酷我-北美枫

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Yesterday joined Kate Marshall Flaherty’s sponemous writing workshop, this morning I practiced...here are three short poems for three friends:

River of Life
For 巴山夜雨

The old memories grow in you；
you carry them day after day-
a sad long river mourning her losses.
Let me to be here to listen.
Let me walk with you along the long bank.
They say-
One cannot enter the same river twice.
I hear you weep-
They are wrong, wrong again.

Book Lover
For Frank Wang

Your love for books is the light
sometimes comforting you
most times consoling us
Each day a few lines
yet they might take us our whole life

See the snow falls and melts
Each moment we resolve things
in accepting then letting go

Living Your Dream
For Iris He

In our interview, I see a mirrored self
We are not alone, not the dying one
In your hometown, wintersweets bloom
in the coldest time
you carry them in your heart

The further you travel,
the more bittersweet they blossom,
Each with a dream to rise,
each with wings to fly...

Thank WePoetry 【海外詩粹】for a special issue of poetry and translation for 《Mirrors and Windows/镜子与窗户》 ( 2021-01-17. USA)

https://wepoetry.com/mirrors-and-windows-translated-poems-by-anna-yin/

作家哈金曾经说过：對汉语寫作者而言用英文寫作是很難的。那就像蓋房子：別人蓋房子，就地取材就可以了，而你卻要連牆磚這些基件都要自己動手。
他甚至認為：如果你的慣有思維已經在一種語境中駕輕就熟，大可選擇更讓你遊刃有餘的語言去寫。他坦诚他尝试英文寫作完全是職業和生活双重压力所迫。
我不知道诗人安娜對此會不會有不同的感受。安娜的第一職業是IT工程師，她說：寫詩、詩譯、辦詩課堂完全是興趣使然。似乎並沒有“被逼迫”的成分在裡面，憑著一份對詩歌的單純的愛，她一次次去到大師中間汲取經驗並敢於用她略帶口音的英語大聲朗誦自己的詩。用字正腔圓的中文演繹他們的詩。安娜詩譯中精選出來的四位詩人有著各自不同的詩路詩風和彼此無法替代的語言特質：莫莉詩歌中格律有致的古體詩範，莫里茨詩歌中略帶哀傷的迷幻詩境，愛麗絲的個體至愛於宇宙星體間的微妙關係，喬治與先人的對望中，極富哲理性的思索。安娜的翻譯都將其中的詩眼一一細緻地勾勒了出來。
而在整個翻譯過程中，安娜不僅是一個忠實的讀者，也展現了她的詩人本質。因為唯有好的詩人才能將詩之聲韻氣息、重音低調把握得如此恰到好處。也唯有
好的讀者才能把自己藏身到原作者的語境中去思考，把原詩中的精魂邀了來，到譯本中作客讓兩個代表不同文化的靈魂成為朋友，還原和傳遞最本真的詩歌意涵，而這才是安娜以為的最有意義的事了。正如她在英文詩歌所寫道的：
「現在我看著葉子和果實，
石子和星辰，
每一個都是一首新詩。
我也咬到了它多汁的果實。」
就此而言，無論是“被迫”還是自投“詩歌”這張大網的，只要樂而為之，並把他們當成一門藝術，一門學問， 並且持之以恆地去做，都會結出好的果子來的。

Vivian雯 2021/01/10 於紐約[img][/img]

George Elliott Clarke reading at Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice- at Aurora Public Library

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXuxT0OA_-k

Poetry Night | Readings with Canadian Poets Laureate

Q/A: Poets Laureate’s Role discussion among four poets laureate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX2uTSxiGjY&feature=emb_title

https://matthewrettino.com/2014/02/12/whylah-falls-by-george-elliott-clarke/

George's videos:

https://socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed-video/stir-it-up/

Exile
for Kwame Dawes

Your scuttled pays floats – fiery – in the ether;
Blazing, it vomits smudge-smoke. Your mind chars
Black because you yaw – moth-like – too near flames.
You douse your dream-scorched brain with slave-sweat rum –
The only gold you can own, corroding
Your liver. Your anthem plays to gunfire.
When you think about it (when you can breathe) –
After all the lies that frame nostalgia,
All the dead faces that occupy photographs,
All the slain lovers pitched into ditches,
Your eyes itch and ache with water, then dry –
Curling like dead leaves, starving for gold fire.

Self-Composed

It’s today
That I can see
Daisies play
At being me.

Beaming gold,
They bend and sway –
Limber, bold,
Anarchic, ..

Holding out
Their leaves like hands,
They don’t shout
Or make demands.

They’re quiet,
Quite, but not shy:
Their riot
Is their beauty.

