English 143B

Other Readings and Media

Moure, Erin: Sheep�s Vigil by a Fervent Person

Description

How might the writer use the various techniques and theories of translation, including mistranslation, as experimental tools to aid in the composition of new poems? Rather than approaching translation as the conventional transfer of meaning from one language to another, in this writing workshop we will take up this ancient practice as a varied and extensive set of open-ended compositional procedures and responses that bring new dictions, syntaxes, shapes and stances into the poem, devising ways of opening our various englishes to maximum interference from other language systems. Weekly reading, distributed in photocopy, will indicate some technical directions. This will include Celia and Louis Zukofsy�s Catullus, Erin Moure�s Pessoa in Sheep�s Vigil By a Fervent Person, Caroline Bergvall�s Dante, from �Via: 48 Dante Variations,� Catriona Strang�s Carmina Burana, from Low Fancy, Ted Byrne�s Louise Labe, and a sheaf of translators of Lucretius, including Basil Bunting, Lucy Hutchinson, and John Dryden. Testing the poem as a medium of response, students will translate their own, one another�s, and outside texts, from familiar and unknown tongues, both in the workshop and as assignments. Alongside this writing there will be considerable discussion on the inevitable political, linguistic, and theoretical questions that arise.