Karen Terrey: You said "The point of collaboration is to turn your brain around and demand that things be made differently in ways you would not dream of alone…" How are translation and collaboration linked? You call them a "commitment to engagement". What does this mean to you?

Beatrix Gates: When I worked on "The Singing Bridge", I wrote a libretto and invented the story, before the music came. The composer writes the music into the words, and I learned the words have to leave room for the music. This is a form of translation.

I discovered with the opera that I’m quite flexible and like doing things I don’t usually do. Offering musicality in the words came in surprising places. I discussed the sound in the words with the composer to choose words which could be used in repetition and echo (rhyme is music too) to help the power of the music to come through. For example, you can’t end a line with an ‘m’, as in "fathom", on a high note because the mouth will close on the ‘m’. I learned a huge amount working collaboratively and would do it again in a minute.

KT: You mentioned you are in the process of working with Yolanda Morató who is translating your poems for a bilingual edition called Nada que ocultar/ Nothing To Hide to be published by puerta del mar, in Malaga, Spain. Do you think this work will influence how you write new poems in English?

BG: The process of talking and making suggestions about the translation or corrections is totally fascinating and weird. I have realized things about my own work that I had not been conscious of. I have thought about making space on the page. My writing has so much muscle inside the lyric twists that it is hard to pull it apart—it’s really tight. This is not a bad thing. But I ask myself, what would it be like to alternate simple direct language with some of that muscle? What if the impulse was to wait a few beats—the rhythm of telling—how the poem moves - how would that alter? What would it be like to interrupt motion of the poem differently? Would that be a good idea or not?

Jesús Aguado’s language in The Poems of Vikram Babu is lean and direct. There’s a framework. It’s not laden with a lot of imagery. It’s a different way of telling. This was refreshing for me.

KT: How did you become involved in translating the poems of Jesús Aguado?

BG: Through friendship and curiosity. My friend and co-translator, Electa Arenal, introduced me to the project by asking, Could we have fun doing this? I said, I don’t know. She said, Let’s try it!

I have a history with translation. At Antioch where I went to college in the 70’s, Alastair Reid was my teacher. When he first met Pablo Neruda, they had talked over Neruda's translating Shakespeare and Alastair talked about translation being this totally impossible and thrilling art. I didn’t know what a gift that experience was until later. Harold Wright, a wonderful translator from the Japanese, was also teaching there. He had us work in clusters to translate the literals—literal translations of a poem where each word is literally defined. In each group a person with a working language of Japanese helped us collaborate on a translation. Those experiences taught me the adventure of translation and possibility of collaboration. What is it like to love poetry in another language? The world was opened up.

In the early 80’s I studied with Grace Paley, a fabulous writer and person and activist for many causes, including the solidarity movement with people struggling in Central America. I noticed there were hardly any translations of women poets from Central America. When I became a trade publisher at Granite Press, my goal was to publish unrepresented women so I chose to work on publishing a bilingual anthology of 50 poets IXOK AMAR.Go, Central American Women Poets for Peace with 50 women translators edited by Zoe Anglesey. That is a whole other story, a gigantic project. I founded Granite Press as a trade publisher, moving from life as a small letterpress print shop in 1985 and published Grace Paley’s first book of poems, Leaning Forward, in that year. Hearing from people matters. Grace taught me that more deeply. She underlined this every day, every way. It was how she was as a person, a real story hearer.

My work in translation began with Alastair’s introduction of Neruda’s poems, as he worked on them, then churned around and reconnected through hearing the strong voices of the Central American women. So taking on this project with Jesús Aguado was part of a natural flow over time.

KT: Can you describe the actual translation process—for example, when you wrote your "early, far out" version of the poem, how much did this version inform the final translation?

BG: Electa and I worked together on two books what you say about me and Vikram Babu. Electa is a native speaker and long-time professor of Spanish language and literature. She makes the literal translation, then I write some versions of the poem—almost paraphrases of the poems—and in parentheses I extend the sense, or write something to experiment with. It’s very porous. I start making poetry, loose versions in parenthesis. It’s just a way to add to its meanings as we work.

We discovered a process of passing the poems under the door to our different rooms, sometimes ten to twelve times. Each time a little bit more tuning, checks beside things happening well. Then it’s down to having a conversation. If we tried to have a conversation too soon we’d go mad in a matter of minutes. This gives space to the process. Then we’d go on a walk and talk about one word or get out ten dictionaries, spread all around, and talk about words, the things we obsess about. It’s really fun.

