What Sparks Poetry is a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Translated from the Arabic by Bryar Bajalan and Shook
       1

I spent twenty-five years in exile's bar, all in cash
Examining time's skull on a rusty table
The saxophone screeched at me from eternity's throat

What is exile?!


       2

In the past:
A house of mud — the smell of tobacco permitting the morning to rise —
A cup of tea, the neighbours's chatter and the newspaper
Raising hope on the mast of determination
Forgetting yesterday's massacre
Simmering our separation or anticipating a new day.

*

Bureaucracy ruined your day
Your capital is time in the landfill


       3

A fifth drink or five in the morning
My companion in the hotel room
Devours time
You don't grasp for the cup but bow your head in respect
Nor do you grasp for a kiss with an empty cup
Between me and the cigarette something comes to mind
Between the cigarette and the bedcover something that wouldn't occur to you
But the morning emerges
Between the sign and its name
Or between the pillows and their cotton
The sun goes down but yesterday has yet to set


       4

Exile is a void — I remember its ecstasy when I make my home
Or when the only thing to make its home is the taste of remembrance
I remember the names of those who departed, one by one
I was one of them
I remember the names of those who were buried
I remember your name or the names of those yet to be born
This was exile
With its countless nights


       5

You need roots to establish yourself in the soil
Esoteric knowledge of petrology and the taxonomy of plants
Reptilian species and the nature of the seasons
The phyla of birds, etc.

You need so much to be someone else
from the book A FRIEND'S KITCHEN / Poetry Translation Center
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Cover of Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's book, A Friend's Kitchen
What Sparks Poetry:
Shook on Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's "Asylum Papers"

"Working closely with Saddiq, we developed an intimate process of co-translation across continents. Starting with Bryar’s initial cribs, we returned to the Arabic together, experimenting and reworking the transfer of some poems’ complicated syntax into English and unpacking the poems’ many allusions. Because of our close relationship with Saddiq, we were able both to clarify imagery specific to the Sudanese context and to seek his approval for some of the bolder leaps we hoped would make his poetry sing in English as it does in Arabic."
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Black-and-white head-and-shoulders headshot of Michael Dumanis
"A Conversation with Michael Dumanis"

"Everything I say and write in English gets translated in my head into a Russian analog, and I am often thinking about Russian diction, syntax, and idiom when writing in English. This opens up possibilities for how a sentence is structured or enjambed which might not occur to me if I weren’t thinking of English as a more flexible system than a typical native speaker probably does. Because I keep involuntarily translating back and forth, I am always thinking in language about language, and never really know where I’m headed until I arrive."

via THE ADROIT JOURNAL
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