If I seem
A weed to some
Eyes, I dream –
And flower I am.

Language fabricates intimates:
The very alphabet pledges incipient pleasantries –
to rollick in letters,
to kiss without kissing….

(Note the glib efficacy of the tongue
at lying;
or to indulge injurious prophesying;
or, wielding a battering-ram limerick,
to hurl a potentate off a pedestal.)

Keats, I come to you as a back-page spectre,
a wanton haunt,
my unidentifiable shadow
crossing over your lines,
to find in Thee –
beyond the grave’s beguiling caricature –
arborescent headstone –
Thy iconic Glamour
that cancels the grave’s purgatorial visibility.

Thou art never as marginal as a corpse,
but sprout poems like gilded lilies –
opaque ink jetting white sunlight –
la dolce vita of Liberty –
what flowers from your acreage –
as vast as the (Roman) alphabet…

[Roma (Italia) 15 février mmxiv]

Experience 1: 1-9 by George Elliott Clarke

History is nothing like what is reported.
(Hard to drain light from mud.)

Trumpets don’t usher in Heaven.

Truth blinds, but Deceit dazzles.

Flames that don’t gleam are smoke.

Manure gerrymanders gardens:
Eden flowers from shit.

Fine wine refines urine.

Politics is PREJUDICE.

Behind these black letters?
White bone, invisible breath.

Bread is eternal.
But your words?

– Zurich, Switzerland. 14 September, 2011.

George Elliott Clarke and Anna Yin will discuss poetry, translations and life experiences. They will discuss about how to write poetry related to political issues, difficult history and identity etc.

The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke is a revered artist in song, drama, fiction, screenplay, essays, and poetry. Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960, Clarke was educated at the University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Queen’s University. Clarke is also a pioneering scholar of African-Canadian literature. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard. He holds eight honorary doctorates, plus appointments to the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. His recognitions include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry,, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

https://www.georgeelliottclarke.net/full-biography

Alice reading another math-related poem, "Rectangularization of the Morbidity Curve" (along with some upfront explanation of the metaphor). -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43A3dqTVq2E

Advice to the Lovelorn by Alice Major

We are observing Eros,
raddled asteroid, lumpish and erratic,
on a loopy path such that
our planet and that planetoid
just might find themselves
one day trying to inhabit
the same point on their intersecting lines.

So keep a wary eye on it.
It’s no sleek bow-directed arrow,
this potato-shaped tumbler
aimed at no particular target in the dark,
just a stranger across a room
that could suddenly become
much too crowded.

Remember this and contemplate
the drowned crater of Chicxulub,
where an asteroid stove in the planet’s rib,
turned rock to instant liquid
and instantly back to mountain, a crumpled scab.
And how the noise was heard two thousand miles away –
everyone knew your business. How dark
the skies turned, whole species lying down
to die in the shadows.

But remember too –
you can’t see that crater now.
The blue gulf washes over it.
Small creatures you’d previously ignored
became more interesting, filled in the gaps.

And always remember,
though nothing will ever be
the same, still you
are bigger than it is.

Alice Major and Anna Yin will discuss poetry, translations and life experiences. They will explore how to get inspirations from science and how to write poetry with an interesting and understandable view related to science.

Alice Major‘s 11th poetry collection is “Welcome to the Anthropocene”. published by the University of Alberta Press. Science has been a source of inspiration for much of her work, including an award-winning collection of essays: “Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science.” Alice served as the first poet laureate for her home city of Edmonton and her honours include an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Alberta. www.alicemajor.com

The muse of universes

Once in a trillion years
the muse of universes
claps her hands. And, with that shock
of light, reverses

an aeon of drift, dilution,
the outward-rolling wave
of dark and the illusion
of end times.

A new draft, she orders
and the universe erupts
into rhyme, fields and forces
echoing. She rebuts

formlessness, sparks stanzas
from an alphabet of particles,
spells out what matters, what
radiates, what tickles

the fancy into galaxies
with gravity’s feather pen.
She unrolls the scroll of space,
says, There. Now try again.

- by Alice Major
from Standard Candles, University of Alberta Press

Please feel free to respond or add on...I will share on our Poetry In Translation events! #poetry #translation

On Translation Anna Yin 2020/08/21

Sometimes it’s a maze
I fall into.
I call for light, for a guide,
struggle to find my way…
finally, out of it,
I am not myself.

Sometimes it’s a lake,
clear to see.
I swim across it with ease.
Looking back,
I find my own mark left behind.

Sometimes it’s a dialogue,
words longing for one another.
Two languages stream like songs,
chiming from the deep.

Sometimes it’s a dream
I walk into yours,
and find you waiting,
then you lead me
through each door
with your own key.