Poem in anthology Notes for the Translators

Andrew’s poem “Finishing Up” has been published in an anthology edited by Christopher (Kit) Kelen for the Association of Stories in Macao (ASM) and Cerberus Press. Titled Notes for the Translators, the book contains poems from 142 Australian and New Zealand poets. Each poem is accompanied by a brief commentary by it author. The back cover blurb explains:

Notes for the Translators introduces the poet-translator to the work of 142 contemporary New Zealand and Australian poets. It is a pedagogic work, for use inside and outside of the classroom. Its aim is to help train poets as translators, and to train translators to be poets.

This is a practical book—a book with a simple facilitative aim. From the poems presented in these pages, and from the accompanying notes provided by their authors, translators will be able to offer a collection of contemporary Australian and New Zealand poetry to readers of languages other than English. With a few exceptions, each poem in the book is short (forty lines or less), the accompanying notes only a page or two of reading; therefore it should be possible to make a first draft translation for each poem in a single sitting. And so—from the materials offered here in this book-for-the-making-of-books—it should be convenient to commence the step-by-step building of a foreign language anthology.

This is a maker’s, not a critic’s, book. The notes are there to help the reader/translator understand a poet. The notes are from one poet to another; they are a helping hand across the cultural/linguistic gulf. If they are, needs be, written to some extent blindly (that is to say, without full knowledge of what lies across the gulf), then that will be a part of their beauty, of their poetic quality, and it will be a measure of the trust we place in strangers when we dedicate our hearts to the project of reaching a reader.