NEWS
I began my blog (Maintenantman’s Blog) on April 14th 2010. The full archive can be found at: www.maintenantman.wordpress.com
In 2007 I undertook a seven months journey around British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska. I used to write occasional group emails to friends and family. When returning to that part of the world for further adventures in 2010 it seemed a good idea to create a blog instead of emailing. Thus it began as reflections on travel. Later it mutated into a mixture of poetry, story-telling, collage work, politics, philosophy, football, photography and commentary.
It’s now time (pun very much intended) to step out of the Maintenantman costume and re-launch the blog on here.
Blog entries will include ‘news’ of relevant creative endeavours.
___________________________________________________________________________
From Dimensions of Dialogue by Jan Svankmajer
One of the many interesting aspects of this experience of being translated is that the writer can never know how close a match the translator has achieved (otherwise she / he would have done the translation themselves). I have profound trust in Shirley Sharpeyes, as the poem mentioned above suggests.
Translators deserve way more credit than they tend to get. I think of how much I rely on brilliant translations of Rilke and Rumi, to name but two. I love foreign language films and am often aware of how crude the subtitles seem, meaning that we lose a lot when translation is not in tune with the original work.
When translated into Tlingit my poems will not even be in a script that is recognisable to non-Tlingit readers, all First Nations languages have keyboard-defying symbols and accents in and around our standard alphabet. I will reproduce them on here when they are available.
What a fantastic honour!
I have been unable to resist illustrating this post with some stills from a favourite artist and film-maker, Jan Svankmajer. His short animation Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) still stands as one of the greatest explorations of communication.
From Dimensions of Dialogue by Jan Svankmajer
Thank you, “Shirley Sharpeyes”.
Ted x