Thaw E-Book

Victor Rodriguez Nunez

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Thaw is a book-length sequence of short poems, all ten lines long. Like haiku, at first glance these seem simple meditations on nature that, when given time, open out into a larger reflections on human experience, emotions and how the three interact.Nuñez enjoys playing with symbols, allowing images to break out into intellectual puzzles and literary references, and resulting in a sequence that is both shadowy and illuminating, tender and insistent, broad and deeply personal.Víctor Rodríguez Núñez has published eleven books of poetry, many of them recipients of literary awards, including Spain's Leonor Prize (2006), Rincón de la Victoria Prize (2010) and Jaime Gil de Biedma Prize (2011). His poems appear in several magazines in the UK and the US, as well as the Arc collection The Infinite's Ash. He is currently an Associate Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, Ohio.Katherine M Hedeen also teaches at Kenyon College, and co-edits (alongside Núñez) the Earthworks Series of Latin American Poetry in Translation for Salt in the UK.This title is also available from Amazon as an eBook.

Leseprobe

IN A TIME OF BURNING

âK‰¶ ªè£‡®¼‚°‹ «ïó‹

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright in the poems © Cheran 2013

Translation copyright © Lakshmi Holmström 2013

Introduction copyright © Sascha Ebeling 2013

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013

Design by Tony Ward

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

978 1906570 32 3 (pbk)

978 1906570 33 0 (hbk)

978 1908376 49 7 (ebook)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The translator wishes to thank the poet Cheran for his endless patience and good humour. It has been a privilege to work with him for many years. Her thanks also go to Sascha Ebeling for useful discussions and for his introduction to this book, and to R. Pathmanabhan Iyer for providing several images of northern Sri Lanka, and for his support in other ways. She is especially grateful to the Arc team for their encouragement throughout this project.

The publishers would like to thank Kannan Sundaram of Kalachuvadu Publications, Cheran’s publisher in Tamil, for providing the Tamil texts reproduced here, and Ben Styles for his painstaking laying out of this book.

Some of the poems in this selection have appeared elsewhere: ‘Amma, Don’t Weep’ and ‘Midnight Mass’ in Chelva Kanaganayakam (ed.) Lutesong and Lament (Toronto: Tsar, 2001); ‘The Sea’ in Wake Magazine (Norwich: 2005); ‘I Could Forget All This’ in Modern Poetry in Translation 3, 6 (2006) and in Ravi Shankar et al. (eds), Language for a New Century (New York: 2008); ‘Amma, Don’t Weep’, ‘I Could Forget All This’, ‘Sunset’ and ‘Rajani’ in Lakshmi Holmström et al. (eds), The Rapids of a Great River (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009); ‘21 May 1986’ in Exiled Ink (Autumn / Winter 2009) and in Talisman (Summer / Autumn 2010); ‘A Second Sunrise’ and ‘Apocalypse’ in Haydens Ferry Review (Nov. 2010).

A number of these poems also appeared in A Second Sunrise: Poems by Cheran, edited and translated by Lakshmi Holmström and Sascha Ebeling, (New Delhi: Navayana, 2012).

Cover image: ‘Vavuniya Lake’ by Dr. Sivathas

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part, nor of the whole, of this book may take place in any form without the written permission of Arc Publications.

Arc Publications ‘Visible Poets’ – Series Editor: Jean Boase-Beier

CHERAN

IN A TIME OF BURNING

âK‰¶ ªè£‡®¼‚°‹ «ïó‹

Translated by

Lakshmi Holmström

Introduced by

Sascha Ebeling

2013

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme supported by Bloomberg and Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and its understanding, uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and promote the friendly co-operation of writers and free exchange of ideas.

Each year, a dedicated committee of professionals selects books that are translated into English from a wide variety of foreign languages. We award grants to UK publishers to help translate, promote, market and champion these titles. Our aim is to celebrate books of outstanding literary quality, which have a clear link to the PEN charter and promote free speech and intercultural understanding.

In 2011, Writers in Translation’s outstanding work and contribution to diversity in the UK literary scene was recognised by Arts Council England. English PEN was awarded a threefold increase in funding to develop its support for world writing in translation.

www.englishpen.org

CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Note

Translator’s Preface

Introduction

ñ¬ö

•

A Rainy Day

èì™

•

The Sea

HKî™

•

Parting

è£ù™ õK

•

A Sea-Shore Song

âù¶ Gô‹

•

My Land

Þó‡ì£õ¶ ÅKò àîò‹

•

A Second Sunrise

Üõ˜èœ Üõ¬ù„ ²†´‚ ªè£¡ø«ð£¶

•

When They Shot Him Dead

ó£µõ ºè£IL¼‰¶ è®îƒèœ

•

Letters From an Army Camp

â™ô£õŸ¬ø»‹ ñø‰¶Mìô£‹

•

I Could Forget All This

ï£ƒèœ â¬î Þö‰«î£‹?

•

What Have We Lost?

