An interview with poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa 

 

 

Colony: Doireann, you write both in Irish and English, as well as translating your own Irish language poetry into English. Do you consider both Irish and English to be your mother tongue? Are you equally comfortable writing in both, or do you have a preference for writing in one language over the other?

 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: My mother tongue is English, albeit a curious kind of Hiberno-English heavily influenced by borrowings from Irish. I learned Irish as a second language once I started school. My first experiences with Irish began when I was four years old, and were limited to school hours. It was taught in a gentle, immersive fashion by teachers who were passionate, creative educators, people who respected the language and the children in their care. From the moment I crossed the threshold of the school, they spoke to me only in Irish. My mother tells a story of me returning, perplexed, after my first day- "I think something's wrong with my teacher, Mammy. She talks rubbish all day." Of course (like all the other children) my linguistic skills developed quickly and I built up a fluency in the language before long. English is without doubt my mother tongue, but I would say that Irish is my (beloved) second language. 

For the first years of my writing, I wrote only in Irish. I felt that I couldn't write in English. It was very strange to me... but then again, I suppose that creativity is somewhat of a mystery to all of us. I began to attempt to translate my Irish poems to English after my second collection had been published, mainly to facilitate public readings. I wanted to make myself understood to everyone in the audience, and I was conscious of people with different linguistic backgrounds to mine. Translating my own poems to English was slow, tortuous work and I fretted constantly that the English translations sounded clumsy or that they didn't read as poetry. I envied my peers in poetry, who all seemed to have amazingly talented poets translating their poems on their behalf. Still, I persevered and after some months I began to enjoy the challenge. I had positive feedback on my translations at readings. It really seemed to encourage those with a 'cúpla focal' to put their preconceptions about Irish to one side and engage with the poems. My translation process went from exhausting and difficult to exciting and nourishing. I began to write poems in English alone for a while, and felt as though I was falling in love with language all over again. At the moment, I write side by side versions in Irish and English. I am at ease in both languages, but I am far more self-conscious about my grammatical weaknesses in Irish, which sometimes prevents me from letting the Irish halves of my poems into the light.

 

Colony: You mention that when you first started writing, you couldn't write in English, whereas when you started writing in English you fell in love with language all over again, as if English were presenting something new to you. This is very interesting from the point of view of self-translation. Most writers, even when they are extremely competent in two languages, have difficulty translating their own work because the target language often doesn't sound like something they would have written in the source language, as if their consciousness and/or thematic concerns are different in each language. Is this ever an issue for you?

 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: Certainly in the early days of my adventures in self-translation, I struggled, seriously struggled with this issue. This experience was made stranger still by the fact that I was translating poems from my second language into my first language: one would imagine that this might be easier but it was not. However, my early Irish to English translations were clumsy, clunky things, they weren't hitting the right tone, they sounded all wrong, the pitch and melody and spirit of the poems were lost. I gave up, very frequently, in frustration. What kept me going, I think, was that dogged sense of grit that you will find with anyone who has decided to forge a life in writing. It’s a trait that all writers share, in my opinion. We become accustomed to being rejected, injured, bruised again and again... our egos take a battering... we learn how to take a punch and stand back up. We stand up again, we come back to our writing after each wallop and try again. That's how it worked for me with translations. I just kept trying, and trying, and trying until I started to create work that I felt was a better representation of the original poem. In a weird way, every poem throws up its own particular set of conundrums, so I sometimes feel that I am still starting anew with each poem. I also take liberties and have fun with my translations. It's my own work, so I suppose that I feel a bit more freedom in my translations than I might if I were translating someone else's poems. To answer your question, I struggled terribly with these issues in my early days of self-translation, but as my confidence in my translations has increased, it has become less of a problem. 

 

Colony: Your liberal approach to your translations reminds me of something Borges said: “The original is unfaithful to the translation.” Your translations are often striking in that they don’t look like the original because you’ve played around with line divisions and lengths. What other devices or techniques did you eventually discover worked successfully for you?

 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: I love that Borges line! I suppose my approach might be considered liberal from a conservative point of view. However, we must not forget that the etymology of the verb 'translate' comes from the Latin 'to carry across'. When we translate poetry, we 'carry across' far more than just the literal translation of words. The beauty of translating one's own poems is that one can remain loyal to one's own poetic impulse, to the feel and flow of the language, in a way that might well have been interpreted differently by another translator. I recently had the experience of reading some of my poems which had been translated into French, and I was intrigued by the decisions the translator had made. It was a strange but hugely rewarding experience to read my work as translated by another person.

 

The process of translation need not be a direct or reductive process; I do not subscribe to Robert Frost's theory that poetry is what is lost in translation - in my opinion, this can be a process of building, where elements of the poem may be illuminated in another way. The translation of poetry, for me, is an act of both imagination and intellect. 

