 Welcome, I'm Esther Allen, a professor at City University of New York and here with me is Allison Markin Powell, who translates Japanese literature and works with the Penn Translation Committee. She and I are co organizers of translating the future the conference you are now attending. Thank you Esther, and thank you all for joining us for the final event in our Tuesday conversation series week 20. Today we'll be hearing from two luminary writers and translators about their works in progress and how they make progress in our uncertain present, guided in a discussion about the elusive art of translation by a brilliant moderator. Kate Briggs is the author of this little art and is currently working on a book titled at the long form, which finds a philosophy of the novel in the daily lives of a new mother and her baby. Tracy K Smith is the author of four collections of poetry and a memoir, and her collaboration with Ching Tai B on the translation of the poems of he lay. My name will grow wide like a tree will be published in November. Montalina Edwards is a writer, actor and translator from Spanish and Portuguese. She has translated a long list of authors, and her own work has appeared in an even longer list of publications. You can read their full and fascinating bios on the Center for the Humanities site. We'd like to express our gratitude to the sponsor of today's event, the Princeton University program in translation and intercultural communication. Before we start talking about the art of translation, we'd like to take one more moment to remember the dangers of translation and to salute the work of red tea, the first and only nonprofit that exclusively advocates for translators and interpreters in high risk settings including war zones, detention centers and sites of political unrest, where translators and interpreters are persecuted, imprisoned, abducted and assassinated with impunity. Founded by Maya Hess, who I'm proud to say, received her PhD from City University of New York. Red Tea has spearheaded the open letter project, which alongside partners such as Penn International advocates for better asylum policies for combat linguists. Red Tea has also issued the first guide for translators and interpreters in conflict zones. It drafts expert opinions for court cases involving translators and interpreters, and it connects individual translators and interpreters with resources to get them out of harm's way. To learn more about Red Tea's work and to support it, you can visit red-tea.org. Translating the future will culminate this week with several marquee events on our original conference date. We're getting tomorrow, Wednesday, with a double billing of post-modern-lingual New York, exploring how the city's immigrant communities have always enriched its linguistic texture, and translating for a world on fire, featuring Maria, Davina Hedley and Emily Wilson, authors of new translations of Beowulf and the Odyssey, respectively. That will be followed Thursday by an exploration of democracy and translation, with Natalie Diaz, Ken Yu, and Marilyn Nelson. And our final finale event on Friday, a flight of Tokarchuk translators, will feature 12 of Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarchuk's translators from around the world, moderated by Susan Harris of Words Without Borders. So, let's turn now for all of those events on the Center for the Humanities website. Translating the Future is convened by Penn America's Translation Committee, which advocates on behalf of literary translators, working to foster a wider understanding of their art and offering professional resources for translators, publishers, critics, bloggers, and others with an interest in international literature. The committee is currently co-chaired by Lynn Miller-Lachman and Larissa Kaiser. For more information, look for translation resources at penn.org. Please keep in mind, as usual, that you can email your questions for today's speakers, Tracy, Kate, and Magdalena to translatingthefuture2020 at gmail.com. We'll keep questions anonymous, unless you note in your email that you would like us to read your name. If you know anyone who is unable to join us for today's livestream or any of those we've done for the last 19 weeks, recordings are available on the HowlRound and Center for the Humanities sites, as well as in the Penn Archive. Before we turn it over to Tracy, Kate, and Magdalena, we'd like to offer our utmost and eternal gratitude to our partners at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY, the Martin E. Siegel Theater Center, the Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Penn America, and the Masters of Dark Zoom Magic at HowlRound, who make this livestream possible. And now, over to you three. Hello, Tracy and Kate. And thank you also to Allison and to Esther and to all of the partners and supporters of this incredible series. I want to jump right in to our conversation, beginning with a question about the title of today's event. And Tracy, I'd like to begin with you and I'd like to know, what do you find most elusive about translation as a practice and what for you is most concrete? I love the question, which is in some ways itself elusive to me. I feel like every, every poem that I've set out to translate has been kind of a new initiation into this art form for me. This is the first work that I've really dedicated myself to bringing into English, and it's from a language that I don't myself speak so the many different modes of listening and collaborating have changed this from what I might have imagined it otherwise could have been. I think that finding the road into a text is the elusive thing. Sometimes I feel that it's a visceral connection. Sometimes for me with these poems that I first encountered in a very like rudimentary English form. I was trying to get past the language to a sense of the images or the impulses that set them into motion. And that always felt to me like a kind of dance and a kind of like a prayer almost to be a receptive medium for another person's voice and thoughts. And those are the things that have also been so exhilarating to me. I find that the poems that were hardest for me to find my way into often were the ones that taught me the most about what I was seeking to do because I had to play these different kinds of very concrete games like, okay, I'm