RADISH FLOWER by Jang Seoknam, trans. Paulette Guerin and Claire Su-Yeon Park
Is a path one travels alone also a road?
The radish flower has bloomed
along a hidden path
after others have been planted.
In the swamp, the radish flower has bloomed
without a flag,
without a flagpole,
its heart coming alone,
late spring arriving with only its body.
Woo woo. Like a Molotov Cocktail,
I bloomed late, among the radish flowers.
Roads ahead and behind are blocked by blue barricades of grass and trees,
at the place of the sacred late spring.
I lived a few breathless days
along a road going alone.
Is the road no one walks
a road too?
My yellow pollen
going somewhere in late spring.
Claire Su-Yeon Park, a nursing decision scientist and poetry enthusiast, wove her research journey into three published poems in healthcare journals. Her poetic inspiration is now fueling her groundbreaking interdisciplinary research, illustrating how the poetic imagination inspires creativity in the age of artificial intelligence—a muse for scientific innovation.
Paulette Guerin lives in Arkansas and teaches writing, literature, and film. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Best New Poets, epiphany, Carve Magazine, and others. A suite of 25 poems appears in the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry. She is the author of Wading Through Lethe and the chapbook Polishing Silver.
- Published in ISSUE 28, Translation
TWO POEMS by Beatriz Pérez Pereda trans. Colleen Noland
“Untitled”Lucía nursed her anguish for thirty-six years (she didn’t know sadness is an animal that doesn’t understand flattery). There are no pictures of her: she was afraid of the eye in the camera lens, since it was said it could bewitch a soul and make feet clumsy on cliffs. Everything about her is a fable—she could have had six fingers, a third eye, been bald and missing teeth. Or, as some say, she could have been more beautiful than a quiet death—no evidence exists to disprove it. They say she got up and changed the curtains, and her hair was enough to make you love her. They say she was silent as water that watches over dreams of the drowned and her dresses seemed to anchor her to the journey she started as a child. They say she emptied her glass, listened to what her legs demanded. They say the animal praised her, caressed her, in return. I was almost named Lucía. Lucía was my grandmother. “Untitled”A dream: the sea, a port, perhaps the same one where my letters don’t arrive because I don’t know its name. A tiger comes towards me with the remains of a blue deeper than the white-water’s whisper. A tiger carrying a drowned girl’s nostalgia on its fur. A tiger without hunger, waiting to see in my eyes the chains and fire he confuses for home. I approach, and maybe the fear of the salt waves crystallizing or the clouds cacophony make my movements small. I approach, and suddenly I know, by instinct: the tigers are oil paints of water, streaked with fury, mirrors that confess before other tigers. |
Beatriz Pérez Pereda, (Mexico, 1983). A poet and member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte de Mexico, she has received the following awards: the Carmen Alardín National Poetry Prize 2022, Óscar Oliva Poetry Prize 2022, Dolores Castro Poetry Prize 2021, Amado Nervo National Poetry Prize in 2015, among others. She has published several poetry collections: Persona no humana, CONARTE, 2022; Crónicas hacia Plutón, ITAC, 2022; Habitación en sombras, IMAC 2021; Teoría sobre las aves, CECAN 2018; Los sueños del agua, Instituto Municipal de Cultura de Toluca 2013 and La impaciencia de la hoguera, IEC, 2010. She currently teaches poetry workshops and conducts interviews with writers for La Gualdra, the cultural supplement of La Jornada Zacatecas.
- Published in ISSUE 28, Translation
MOTHER TONGUE by Adil Tuniyaz trans. Munawwar Abdulla
We were born like gold
on this sparkling brown land.
It fell, ringing
from the mouth of an Uyghur angel,
its music sunk into our ears.
Oh, mother tongue,
we became wanderers,
and have moved far from your horizons.
Opium poppies
bring the scent of the seas,
thoughts kept moist for a while.
I have left the radio on.
It speaks
in the wind.
Cool orchards
Oil, sandy mountains
A group of people whose colours have drained,
dead still cities and winter pastures.
I drank coffee
and cried.
