delle nobildonne (Noblest of Noblewomen, 1985), and Il licantropo e altre prose inedite (The Lycanthrope and Other Unedited Prose, 2010), and played a minor role in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1961 directorial debut, Accattone.

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