having a difficult time stepping into the thought process of this poem. So I'm going to translate it backwards and see if the images can guide me until I forget that I'm attempting to do something and then I'm just in conversation with this. And I love the fact that every time I opened up this document with Elie's poems. I had no idea what the approach or the, you know, the dance would be like. Yeah. Kate, but what would you say for you as elusive and what's concrete. Yeah, thank you. It's beautiful to hear Tracy talk about that process. I think, for me, if I'm honest, when I first saw the title actually the elusive art of translation, I think part of me was kind of resistance. And not elusive, you know, not at least not in the sense of something that's kind of hard to reach or hard to get at or that requires some special process of initiation in order to begin. I was thinking something more like the concrete, Tracy's book of concrete games, you know, the concrete art of translation or the embodied art of translation or the laborious art of translation. In the book, This Little Art, one of the ambitions was really to try and bring the practice into relation with ordinary everyday experiences of life and kind of try to show how translation happens in such kind of settings, embodied kind of settings. So with that kind of ambition in mind, I would say no to elusive and then I was thinking about this and then thinking about what it feels like at my desk recently trying to translate a sentence, you know, a three word sentence from and understanding it feeling kind of fairly confident that I've understood it and feeling like it's making me feel something, you know, feeling it having a sense of its charge or its energy and feeling sensing that there are probably maybe sort of two or three possible solutions available to me, and I set them down, I said one down, I deleted, I put another down, I deleted, I said another one down, and, and that you know trying to trying there to catch it something. And there it feels like elusive would be exactly the right term this, this idea of kind of, you know that you can hear something or that you can feel something or there's a charge of something. But how, what do you have how what kind of net. Can you make, can you construct that can actually hold that and I think for me that often realize that it can't happen at the level of the sentence actually it's always about then how that sentence is is acting in relation to another sentence somewhere in other words choice somewhere else it's about kind of sort of slowly weaving this much bigger net that might catch something of that. Of what I think I hear so there so I would say no to elusive and then, and then, and then a yes kind of emphatic yes to elusive. I mean, it sounds like in an interesting way, what each of you is getting at is, there's no one path, each time that's the same, or even for for one text if it's a say it's a novel, or a series of chapters or poems, each one is going to demand different things and I love this idea of starting backwards, and also this Tracy you're talking about this kind of wanting it to feel not like it's, you're trying very hard to make it work, but rather to have the feeling of the of this piece of art or language that that is meant to have the reader have an experience. I like the resistance to the word elusive as well. Yeah, I feel like it's also in some way, at least for me a dance around my relationship to authority. You know, okay I don't have authorial authority. I don't have a command of the language. And so can I when do I allow myself to trust that what I'm receiving from this poem in the form that I'm getting it is something I should be authorized to act upon and to kind of offer as the one of the central concerns or one of the central offerings of the of the experience of the poem. And that's an interesting, you know, set of questions and inhibitions that I think, ideally you work work through and they become less and less of a constraint. The further into a poem that you get, but I often found myself saying okay, this is what these poems are saying to me, and I feel so compelled by these, these facets and these these powers that the poem seems to have. But I really hope that somebody else will hear something else and act upon that and do the work of translating this in a different way and somehow that was very freeing for me to think I wasn't going to be. I wasn't going to be the last person I'm not the first person. And what I can offer is a version of my own conversation with this poet. So I've really enjoyed reading each of your works as in preparation for this and sort of thinking about palms Tracy that you've written and also Kate from this little art reading, you know your meditations on translation and on language and on various things. And so I wanted to read a little snippet from from each of you and sort of throw that into this conversation see where that might take us. And so the first one and I think it these connect also with these questions of body and dance and a kind of giving and taking. The first one is from is from Kate is from Kate's book this little art, and I just love this moment where you say, I read with my body. I read and move to translate with my body, and my body is not the same as yours. And Tracy this the section I chose is to read of your work it comes from the poem self portrait as the letter why, which is such an interesting title so evocative for me self portrait is something that's different perhaps than the speaker herself. And this comes from the book the body's question. And the section is this, I am invisible here, like I like it. The language you taught me rolls from your mouth and to mine, the way kids will pass smoke between them. You feed it to me, until my heart grows fat. I feed you tiny black eggs, I feed you my very own soft truth. The scene and this image and this exchange makes me think a lot of ways about translation, perhaps as as something that is that is not only exchange but also perhaps even can be can be erotic. And this then brings me Tracy to this translation project that you that you've been working on that comes out in November so I just want to throw that all in and see where that will take us. I guess I guess to begin with the sentences that you read my mind and what I had in mind there is what I