The ocean waves entered my home.
A note on Adil Tuniyaz by Munawwar Abdulla
The current whereabouts of Adil Tuniyaz is unknown. Most likely, he is in a jail in Urumchi, the capital of occupied East Turkistan, in Xinjiang, China.
Adil Tuniyaz, his wife Nezire Muhammad, eldest son Imran, and father-in-law Muhammad Salih Hajim, were all arrested in December 2017 during the Chinese government’s mass incarceration campaign that displaced millions of Uyghurs into re-education camps, prisons, and forced labor factories. The official charges for Tuniyaz and his family’s arrests were “promoting terrorism and religious extremism”. Multiple sources have speculated that the family were detained for their work translating religious texts such as Islamic hadiths into Uyghur. Muhammad Salih Hajim was a prominent religious scholar who was credited with being the first to translate the Quran (with permission from the government). He was confirmed to have died in a re-education camp in January 2018. It is difficult to know the current status of the rest of the incarcerated family.
China has denied the existence of “re-education” camps, then rebranded them as vocational training centers, then defended them as deradicalization training, and now claims that they have closed. Still, the number of prison sentences have skyrocketed, and many of those camps have always been attached to forced labor factories. People from every age group, religion, career, or academic background were targeted with no opportunity to ask for evidence for arrest or appeal for release.
Along with the crackdown on bodies, there has been a crackdown on thought. Knowledge. Language. Many writers, artists, publishers, even literature and anthropology professors, have been given long prison sentences for vague reasons with no trial. Tuniyaz’s cohort of modernist poets included Perhat Tursun, a controversial and secular writer who is now serving 16 years in prison after being arrested in January 2018 for unknown reasons. Another is Tahir Hamut, who managed to escape to the US and write about his harrowing experiences as an artist navigating state control in his book Waiting to Be Arrested at Night (2023).
While we wait to hear of Adil Tuniyaz’s fate, it feels important to share his old poetry. We sink into the softness of his longing for familiar sounds and horizons while in a foreign land. We think of his connection to identity and the way he transposes Islamic mystic elements onto Uyghur cultural motifs. I marvel at the scents and melodies he infuses into his poems. And I note the irony of translating a poem called Mother Tongue, and wonder if I have become unanchored like him, and maybe I should drink coffee, and maybe I should cry.
Adil Tuniyaz (b. 1970) is a well-known poet, journalist, and author of the books Questions for an Apple and Manifesto for Universal Poetry. He is often considered to be among the first generation of modernist Uyghur poets. Publishing his first poem in the journal Xinjiang Youth Daily at just 12 years old, Tuniyaz continued to pursue his passion for literature at Xinjiang University in Urumchi. After graduating in 1993, he became a journalist for Xinjiang Radio while continuing to publish his poems in literary journals, as well as several of his own collections of essays and poetry. In the late 1990s, he left his journalist role to continue his literary studies in Saudi Arabia, returning to Urumchi a decade later. In 2015, he and his wife, Nezire, opened the Light and Pen bookstore. Tuniyaz’s poetry often touches on topics such as Islamic mysticism, Uyghur culture and identity, and many contemporary themes that have made him a popular poet in Uyghur society.