With my book Nothing to Hide, Yolanda did a translation and now Electa is helping me look at it. I don’t think I quite get the good news yet, that it’s going to be in the world and people I don’t even know are going to read it. It makes me so happy. For example, in the poem "Good Seeing: A Poem of the Full Sky From East to West". ‘Good seeing’ is an astronomical term for the available dark, being able to see the sky well, meaning planets and stars. The poem focuses on scientific contributions from the Arab world, such as algebra and astronomy. The subtext is seeing from the other side. We’re so focused on the west. It is about how to see in a larger way. I would love to work on this poem for a year. I would want to talk with people in Spain about this poem. The permutations of the Moorish culture and the accomplishments of Muslim Spain, are right there, in Andalucía. Aguado is from Seville and his recognition of the meaning of the poem was instant. That was very gratifying.

KT: According to Paul Auster in writing about translating French Surrealist poems in 1968, questioning can be a path to breaking the shackles of our own limitations. He wrote "In light of that tumult (that questioning), the Surrealists were a major discovery for me: poets dreaming of revolution, of how to change the world. Translation, then, was more than just a literary exercise. It was a first step towards breaking free of the shackles of myself, of overcoming my own ignorance." Did you have a similar experience while translating?

BG: This is a wonderful quote. It hits on the point of translation. Translation is about breaking out of our own cultural and linguistic prison, the limitations we don’t even know we have. Without translation, where would we be? Where would I be without the words of these poets? The issues of how to transmit culture and story go back to Horace. How are we going to keep learning? There is not a cultural superiority to the present, just because this is the present.

In translation, the question is how can you transmit the atmosphere, the cadence, the content, the preverbal emotion? You need to understand the poem physically before you move up into the full meaning. You try to create triggers that are equivalent to what is created in the original language, the same meaning. It’s always a problem and sometimes you find a really good solution.

For example, Margaret Sayers Peden imitated the alliteration in her translations of Pablo Neruda. This is very difficult, yet she captures things other people don’t get. Electa told me we could create alliteration using a different sound, for example a hard C instead of a T, while still indicating a physical rhythm.

In translation you have the meaning and then you work back into the source of the poem. You must experience this from the poem. You try to re-enact the poem, so it’s comprehensible and comprehensive. This is a circular process because as poets we start at the source and write out towards meaning.

When we brought our translations to Jesús Aguado for the first time, he was very excited because the translations were taut and clear. We had a few things wrong. But overall he was very excited.

Electa and I are going over my poems translated by Yolanda Morató. Electa already knows the poems and knows them differently now. And so do I because of coming to understand via the translation challenges exactly what’s at stake in the language and the meanings implied.

KT: How do you know your poems differently?

BG: There are two things. The first thing I noticed is the imagery has a very dense sound, at times, and sense, like muscle. It is almost marbled, the metaphors, and hard to take apart. Trying to literally paraphrase an image is very difficult. The image and sound are working together.

Second, the way I use narrative and dialogue. I see that the narrative is truncated and the dialogue is very ironic. Irony and double meanings or puns are difficult to translate because they are so dependent on that specific overlay within a word as well as the cultural circumstances. I realized I let my characters hang themselves with their dialogue. This can create real problems in translating the ironies of speech that I rely on for meaning.

KT: Would you recommend translating for a poet who is not fluent in the other language? How can this approach work?

BG: I believe you absolutely need a native speaker to sit with and talk with. Otherwise it is disrespectful.

KT: Let’s hear more about your writing process for long poems. How do you use or discover history "as weave and tongue" as you say?

BG: The two long poems "Daylight stunned in purpling tongues" published in The Dirty Goat by Host Publications and "Seeking Tenderness" in Ten Minutes are connected in that their first understanding is brought through sensual experience.

Hurricane Katrina happened while I was at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I arrived on a bus that was on its way New Orleans. People on that bus were going to New Orleans. The storm hit while I was there. I was shocked by the whole thing and I wondered if writing about it was too ‘scavengy’? So I took little notes each day of what was important. I turned the page without reading and scribbled the next note. I only looked at it later. Right then it was too appalling. Making notes can be great. You have enough that you can remember what you experienced, the essence without shaping. I wrote from the notes with more research, later on. I had to take it in. I needed some open time to work over that winter and spring; four months later, I took a draft to my writing group for help.

Quay note: Click on the player below to hear Gates' read "Daylight stunned in purpling tongues" published in The Dirty Goat.

Quay note: To read an excerpt from "Seeking Tenderness" click here. Click on the player below to hear Gates' read "Seeking Tenderness" from volume Blood and Tears.

Photo of Beatrix Gates: John Masterson