have in mind or who the work I have in mind kind of ongoing throughout this little art or the lecture courses on lecture courses and, and and there kind of distantly I think, or maybe not so distantly and maybe a few pages away from those lines. I've written about a list that made in his autobiography of sorts translated by Richard Howard which is just a simple list apparently simple list of likes and dislikes. I like, he says, I like cinnamon, I like slow walks, I like very cold beer, I dislike women in trousers, harpsichords, the afternoon you know these kind of, and so he has this list is very quite well known list of preferences of tastes I guess and that those two paragraphs end with him writing you know what does this mean. What does that want to say you know, actually it means nothing or it's, it has no significance, apart from to say my body is not is different from yours, you know my body is not the same as yours. So I was just very caught by this kind of expression of preference, which might seem like the smallest things you know the smallest like cold beer rather than whatever you know coincide or something like the smallest preferences but to think about making a kind of space for translation where, where, or an account of translation where those sorts of preferences are kind of possible to affirm and to hold to, and perhaps even Tracy was talking about authority to kind of ground an authority. But at the same time, you know, thinking about one's preferences, you know, for like blue jumpers or whatever it might be, or lipstick or, you know, I think, thinking, thinking that is that one doesn't stop I don't think it's possible to kind of all one should sort of stop an affirmation of preference. It seems that that to me that it also kind of opens up a space of inquiry where we might start thinking thinking we're certainly when you're translating to think about, why do I prefer this way of that way you know why do I like it like this, why, especially when it comes to the use of language, why does this sound right and good to me. And how far can I affirm that that is a kind of individuated preference and how far am I kind of reproducing some kind of norm that I might have inherited or received so it also I think translation does bring you up against your, your preferences like not harpsichords, you know, or your your kind of received aesthetic aesthetics of a sentence of a line in really really interesting and challenging ways and that's one of the reasons why it's so, I think valuable to do it so again it's sort of have wanting to say both to affirm the bodily and the fact that bodies are different and we translate, you know, from our bodies and we are under different pressures and kind of oriented a different way, but at the same time, sort of think out why and how that might be and how they might change possibly through the process of doing it. I love that. I love that sense that you know we can begin with what we're drawn to what speaks to us in the, the language be it you know made up of any essence that is home for us. But then that other thing that you're talking about which is, Okay, now I think I need to also acknowledge what I'm drawn to. I think about what the other facets of this work are calling me to submit to, to learn to seek to, to love or question in different ways. I felt that a lot. There are aspects of Eli's work that speak to me so emphatically and they have to do with theme, and they have to do with a beautiful sense of image and the features that were, I had to kind of submit to were the ones that had to do with what feels oracular, or what sometimes feels, you know, like it's built of an emphatic repetitive insistence. And I think it was a really beautiful revelation to say, I, I need to take myself out of this work more. I need to recognize okay this is what the me that that loves certain things can do within this space. I also have to remember to take some of that out and honor these other, these other facets of the work, which is beautiful. I think it kind of speaks to the, the sense that I'm, I am here in the lines that you quote from my poem, which is, this is an act of love in a way this is an act of finding a shared language for really heightening proximity, or porousness to people. And that's really an exciting thing to do as a writer, because most of what I find myself doing is is about going into myself is about thinking in, you know, very solitary terms hoping that psychically I can make a connection to something deeper or bigger than me or buried deep within me but it's a very different thing to say no, I want to be conduit for someone else. And that's kind of what, what love invites us to do in different ways. I certainly felt myself, you know, actually literally falling in love with the person that whose work I was translating and having the good fortune of being able to talk with her. In a very triangulated way. And to, to, I hope, take something from her that lives in my poetry now, you know. Yes, yes, and everything that you say also really resonates for me with what you brought up before about pushing against authority, and maybe not having this authorial or authority kind of position at the same time what Kate was also speaking about in her voice. And, you know, choosing to prefer it this way feel through it that way, and to have that generosity. Also, as you were describing to take yourself out of it more. I'm in it too much myself and I wonder if, if he lay herself if you feel that in her poems that speaker is also doing that kind of gesture of taking herself out in certain moments. One question I wanted to ask you about your experience of translating her work is, what was it like to work with the co translator. And, and also how did you feel, because I was reading a little bit about your meeting her for the first time in New York City and then having this opportunity to go visit her, you know, on her turf, and how, and how, how was that sort of comparative or experience or duet even of interlocution. And so many different, like the geometry of the relationship is really interesting. The way that we work together because he lay had hardly any English and I don't speak Chinese at all was through, you know, Chen Tai be who goes by David. And so I found myself working from this, this kind of bare bones, literal translation. And the bearer