- Published in ISSUE 28, Translation
I WILL REMEMBER by Rahile Kamal trans. Munawwar Abdulla
Today I did not comb my hair
I didn’t even look in the mirror
My kitchen greeted me icily
The walls eyed each other, but didn’t look at me
I wasn’t worth it to those four walls
It’s hilarious that my cat was scared of me
Is my appearance uglier than a cat
Is it so important to dress up
How did I get to this thought
To carry on for a day like I am not living
Doing whatever that comes to mind
To think like those who have gone mad
Firstly, I boiled the coffee in a saucepan
then added a touch of vinegar
I washed my socks in the dishwasher
Found holes in four places
tossed and turned it
and sensed that it was still sound
I tried calling my daughter mum
Can you believe she replied, yes my daughter
I will remember that my mother is also my daughter
I hesitated when it was my husband’s turn
because sometimes I do not recognise him
He has this one look
where my insides end up on my outside
That is the way I am tested
I will try calling him by another name
Wallander, I called, staring at him
Wallander is a Swedish inspector
He didn’t respond, so I repeated, Wallander
Your case is fairly complicated, huh
If we bear it for a day it will unravel itself
A gourd with no water will wear holes in itself from dryness
So he said, looking at himself
Carefully combing my unkept hair
I will remember my husband really is Wallander
The litterfall is my red carpet
The trees sway and flirt
On one foot I wear a boot, on the other a slipper
I wailed loudly in my Uyghur tongue
The Ili roads are winding, winding
On those winding roads, a pair of skylarks sing plaintive
Mournful skylark
I will remember the magnanimity of the trees and litterfall
I came upon a gaunt woman
She froze upon seeing me
then backed away slowly
barely holding back a laugh
Between the two of us one of us is crazy
I know I am faking crazy
If she is also faking crazy
it’s clear then we are both crazy
After the gaunt woman
I arrived upon a four-way intersection
Green, yellow, and red lights
were brushing the road’s pressure points
Ah the highest degree of mania
It is not at all like the imagination
The lights stand around
shining their eyes
There is only colour here
The colour yellow is calm
How mystical is the red
How loving is the green
Some people would say I was calm
when they became toothless snakes and bit me
They would say I was a loving woman
when they hid the sun behind their hems
They would say I was a mystical woman
when I became crazy like this
Again a green light
On yellow we prepare
Red summons
I raised my right leg
I raised it and
I saw a woman stretched out on the ground
Her white hair uncombed
On her right foot a boot, on her left a slipper
Mournful and restless
Oh, this crazy, whining woman
said the gaunt woman
whispering
Oh, this lunatic woman
said the cat
muttering
The woman lying on the floor looked like me
but was not me
The green light was still on
I will remember the countenance of the colour green
I recalled all my memories
My vinegar flavoured coffee
My holey socks
My daughter mother
Wallander
My litterfall
My madness
These are all my green lights
Rahile Kamal is a poet born in Ghulja, East Turkistan, where she worked as an editor, reporter, and editor-in-chief at the Ili Evening Newspaper from 1993 until 2004. She was a prolific writer, publishing numerous poems and other literary works in various newspapers and magazines, many of which received prestigious awards. However, after migrating to Sweden in 2004, it was only after 2016 that Rahile rekindled her passion for writing and began publishing again in journals such as Izdinish and Ittipaq. Her poems have been translated to Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and English. In May 2022, she published her poetry collection titled Kamal is Gone in Istanbul, and she has upcoming work in the anthology Uyghur Poems, which will be published by Penguin Random House in November 2023.
- Published in ISSUE 28, Translation
A FLOWER THAT REFUSES TO BE POETRY by Kim Hyesoon trans. Cindy Juyoung Ok
Anything too cold
does not become poetry
Anything too hot
is not poetry
Soaking your feet
in boiling water
does not bring out poetry
Lying on the ice
with eyes wide open
does not bring out poetry
That day no one wrote poetry
They just made a call
Secretly picked up the receiver
Blew and sent off poetry
—Did they wear new clothes?
—No, just took off their old clothes.
That day no one wrote poetry and
they ripped a wedding dress
to make bandages and
held rice bowls
to make coffins to contain each of their heads
Anything too beautiful
is not poetry
That day when they opened their mouths and
cried as though for the first time
that was not poetry
merely
the blooming of an entire city
floating on the field of the earth
a flower that refuses to be poetry!
TRANSLATOR BIO:
Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024), a Kenyon Review Fellow, and host of the Poetry Magazine Podcast. More translations from Kim Hyesoon’s The Hell of That Star are in Bennington Review, Poet Lore, and Tupelo Quarterly.