å¼ Cƒè÷ˆ «î£N‚° â¿Fò¶

•

A Letter To a Sinhala Friend

Ü‹ñ£ Üö£«î

•

Amma, Don’t Weep

♫ô£¬ó»‹ «ð£™ Ü‰î «ïóˆF™ c ÜöM™¬ô

•

You Didn’t Weep That Day

21 «ñ 1986

•

21 May 1986

âK‰¶ªè£‡®¼‚°‹ «ïó‹

•

In a Time of Burning

ó£TQ

•

Rajani

°ö‰¬îèœ

•

Children

áN

•

Apocalypse

ªð£¿¶ ꣌‰î¶

•

Sunset

«èœ

•

Ask

Gø‹

•

Colour

ïœOó¾Š Ì¬ê

•

Midnight Mass

ªê‹ñE

•

Chemmani

ñ„꣜

•

Cousin

ÝŸøƒè¬óJ™

•

On the Banks of the River

åO ðó¾‹ ªð¼‹ ªð£¿¶

•

A Season of Pervading Light

ªî£¬ô«ðC ܬöŠ¹

•

Telephone Call

ï‰F‚èì™

•

Nandikadal

ñí™ ªõO

•

A Stretch of Sand

Þ¼œ

•

Darkness

èìL¡ è¬î

•

The Sea’s Story

áN‚°Š H¡

•

After Apocalypse

F¬í ñò‚è‹

•

Merged Landscapes

â¬î  àù‚°ˆ F¼ŠHˆ î¼õ¶?

•

What Shall I Return to You?

èó®J¡ è¬î

•

About a Bear

è£ì£ŸÁ

•

Forest-Healing

Translator’s Notes

Biographical Notes

SERIES EDITOR’S NOTE

The ‘Visible Poets’ series was established in 2000, and sets out to challenge the view that translated poetry could or should be read without regard to the process of translation it had undergone. Since then, things have moved on. Today there is more translated poetry available and more debate on its nature, its status, and its relation to its original. We know that translated poetry is neither English poetry that has mysteriously arisen from a hidden foreign source, nor is it foreign poetry that has silently rewritten itself in English. We are more aware that translation lies at the heart of all our cultural exchange; without it, we must remain artistically and intellectually insular.

One of the aims of the series was, and still is, to enrich our poetry with the very best work that has appeared elsewhere in the world. And the poetry-reading public is now more aware than it was at the start of this century that translation cannot simply be done by anyone with two languages. The translation of poetry is a creative act, and translated poetry stands or falls on the strength of the poet-translator’s art. For this reason ‘Visible Poets’ publishes only the work of the best translators, and gives each of them space, in a Preface, to talk about the trials and pleasures of their work.

From the start, ‘Visible Poets’ books have been bilingual. Many readers will not speak the languages of the original poetry but they, too, are invited to compare the look and shape of the English poems with the originals. Those who can are encouraged to read both. Translation and original are presented side-by-side because translations do not displace the originals; they shed new light on them and are in turn themselves illuminated by the presence of their source poems. By drawing the readers’ attention to the act of translation itself, it is the aim of these books to make the work of both the original poets and their translators more visible.

Jean Boase-Beier

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

This anthology is a small selection of poems by Cheran, one of the most important poets writing in Tamil today. Cheran, a Sri Lankan by birth, began writing at a time when the ethnic conflict within the country was rapidly escalating into civil war. His poetry charts the narrative of that war of more than three decades, and its aftermath. The narrative gains poignancy because it is set against a landscape once idyllic, now devastated. Yet this is not the only narrative in his body of work. Woven through are love poems which are often, even in his earliest work, shadowed by uncertainty and loss. Yet another theme is that of displacement, exile, and the experience of diaspora. Within such a range, the translator must read each poem afresh, but also as part of a larger story.

Cheran steadfastly refused to align himself with any of the political groups within the Tamil community. This has enabled him speak out against all atrocities committed, both by the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil militants. He sees his role as chronicler and witness: the poet is often present within the frame of the poem, watching, commenting, indicting. The ‘voice’ in the war poems is finely judged: to reflect it is one of the challenges facing a translator. The rhetoric is often that of direct address, close to oral delivery; public and personal at the same time. Such a voice is noticeable in the elegies to friends who were killed; they are poems of personal grief, but also of communal mourning; testimonies to friendships and humanity. Many poems are records of specific events, some of them brutal in the extreme, but the specific becomes also a comment on the Sri Lankan war as a whole. Because of these complexities, Cheran’s poetry is both a vivid and moving account of a particular war, whose horrors have not yet come to an end, and at the same time of profound relevance to us, our times and the world we live in.

Similar to the shifts in the voice are the shifts in pace and rhythm within the poems. Many of the early poems are lyrical, with lilting rhythms and carefully placed refrains, the sea poems echoing the rocking of waves. Yet often there will be a surprise ending, with a change of pace as well as voice. There are fine variations of pace, rhythm and tone in many of the war poems. For example, in Tamil, the first three verses of ‘I Could Forget All This’ are all part of one long sentence enacting a headlong flight along a road in Colombo full of terrible sights and scattered body-parts. The pace is equally headlong; the long sentence strings together surreal and fragmented images as they flash past. The last verse, by contrast, is one single poignant memory: the pace slows down with the conjunction aanaal, “but”. That aanaal