the better because there were moments when he brought in a kind of lilt or something that he thought was beautiful and so it occluded something that I needed to be able to hear. So that negotiation was interesting. But then to see him take my poem and back translated for her. So she could witness the changes that I had made. Some of them had to do with image systems that I thought could better carry a sense in English. And, and so it became a truly did feel like a collaboration. There were things that she liked about the changes and there were moments when she said you've pulled this, you're, you're only listening to this layer of my poem. You're only listening to the layer of this poem that has to do with desire, or with the female sexual power. But this is a poem that's also about government or this is a poem that's also about authoritarian, you know, law. I need you to hear both of these things and so to to be guided to kind of think about the distribution of my awareness within a poem was really exciting and to know that it wasn't threatening to her to see what I chose and what I what I didn't necessarily want to say, but rather an invitation to kind of educate me about these poems. That was really delightful, as it was delightful seeing her, her grow into her fuller self when we were in Beijing, and she was leading me around and introducing me to the people that were her peers and protégés and eating together all of the things that kind of, you know, we build a, you know, talking about the things we like, and how they, they are so emblematic of what we have to say and how being able to share in that together was really wonderful. It would be fascinating also to see those various drafts and that exchange and that dance, you know. I mean that that's where I wish I spoke more languages, because of course I could never appreciate the Chinese original or the translation back from yours but but if one could get a sense of all of that. And then and then of course it's all layered in the final translation. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about your new project, which I I've sort of thinking a little have been thinking a little bit about as a duet of sorts, between a new kind of translation work you were describing from the French right and then working on a novel of your own. And so can you tell us a little bit about this, these two, these two. I mean, I have a lot. Yeah, thinking also everything that was just said, maybe it does connect. I think it does connect. The sense that I didn't my this sort of most formative translation experience so far has been with an author with whom I, I had a very strong sense of working with and writing with, especially at the level of the translation but also at the level of the writing, this little art being as kind of making a kind of space of writing and thinking with in that book but but where the dynamic or the reciprocity was not was not as Tracy described in in her situation. But for many reasons to do with, you know, being alive or dead one thing but also to do with a kind of canonical established philosopher writer figure and and being a kind of very enthused willing student of that work but with with a very kind of uncertain sense of her own identity we're talking about myself as a as a as a writer as a thinker as a so where it felt like the kind of distribution of the distribution to distribute a distribution I guess it of power or agency or or was was was just different different to what I think Tracy is describing is having experience then and in a way that connects. I think in this little art there's one point towards the end of the book where I talk about trying, I tried to make an analogy again sort of bringing translation in relation to the ordinary. Every day very common experiences between translation and childcare. And the hinge of that analogy is is the is the reality, what for me felt like the reality of taking responsibility for something that I couldn't expect to be responsible for me. So kind of asymmetrical kind of one directional responsibility that you might have with a with a baby, you know, I'm responsible for you. You're not responsible for me I know that sounds slightly unlikely to kind of put hold on to this late work in the position of the baby in that scenario. I really don't know. Yeah, yeah, anyway, we could talk about whether or not he would be in anyway interested in that but for me that sense of like, I'm speaking for you I'm not expecting you to speak for me that's kind of not possible it's not reversible in that way. And that connects I guess to this this will very much for me to this, this, this project which is, I keep calling it new but it's been sort of three years or so now which is a, which is an effort to try and think through fiction, the kind of fictional days of living out, living out and living with this, the unproductive sort of unpredictable needy open form of a baby with that kind of long form of kind of discontinuous continuity and demand and response that that produces in the kinds of the level of the sort of texture of the days and to try and think that together with the kind of just oddly interruptive long form of the novel, which I know when I say it like that it sounds kind of completely opaque even to me, right. What that actually might, might look like, but the, the effort is to try and hold this sort of novelistic storytelling element together or kind of hold it in relation to a more essayistic kind of philosophical element of thinking about what, what kind of thing the novel is. And in relation to that, I have been translating. And I've been working just but very in a very un, un contracted kind of personal way through preference actually and through learning which is the term that Tracy used a book by Elen Becet, which was written in 1954, called Matana, which is set in a, in a Matanel and it's kind of an experimental novel of early years childcare in a way. And it's extraordinary. I find it extraordinary. It's very strange but very exciting at the level of, of the page and spacing and line breaking and capitalization and things that I'm trying to do in my own book, and then kind of found this, this, this, what is she a kind of instructor in a way. So I've been working on, on, on, on translating that alongside or just quite, quite recently alongside my own projects