- Published in ISSUE 27, Translation
TWO POEMS by Abdourahman Waberi trans. Nancy Naomi Carlson
Sahel! Sa(y) Hel(lo)
Mother earth The gods are seeing red The earth the sea In India an old legend persists He sings of the wandering caravan driver who didn’t What remains of our oldest forebears the reptiles |
Every Being Is UniqueI’m a sponge Heaven is on earth and nowhere else You’re getting too old, son Inscribe in your notebook these expressions The sun opens the inkwell to the day The cock’s crow As a child one sometimes confides Every being is unique |
Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation of Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull) won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her second full-length poetry collection, as well as Delicates, her co-translation of Wendy Guerra, were noted in The New York Times. She serves as the Translations Editor for On the Seawall.
- Published in ISSUE 27, Translation
THREE POEMS by Nadja Küchenmeister trans. Aimee Chor
at the base
no one quite knew how late it was
when it was too late: i came back
a breeze took my hand, the courtyard
recognized me, as always, without waking
i picked out the old names on the name plates
bein, puhahn, henke, brumm, i let them dry
no clothespins on the clothesline
where there was a puddle, no longer a puddle
where no trees stood, there stood trees
the hedge conversed with me, softly, a shadow
under the ping pong table, only the lifespan of the streetlights
seemed longer than an afternoon: mr. schatta
has slept in the graveyard for twenty-five years
for twenty-five years i have been asleep too
no one quite knows how late it is, when it is too late
benches without backrests, as always deli-counter light
the small flakes on my lips, that scrap of skin
i push around at the base of my tongue, i am.
after the conversations
it is as if your furniture had decided
on its own where it would like to stand
a circumspect silence of wood
the bed in its corner in the hall
the bookshelves, their load
mystery novels, political texts
there is nostalgia for plastic
bags near the closet i catch
a scent, harsh in its sweetness
wallpaper flakes away here and there
from the walls, where did the brownish stain
on the ceiling come from, on the dresser
a framed photo of my childhood
friends, they are still looking at you
silent and dusty: this is how one grows old.
scorpion or spider
you’re saying something about matter and dark space
and your arms spread out wide, as if you wanted
to cradle a zeppelin, stars, electrodes
voices approach, grow distant, monitors
something hisses, your lungs, and these white
machines, seductively cold, know almost everything
about you, cables, hoses, the door hangs lightly
on its hinges on a glowing hot sunday
afternoon dust motes float in the air like bird
feathers on water…we follow them
as they fall, flakes of skin fall
we do not hear the steps in the hall
until we see shoes, an animal in my back
scorpion or spider, marks the break: i could not
find a container for the teeth, i’m sorry, nor
for the toothbrush, the comb, there are more hand
kerchiefs in the bag, the phone and your reading glasses
two shirts, socks, some pairs of underpants.
Aimee Chor is a poet and translator in Seattle. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Sepia, The Apple Valley Review, AzonaL, and mercury firs. She can be found on Twitter @aimeechor and at https://commonplaces.netlify.app.
- Published in ISSUE 27, Translation
INVITATION TO END by Faris Kuseyri trans. Patrick Sykes
A woman puts an orange in her husband’s pocket
and her longing I saw
they’re opening unmarked graves with warrants
and silence’s strength I saw
truth bound, the papers lie
and hate in the words I saw
grace in the bazaar, conscience in exile
and the feigned surprise I saw
driven again to my pencil’s mercy
and the invitation to end I saw
from poison mouths the children kissing the vine
and their glass bravery I saw
Patrick Sykes is a journalist and writer based in Istanbul, Turkey.