 

I can't share any particular devices or techniques... But I can give you these lines from Nox, where Anne Carson represents the curious mystery of translation-

 

“Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...” 

 

These lines capture the buzz, the fear, the excitement of translation far better than any list of devices or techniques that I could suggest!

 

Colony: That’s a great lesson in translation in a nutshell ☺ Do you ever translate your English poems into Irish?

 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: I tried to translate my own poems from English to Irish once or twice but it just wouldn't happen for me, and I gave up pretty quickly on that. I have also tried to translate poems by other poets into Irish and I encountered the same problem- I just couldn't get the sparks flying. I do continue to attempt translations in this direction regularly, using the work of other poets - there are poems that I love in English that I would love to see translated into Irish. It's an ongoing learning process for me… we'll see. I have pretty much given up on translating my own Irish poems to English, though. The process doesn't seem to work that way for me. 

The initial writing of a poem happens for me in parallel versions of Irish and English now, so in a way both versions are 'bundánta', or primary poems. I think of poems that grow like this as non-identical twins, they share a lot of genetic matter, but they do not share precisely the same appearance. For example, the twin poems Glaoch and Call grew first out of the idea of a skype-call breaking up due to a weak internet connection, and how that might work as a metaphor for a relationship imploding. At a language level, the poem grew initially out of the insistence of the phrases 'slender thread', 'we break up', 'Ní chloisim tú ag análú' and 'líne lag'. Both poems grew side by side and informed each other's development. Poems like this almost translate each other as they take form. It's a very exciting process. 

 

Colony: Your insights into the process are equally exciting and throw some light on why poets are usually dissatisfied with their self-translations. They probably don’t have that sense of producing a twin, side-by-side, which is what they’re aiming for. Since you mention Glaoch/Call, let’s take a look at it:

 

 

Glaoch

 

Ní cheanglaíonn

                                      aon chorda caol,

aon sreang teileafóin sinn níos mó.

I réimse na ríomhairí,  

                         ní thig liom 

do ghuth a bhrú níos gaire do mo chluas. 

Ní chloisim tú ag análú. Anois, ’sé an líne lag seo 

            an t-aon cheangal amháin atá fágtha eadrainn 

agus titimid 

            as a chéile 

                                     arís 

is

            arís eile.

 

 

Does the fact that Irish is a minority language influence the poems you write in Irish? Is it part of the reason that you write in Irish even though you sometimes feel less sure of that language than you do of English?

 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: Some might argue (regardless of language issues) that the transformation of an idea into words, into a poem or a story is a translation of sorts in itself. Irish, in many ways, is simply the language in which my imagination expresses itself. In other words, I don't sit down and decide to write such and such a piece in Irish, just because it's a minority language... it just happens that way. 

I write in Irish because Irish writes herself in me. I write in Irish because I am compelled to. I write in Irish because I must. This would be the case regardless of whether it was a language spoken by a minority or a majority in Ireland. 

In terms of the language itself, I feel that it's a subversive activity to write in this minority language in contemporary Ireland. Many people feel (and express) a depth of animosity and vitriol towards Irish that, to me, is really quite astounding. It takes guts to write as Gaeilge, despite the scorn and indifference of one's peers. It's a language that suits those who are renegades, rebels, dissidents... our voice may be small but we are not afraid to use it.

 

Colony: Let’s finish with a look at some of your poems and rebellious translations where you add lines that aren’t in the original, change the meanings of words so they are more alliterative in English, modify the structure of the poem…

 

 

Céad Coinne, Sráid Azul

 

Séideann tú ar do chaife agus lasaim toitín.

Éiríonn gal is deatach ar an aer.

 

            Eitlíonn péire fhéileacáin          dearga tharainn.

 

Monarchs, a deir tú. Cromann tú chugam 

le míniú go n-eitlíonn siad trí mhíle míle

 

le teacht ar shlí chuig crainn giúise Meicsiceo.

Smaoiním ar an bpobal Astacaigh

 

a d’fhéach ar fhéileacáin mar naimhde caillte, 

nó mná a chailleadh ina luí seoil—

 

anamacha ar fholuain trí spéartha ciúine, 

cneácha tiontaithe ina sciatháin dearga. 

 

Níl fhios agam céard ba cheart dom a rá... nuair a osclaím 

mo bhéal, eitlíonn mo teanga uaim ar an ngaoth.

 

 

 

Seanchló

 

Luíonn brat deannaigh

Ar dhromchla an chlóscríobháin,

Méarchlár meirgeach

Sa seanchló gaelach

Le heochracha marbha

Don séimhiú, don síneadh fada —

 

Cnagadh ciúnaithe.