as a kind of learning experience. I think this idea that the translation is something that we are responsible for, but it's not responsible for us is so very interesting. And also, I really appreciate how you, you get into questions of, of childcare and caretaking in this little in, you know, in a very real way. And that, that brings me to a question, I think, for so many people right now, during this pandemic during this time of all kinds of upheaval and, you know, the three of us have to have young children who are home all the time they How, how are you, how are the two of you possibly keeping going with your work. And I, and I mean, the most kind, the most specific kind of concrete, you know, techniques or, or hacks, and, and even if there's spiritual mantras or something that was working for you and I'm asking not for a friend I'm asking for me. Oh, yeah, it's been such an interesting, you know, I can't even it's like more than a season now this this year really. And I've gone like everybody I think through many stages of feeling overwhelmed feeling angry feeling just dominated by reality. And to feeling, okay, actually the chaos of family 24 seven everything in one space. Maybe I can try and enjoy this. And one of the things that has kind of been helpful for my work, which I didn't have any, you know, impression that I would be able to attend to was, I guess, really just creating a practice of meditation. You know, my, they're the world. Questions of, you know, public health questions of justice, anxiety of leadership, all of this stuff is truly maddening. I mean, just the way that we relate to people that we know that we've known for a long time which is also a form of, you know, like just burden. And so the meditation for me has been really useful just to turn the volume down, but it's also guided me to start thinking about where my work my own work might seek to come from in a different way. In some ways, maybe it's similar to what happens when you're listening to another writer's voice and trying to draw what is true from it in service of that voice. This feels like I'm trying to listen to the deep me, or whatever I believe that I'm, I'm attuned to, and to draw something that can feel useful or even necessary to this moment. And that's felt really like such a such a gift to have to find poems out of this this time to find that my obsession with the news which many of us have can actually yield a body of poetry that is is speaking back to or seeking to speak through some of this found language. And I feel like there's a big lesson in all of this, which is, you know, we just mothers are really good at making space but actually we humans can be even better at doing that, then we already have learned to be. And I think it's about finding for me opportunity for silence and patience because you can't just sit right down and then get insight. Sometimes you have to fight against yourself in order to wait for it. And to parse it. And that's that happens sometimes when I'm sitting and writing but to imagine that that can precede the act of writing. That's very different for me. And then I can go back to picking up Legos and trying to get my kids back on the zoom classroom and, and doing all the things that that family life allows us to do. I mean, I feel like in a way of. Yeah, I mean it's a very big question of how I feel I think I feel surprised in a way, I've been wondering it why, why it is that I have felt it possible to kind of work on going or kind of just sort of keep a sort of sense of if in a project or investment in a project through this through this time like what why when I know, and I don't think it's any sort of particular special quality in me because I know you know many, many friends and, you know, felt found that really difficult to just find the kind of relevance in, you know, in relation to all of these things that we're experiencing. I think, I mean, in terms of a kind of practical sort of organization of my day one thing I did do when my children were locked down began was just started to just claim two hours in the morning I get up earlier, earlier than anyone else. And it was also sort of spring and you know the light was changing. And I just come come up to the space I work in and have two hours before going back into the into the tangley kind of lego sort of day and doing that felt just really important for my own kind of well being and just just doing a small push at work which often meant just reading and just being with with the kind of books that I've set around this project and that I'm thinking with. And I guess, I think maybe that what hasn't happened yet and I think if it did happen I would think I would be in serious existential crisis but I mean serious in the sense that it's something that I that has held me as a kind of one thing I'm trying to think about in this book the long form is is the book as a kind of holding device. And that's also a way of connecting it to to holding in a kind of win a cotton sense of what it holding a child a kind of responsive holding and books do, they have always, for whatever reason to do with preference or luck or education or privilege or held me and I, and I do believe I haven't lost faith in the technology of the book as a, as offering a space that I can enter and just live in with with someone else's energy and time and imagination for a while. And it, not that that makes me out entirely from from my own life or my own reality because I'm always being kind of pulled back into it and but but I believe in, you know, believe in their capacity to do that so the so sort of writing books, even though it takes things to take me quite a while, it does feel like an ongoingly meaningful thing to do just in, and I, I measure that against how, how much they, they mean to me in times, you know, like this of uncertainty. Yeah. I think that idea of the of the book, or the poem, as a space you can enter into which of course suggests you're going to leave where you are, and the freeing this of that and kind of read read becoming reacquainted with the power really for I've been reading a lot. I've been writing a little bit less lately but I've been reading a lot and it's been so satisfying to read in a way that that I recall from when I was like a kid. Right like the summer there's nothing happening you're kind of bored your