- Published in ISSUE 27, Poetry, Translation
from YOU by Chantal Neveu trans. Erín Moure
first his breathing then his pupils
I watch his mouth
its furrows its swells
slight circle of his irises
the black hole a tube
he sees me
impulsion
an implicit programmatics
ascension
the facades the borough
remanence of Rio
a yard a garden
the staircase
winding
its gradations
compelling
the maples
alongside
the false acacias
figuration of caresses
swirled rumour of a fountain
faint sound
metallic taste of the city
a magnetism
from palate to nostrils
infra-resonance
warm silver
low table
the flakes of fish
air under the studio ceiling
a loge
we make acquaintance
summer solstice alters the sky
we deflect curiosity by foreseeing questions
private
spheres
spontaneous revelation
the ineffable
freshness of a stream
are we already naked
bared
we expose ourselves
fluidity
gravity
propensity
the charm
the intimacy
premise of a banquet
Hephaistos
Aristophanes
vestiges dionysiae vertiges
Empedocles
happiness
tenor of futures put to the test
at ease
we name
great loves
inflections
decades
les fidélités
promises made
offenses injuries miracles
the enduring friendships
gaie santé
current genealogy
virtual group portrait
numerous
already
he stands up
draughts
the bamboo imbibe their fill of rainwater
transfer of delectation
euphoria
temptation reparation
congruency
catalysis
paradoxical privilege
incursion
permissiveness
we draw close
to kiss
convergence
Erín Moure is a poet and poetry translator. Most recently: Chus Pato’s The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021) from Galician, and Chantal Neveu’s This Radiant Life (which won the 2021 Governor General’s Award for translation from French and the Nelson Ball Prize). A new book of poetry, Theophylline: A Poetic Migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké, has just been published by House of Anansi. https://erinmoure.mystrikingly.com Photo Credit: E. Sampedrin
- Published in ISSUE 27, Translation
THREE POEMS by Anne Vegter trans. Astrid Alben
With permission from the publisher
WILDCARD
A light-hearted lullaby this, not much happens
that doesn’t already happen somewhere else:
a garnet-red baby opens wide its tiny jungle mouth.
Familiar to all who read them, lullabies are
about kisses, jealousies and parents / keepers.
Raging in the pillow, rising like a statue made of ash.
A parent is a house. Gooey goo-goo. Food, milk,
lalala. A lullaby disentangles love.
Be joyous and light touch. Filter light,
the air is of an invaluable purity.
Compared to wellbeing I daresay it’s cloud-cuckoo.
Parents / moods / components of the growth machine:
baby’s first, baby’s own, baby’s living it up. Joyous,
carefree bellowing in a sun-drenched nursery. Done.
Hearts plead, hearts steam: Adonai —
give me back my stalemates, my singular days, my intact membranes.
ISLAND MOUNTAIN GLACIER, PART IV
Even when I, in this minute of my kingdom, in this household of seasons (jan steen), in this
temple (breath), leave it all to you (here sweetie, for you) I elevate your thin meat to a spectacle.
Even when I touch the memory of your hips, your hands tiger my uh-huh parts
ingest me (tongue chest lips) and I read my gape from your lips or should that be gave.
Selections from the Appendix
Appendix
Just like a poem, a translation emerges out of its own possibilities. It is built up of layers, alternate states that enter the work and flow through it. Options, possibilities, stabs, trials and errors, interpretations and choices are made, discarded, brought back, revived, knocked about, improved and transformed.
I got to dissect and study Anne Vegter’s craft as I worked on these translations of her poems. This was a gift. More than a reader, a translator becomes the work’s mechanic. I dismantled each poem, uncovered its particulars, brilliance, magical flurries, flaws, oddities and the syntactical, semantic, sonic, rhythmic bones and muscles that hold it together. On my desk, the poems to be pulled apart, experimented on and reassembled in the new language. Like twins wearing different outfits and sporting different hairstyles, the original and the translation are intimately related yet distinctly separate entities.
Translations are like poems, a work in progress. It is nothing more complicated than that. And then, of course, it is. This appendix shares my process, isolating my choices and keeping the layers of possibility visible for the reader to create their own arrangements and, where necessary, to improve the translations. For I am but one of what I expect will be many more translators bringing Vegter’s writing to an English readership.
Astrid Alben, 2021
TRAMPS
You spoke of an emotional chill, below zero you said it was between
my thighs in the departure lounge. After your bag we hugged heart to heart,
I could’ve joyfully sucked you off. Are you even listening?
We resembled wiry birds; you designed a deathblow on paper,
had yourself a little after-fun with your boredom. It got tricky finding reasons that way.
When the glass slips from your fingers you go find a cure for cracks and salt.
The carpet grins. Will finally someone stand the fuck up and hold me?
