Poem a Day in Translation

I had the pleasure of meeting Clifton Gachagua a few days after I fell in love with 'Promenade'. And being me, of course asked him about the poem: what inspired it; what does it mean; who's the dog; the lady? He shrugged as all genius creatives do when asked such needless questions; for once art is consumed, it's down to the 'beholder' to shape it as they please. What excites me about Promenade is how EVERY time I read it, I want to read it out loud. It demands to be heard, whilst obstinately remaining an enigma. And everytime I read it out loud, the cadence of the hues of the words, the mini worlds each sentence forms, the shape of the feelings it evokes, they keep morphing, like I'm reading it for the very first time. Who maps water?! — Mapenzi

Between regaining bits of my memory & recovering from an illness, this poem written by Cullota & Richmond becomes a door through which I am set free, & realising that A'bena & I had long done a recording of this poem in the first week of January. This poem is a journey for me. I hope we both find each other.

Grief Worn is an analysis of a grieving person. It is a psychiatric evaluation as well as a commentary on loss. The story of Prophet Jeremiah of the Bible comes to mind here. It is as if Richmond, after listening to the writer of Lamentations, took a notepad and pen to narrate to casual observers the loneliness that loss brings. In communities that promote individualism, life after losing a loved one is a difficult one to navigate. While others are outside having fun, the bereaved are inside feeding on memories and losing touch with the world which they once belonged. Richmond does not just leave us a note on how not to look at the bereaved, they also show us how to approach them with comfort, in the unwritten lines of this poem. A'bena & I try as much to retain the loneliness and sadness in this poem in both the Igbo and Twi languages.

Everything about the poem is like dancing the Tango. It addresses vulnerability, the strength and beauty of the male body. The male body is a glorious thing to behold. It is too glorious a thing to be bound by the kind of stereotypes society places on them. I liked that Loic addressed these dynamics.

Elizabeth's poem was something I stumbled upon scrolling through Twitter. As I read it, that hymn was an earworm. I marvelled at how well she captured these emotions in text. I liked that she asked questions without attempting to answer them or give some philosophical saying. I think that is what life is all about asking questions you have no answers to. This is how we become whole, questioning the point of it all. As regards language, the parts in Twi were to me what sounded similar to the hymn. French was because I was being whimsical.

Stefanescu’s After Moving Back to Alabama is a harrowing poem. It gallops on bewilderment and rituals. When we tell people we love them, do we intend to love them without their past? What question does our love beg to answer? It is as if by choice the persona of the poem brings back their family to a place they once lived, just to introduce them back to a past they had on that Alabama soil, the red dirt that made them. I love you is the most unoriginal thing to say to each other, yet when we say it, it feels like it's never been said before. It is a different kind of blizzard we want to be part of without questioning God. We can feel a snowstorm of emotion by just hearing someone we care about telling us they love us, but can we gift each other our shame, our crooked past? Love documents a history of scars suffered by a forest because an axe was allowed entry. Stefanescu evoking the natural world, dashes us to a spring of emotions, asking from us what we can make of our attachments, without actually asking. Almost as if the poem is careful enough to not tell, but to show. Here we have been shown. Please stay tuned as I bring you this poem in Igbo and English, while A'bena presents it to you in a motley of languages — French, Fon and English, as a tribute to everyone who grew up in a multilingual home.

When Akpa asked me to choose a poem, he sent me three poets. Ilya Kaminsky was one of them. I was familiar with his work but I loved his name more. It reminds me of the jingle of a tiny bell. I liked it. So I browsed his catalogue of poems. I passed by this poem six times. I was deliberately avoiding it. Until I could no longer. That poem put my face in the reality of whatever happened that night and the events that followed. I experienced again, the full spectrum of emotions.

When we selected this poem, I was thinking about relationships — how one minute, we are in the kitchen making tasty meals, and the next we are writing and recording our podcast, and another, we are alone in our respective rooms, far from each other, drowning. And how, no matter how close you are with someone, they really don't know you beyond what you are willing to share. I was thinking about abandonment. Oftentimes, families are the first to hurt you. Friends, same. You come out to your family as, say, gay, and they say you have brought them shame and excommunicate you. You make a lover jealous, they kill you. So, Obi's poem is the last prayer of someone tired of domestic abuse, loneliness and abandonment. This is us, hoping that you reach us the way we are trying to reach you. The ruin can end here.

In this poem, my acceptance of this state of be-ing finds vivid color. Feeling thirst without the expectation of satisfaction is also something sacred.

A'bena and I are on a 20-days translation challenge. We select random poems from anywhere in the world, translate them by default into the Igbo language, and into any of the more than four languages A'bena is familiar with. For our first instalment, we pick Pamilerin Jacob's It Is Impossible to Live. It is a poem that mirrors a people's loss, struggle and collective grief. I am writing this because a bullet didn't start its journey towards me. It did not start towards you. We are here because even if it started, it missed its way to you. But a live bullet rarely ever misses.