parents won't take you anywhere you're just in the back of the house or the garage or whatever just reading reading reading. And I was hoping that that perhaps each of you might want to read something for us today before we take questions from from listeners. I'll share I can I'd love to share a poem of a lay hearing you talk Kate it also reminds me of something like none of us had guilt. And this the context of that which is sometimes what the motherhood slash being the selfish writer makes me feel. And I think there's something about this time that has absolved us of a lot of the unnecessary guilt that we felt. Maybe because things have collapsed and we've we've been able to kind of just dwell in what what is beautiful about going to this place thinking about books thinking about voices listening. Maybe I'll read a poem that is. Well I'm going to read this poem which is a little bit it feels a little bit unusual for a lay. It's called black hair. And I'm reading it because it's one of many examples of how something that arises out of her life or her, you know, vocabulary of experience or awareness intersected with mine from a very coming from a very different when I saw a poem called black hair as a black woman that met so many things to me that I knew it did not mean to elay, and yet the act of translating the poem allowed those different sets of concerns to kind of play together which I really loved. Black hair. Black hair like youth runs wild in March. Dark papery leaves fly teaming swarming bum rushing March black hair in March is gentle strangers eyes softer memory, a feast on offer. Born of the primordial see embrace me, drape my skin oldest clouds and something suppler. Black hair blown free rootless wanders the deserts countless tombs sways across a vacant sky whips it fresh mud in rain days blaze past. I have lost sight of my own black hair in the mirror. Let me watch it now for the next 1000 years black hair weedy and dirt poor soil, thirsty, diluted squandering its spoils black hair has no idea. The story of black hair is my story. When I die, let me drift like a dandelion of black hair black hair, like holy water. No way. There is no way to be saved, except to die. When black hair cries, its tears snuff themselves out like candles. So will my life cease to flicker. Black hair exhausted brush fire fanned by misery whistling through the last century. Black hair shredded black flag of a woman's glory ragged and battered in March wind, forsaking dignity, absolved of chastity with its pride in knots black hair smiles easily in March. If waterfall, it will plummet if cloud, it will scatter eyes plaintive wide black hair waits to be spun by hardened hands into rock. Thank you Tracy that was extraordinary. I think for me that that there's so many things to think about and to say in relation to that but as listening to you kind of pronounce those words with your body and and you know occupy the eye of the poem and at least in the moment of that reading. It just really makes me think of the way that translation is, you know, in the best case scenario is not a it's not a layering, you know, it's a setting alongside. It's something that exists and still permanently exists and here is something new that exists that is in in direct conversational perspective relation to to what caused it what prompted it and what it couldn't exist without, but they're now two things, and then and they're conversing, and, and, and what you said about about the kind of resonance of hair black hair just just that just came across really powerfully, and also not they're conversing but they're also creating a kind of space in between them kind of charges between them. Thanks for that this exciting to me I also feel like oh I understood I've understood so many ways that translation is you know it's it's a creative act it's an active of excavation it's an active like honoring and archiving and it's an act of political act in many ways but this felt like at this, you know, at this time, creating a space for communion, love that exists between, you know, unlikely, unlikely pairs seem so important. And that that made me feel very excited to think oh, we can see one another in ways that we, we may never have thought were possible. And that's, that's another really good reason to to cross these lines and to undertake this, this kind of conversation, in a way. Unlikely pairing. Yeah, likely and unlikely pairings. And also I think maybe in this in this time, going back to, and I'm saying this because I haven't prepared anything to read. I mean, I'm not just feeling at home but also because I'm well just because these this everything just feels very fragile and I sort of a woman, not quite reasonable in this in this in this format but just going back to to what Michael and I picked up on about that question of preferences or my body's not the same as yours I think there's also, and you know I do believe that it's important to think through why we might turn our attention to this rather than that what is it that makes us lean towards this rather than that I do think that's that's vital work and as part of what I think translation asks of us but I also think it's so important, maybe right now as well to be able to affirm your own, your right to your own preferences as well to say you know this is how this is what I like to do you know this this is, this is how I like to organize my day in these open days of, you know, non time and just say this small thing I like this, hold to it. So, the right to one's own preferences feels really important. Kate Kate you had mentioned that. Well now you said the word fragility, which I think is so important, you know to not be ready to share but to also enjoy for yourself that fragility, and you had mentioned that this new project of translation is a kind of improvised translation. I would like to, to say just a little bit about that like, what, what do you mean by improvised and what is the, what is the preference or the pleasure the joy that might come from that. Thank you yeah I said that in an email exchange with you and I love it as a as part of your own practice and I think your own in your own interests and investments, you kind of zoomed in on that and I think I was thinking what did I mean I, I, I guess I mean improvisation in the sense of improvisation, which feels in many ways