TRAMPS
You talked about air temperature, below zero between my legs you said in the
departure lounge. After your bag we hugged each other coeur à coeur,
man I could have blown you I was so happy. Are you still listening.
We reproduced rigid birds, a deathblow’s what you designed on paper
had a little after-fun with your boredom. It became tricky to find reasons that way.
When the glass jolts / jumps / leaps from your finger you look for a cure / remedy against cracks and salt.
The carpet grins. Will finally someone stand the fuck up and hold me.
VAGABONDS
You talked about instinct-heat / emotion-temperature, you found it below zero in the
departure lounge. After your bag we hugged each other coeur à coeur,
happy as a lark ready to blow you. Are you still listening.
We faked / forged / imitated rigid birds, you designed a deathblow / deathly fall on paper
had some after-fun with your boredom. It became tricky to find reasons [in] this way / method / manner.
If the glass leaps from your finger you look for something / a cure against cracks and salt.
The carpet / rug / runner smirks. Will someone stand the fuck up and hold me.
Astrid Alben is a poet, editor and translator. Her most recent collection is Plainspeak (Prototype, 2019) and Little Dead Rabbit (Prototype, 2022).
- Published in ISSUE 26, Poetry, Translation
CHEWING BETEL NUT by Mark Dorado trans. Eric Abalajon and Mark Dorado
This mouth
grows in it a forest
born from the spit
of the gods
of my land;
chews a wildfire
that blackens the stumps of my teeth;
hums the serenade
of our greatest hunters.
This mouth can utter to life
the many names of our ancestors
the conquerors could never
wrap their tongues around,
the ones they spat with regret
as their teeth disintegrated,
choking on the sharp
inflections of the names
of our oceans,
mountains,
warriors.
Oh, to speak
of love and freedom
is cruelty
to a colonizer’s tongue.
Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the UP Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, ANMLY, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He lives near Iloilo City.
- Published in ISSUE 26, Poetry, Translation
THE GARDEN IS THIS GARDEN by Hélène Cixous trans. Beverley Bie Brahic
|
My days come and go, their almost motionless river is swept with traces, am I in the river’s current or on the edge? I see the shores of Lethe. The river repeats itself unchangingly, on and on, endlessly until we heave ourselves, the river and me, out.
The garden is This Garden. This garden is populated with an indefinite number of presences and visits. Seated on a bench, This Bench, I almost don’t notice a furtive future thought that thinks: I was sitting on This Bench, at the corner of the house where the cat goes out of sight, where Eve my mother, seen only by my hallucinating eye, sits in her usual chair under the strawberry trees.
Memories? No memories, no reproductions of visitors in an album frozen in time but waves, glints of reflections, of instants, bits and pieces, allusions, syllables, sometimes just letters, but capitals, a swarm of winged motes, the dead are not dead, all my old cats go by, hurried thoughts between the paths of present cats, a characteristic of this populace is incessant movement, I do not know what drives them, is it the wind, the spirits, the gods, my beating heart? –No one is dead as long as I am here to greet and traipse after them –Do you remember my sonnet 81? Shakespeare says, the sonnet that has kept me company from May 26, 1954 to this day May 26, 2020, we’ve never been apart, today is the same May 26, between us immortality reigns, a love which does not alter that’s why we are able to remember a sonnet, inscribed in the magic stone of the book: I open Shakespeare and the young sounds of the sonnet prophetic of our mysterious future memories are written on its paper lips. ‘Your monument shall be my gentle verse, / Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read.’ I have never been able to read these lines in vain, sixty-six months of May readingreading
from ‘Rêvoir’ , translation forthcoming 2024 from Seagull Books. |
Beverley Bie Brahic is a Paris-based translator and author of four collections of poetry, including the 2012 Forward Prize finalist White Sheets. Her translations include works by Charles Baudelaire, Yves Bonnefoy, Hélène Cixous and Francis Ponge. Guillaume Apollinaire: The Little Auto was awarded the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. (Photo Credit: Michael Brahic)
- Published in ISSUE 26, Poetry, Translation