like the wrong way to start a translation that one ought to be prepared and one ought to be qualified and one ought to be learned enough to undertake this but I guess I like and that's part of the, of the invitation I was hoping to make with this little art is to say, within the sphere of at the moment my own interests of course, you know when it becomes a question of publishing and making public. It's one of the factors to consider but at the moment, I'm just going to begin. You know, I see this page, and I see this weird typography in this spacing and, and this matter now, which whether you know this, this, this early years scenes that are being created for me on the start and then, and see what that does, then and trust also in the way the process of translation will lead me towards what I then need to learn and be responsible for it doesn't absolve me, starting doesn't absolve me of responsibility, it just leads me towards me to think about reading more of her work reading her biography thinking about her manifesto, you know, and so on and so forth so that's I guess what I mean is just again like affirming a right maybe to begin. Yeah, for me but also for everyone at for others, you know. So amazing. This is so wonderful to hear the three of you in conversation and as always, I would love to just let this continue but we do have several questions from from viewers that we've brought to you and if there's time I have a question of my own and I might like to ask. So, one of the questions that came in is for both of you. I say I love the metaphor of translation as dance, and then there was a follow up the same person wrote back and said that something that Tracy said reminded her of reminded the writer at of a speech that Tony Morrison gave called the dancing mind. So the question is, can you talk about the listening that you find yourself engaged in as you translate. What are the modes of listening, you are aware of engaging as a translator. I often feel that listening is the, the mode that drives my work as a writer at least that's what I tell myself. I am listening to and through and trying to find what I otherwise I'm not equipped to notice or to. You know, like, it's kind of own up to, and I think that, you know, there's a different kind of listening that's at stake here which is what. What is this poem that's burying its soul. What is it offering and what does it want. What does it want me to lean toward. I know that when you're reading a poem and those are the features that that you you notice and that you respond to and that you question and dwell upon. When you're reading a kind of a literal translation, you notice these those things and you also notice areas where you know something more is there than what you're getting. And that was the kind of listening that I found myself daunted by and then really loving to think. Okay, I can, I can recognize these images. I can recognize this logical clause here. But what is the poet really, you know, what is she what is she confounded by and what is she conjuring by by bringing these things together and can I leap into that space. And sometimes it meant, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to think about the hot spots in this poem and allow them to activate something for me. And sometimes it was allowing my own mind to associate a little bit. But those were the those were the forms of listening that I was conscious of and then of course there's a mode of listening that's like I'm stuck this is what I hear but I can't. And that's where, you know, I had recourse to Eli for years of this process. And that was great. And then she you know she's she's passed on now. And so thinking what what what drives her. What are what are these other poems obsessed with that have spoken to me. And how can I trust that this poem that I'm struggling with is in conversation with those in some way. So some of it is, you know, a kind of inventive or willful form of listening that also ideally gets you to the next thing that's concrete that you can really, really trust. I mean, I think for me in bringing listening towards dance I think I love dance I love dancing and I love watching dance and I'm not but I'm a very amateur dancer, but it's something about rhythm I think is and is is is really important to me as a writer and like and in terms of preference of what one might be drawn to I think with this writer Ellen Bassett I think what and what I find in her is is this kind of strange kind of untimely off kind of rhythm which you know, like when you, if this happens to you if you like dancing or you know when you're dancing in front of dancing well or not well but with joy or, you know, abandoned and and to sort of catching the energy and wanting to dance I often, you know, watching someone dance I want to dance to, you know, and there's something about that. I think for me that powers or is the energy source of my, my writing and my translation is is is sort of reading and feeling kind of a sort of agitation as often a rhythmic agitation which is as much to do with as rhythm is to do with the delay and spacing as it is to with anything else kind of gaps between things that kind of agitates me into wanting to dance to or write to. So it is about that a kind of responding, responding with my own energy to the energy that I can that I can hear. And then, yeah, and rhythm is is a crucial part of that, to the point where is part of life hacks of, you know, I was asking about, I do if I'm working and I've been sitting down for a long time I do, and I'm alone, which is not that often nowadays but I will just put really loud music on dance about. So, a question has come in that's for you Kate that's the perfect follow up to that one. The person says that they especially like the form of this little art. How did you decide to arrange the book and what do you think it's organization can tell us about how we speak about read about think about right and understand translation and literature. Wow. Thank you. I think just answer, maybe I could talk for a long, long time if we were together in a different setting to the question that I think for me the key thing was, and it has to do with, I guess the question of authority that Tracy mentioned earlier of how, it's troubling to me through the translation process and through the writing process, who am I, who am I to, who am I to it was a big issue for me, who am I to translate this work and then who am I to pronounce on translation for others. Not and how to do that in a way that precisely isn't for others but trying to kind of affirm what was particular to me and try to find ways to open that up in such a way that others might join me or find kind of common ground with me. So the form was very much related to that I wanted to make an open kind of book where you might, and that's why there is this kind of address between you and me, or me and you throughout a kind of informality to the book which is trying to make it capacious enough that you know dissenting think a dissenting translator to come in and just occupy that space with me for a while so the organization did very much have to do with rhythm and pacing and trying to to sort of arrive at a mode of doing argument of doing argumentation but that felt narrativized and dramatized to the point where when when I arrive at a question or or or proposition it lands and I think that has very much to do with kind of pacing and rhythm, but it also had to do with trying to make space for for others to join me in the common thing, which is the book, which isn't the thing that's external to me. We have another question this one is for Tracy. How did the experience of working with a change how you interact with the translators of your own poems. How does being translated feel to you. I like that. I am after or do it as this project was kind of culminating. The Spanish translation of weight in the water was beginning and I speak Spanish, and I felt that unlike previous translations I wasn't afraid I just wanted to. I didn't want to say okay I'll let them, I'll let them do this I'll answer their questions, but I want it to be their act. The translator Andrea Cote Pupero is really wonderful at just wanting to kind of like have the relationship with me that I had with a lay in terms of let's talk what what are you thinking about what do you care about. You read your poems out loud and and she's closed the distance between me and her version of my poems in a way that's felt really beautiful. I think I was probably afraid before the first translations of my work I think we're in languages that I don't speak. So I just had to trust. And this brought me into an awareness that oh no this can be a really kind of a shared endeavor. And that's that's how I've received the gift of Andrea's work on my work. And I hope that future translations will be like I met he lay through my Chinese translator, whom I've never met, but he said you guys I know your work and I know her work and you need to know one another. And that was a really beautiful gift. So, I hope I'll have other relationships like that. I think it's a great story to think about how what brought you as a poet and a writer to translation. And if I may take the last few minutes that my question. I think is most attracted to Tracy but anyone's welcome to answer it but I think in this whole transcending the future and thinking about it seems like right now there isn't, there's there aren't as many writers and poets who are finding translation in ways in a way like the way that you have. And I'm just, I think often about how to bring more, more writers into this world that we're in of translation and I wonder if you have any thoughts on your experience. I really love the way that this happened it was kind of like a setup in a way. After Elaine I had already begun our relationship with on her poems. I was invited to a translation workshop that Ming D conducts in China every fall usually, and Elaine came to that. What actually happens there is writers in one language, sit across from writers in another language and work on an in a single poem together or two or three poems over the course of a day with help from bilingual people. It allows those of us who see ourselves as unlikely translators because we don't have a strong sense of authority within within a single language to say oh but I can, I can cross the stream. I can, I can do this thing of listening and interpreting and conversing. And I feel like there should just be more more opportunities for such exchange. I think the people who know that this is something they can do. But I love to think that the poets I love in their own language could also become guides for me to to poetry and other and other from other places. What do you think about that question. Or do we have another minute. I have 229 on my cloud. Okay. I would just say, in the extent to what was just said that I think translation is the most extraordinary education and many kinds of into many kinds of things, many kinds of questions but one of them is writing. And, you know, is kind of making a space a kind of forum for thinking about how writing happens what it does how it behaves you know, I would think, and also a way of affirming. I teach I teach with a lot of I teach with that work with artists and that almost always speaking English as a second or third language, and trying to use translation as a way of also kind of affirming the knowledge and the resources and given that the language of instruction is English so to think of translation as a way is kind of something that's brought in to writing pedagogy. Not just kind of a question of linguistic competence but but I think it could be brought into so many different fields meaning fully and also thinking of younger you've children, you know, so much earlier as a way of affirming and exploring competence and feel, you know, bodies of knowledge and so on so I am very, yeah, I'm very pro translation by opening up translation as a practice for the more. Thank you all so much this has been unforgettable. Perfect wonderful thank you Magdalena for that great framing and those questions. And Allison has some final thank yous. It was a beautiful moderation Magdalena thank you so much. And once again we'd like to thank our partners, how around pen America, the Center for the humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY, the Coleman Center for scholars and writers at the New York Public Library, and the Marnie Siegel Theater Center, and to the Princeton University program in translation and intercultural communication for their support of today's event. And thank you all for watching translating the future. Thank you. Thank you.