Hi  All,
Re downturns in poetry sales and the fortunes of some poetry presses
in the UK, Forest Books' retirement from publication of poetry
translations is also bad news for poetry.  Brenda Walker started the
press in spring, 1984, with publication of a book of poems by a Romanian
poet, Ion Stoica, and the press grew so rapidly that by April 1988, she
switched from education to full-time publishing. By 1994, Forest had
published 100 books and 10 reprints. An international list. Walker's idea
was to develop cultural world-wide links and to give special prominence to
minority languages and ethnic groups whose literatures weren't widely
known. It was a mammoth undertaking, sparky, idealistic - international
contemporary poets being aired in English, many for the first time.

An idea of Forest's contribution can be seen from 1996 when Polish poet
Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize. In the U.K., relatively few people
had heard of her. However, Forest Books had published her  'People On a
Bridge' (translated by Adam Czerniawski) in 1990. The whole experience of
Szymborska's win was amazing for Forest. TV and press coverage -
translation,
poetry in the news. . .The remaining copies of Szymborska's book
went in a matter of days and 10,000 more copies were ordered over the next
month. Shortly after, Faber brought out a more recent book of her poems,
these in an American translation.

Forest depended very much on Arts Council and other subsidy, including
UNESCO grants and assistance from  national cultural bodies. Alistair
Niven, then Literature Director at the Arts Council, placed large emphasis
on the value of translations, and helped accordingly.  Bloodaxe and Anvil
in particular, but also Faber and Carcanet, stepped up their translations'
publishing. There was an air of excitement, a  new sense of the need for
poetry in
translation, and a recognition that with subsidy and marketing, it was
possible.
The world was growing more global and the exchange of languages could make
a buzz.  Unfortunately, personal factors led to Brenda Walker's decision to
stop
publishing around 1997-98. Not surprisingly, marketing was always a
problem for Forest.
        Here are a few poems from my translation of Jean-Jacques Celly's
'Le Somnambule aux Yeux d'Argile' /'The Sleepwalker with Eyes of Clay',
published by Forest in 1994. The book was in dual-text, my first and only
book in translation - so far, at least.  I enjoyed doing a whole book as
opposed to
translating the odd poem here and there.
         'The Sleepwalker. . .' is a sequence of fifty poems (mostly prose
 poems, with nineteen in verse). The poems are contemporary, sometimes
surreal,
about flux, history, war, debts, love, honour, survival.  I really liked
the book
 - moreorless one long poem  - quite political, wide-ranging and full of
surprises.
                        ***
'The Sleepwalker' has lived and thought much, he has seen the dark sides. .
. A kind of
Everyman. . .
                        XXI
        They have stood you up against this wall tattooed
        with holes blood and lightning
        facing twelve trembling perspiring stares
        who see nothing of you but a shadow transfixed
        but a target crying out a useless goodnight
        useless passage to memory's words
        And twelve times standing and twelve times falling
        you let sleep enter under your wounds
        and reach your soul already drawn towards other gods

                                XXXIV
        Summer is slow to fade, like an island at sunset
         hanging on to its own light, or this naked woman with
        widow's eyes watching her desire slowly drift towards
        other terrains. Something, however, refuses to be
         changed: the sand-castle, a spade's yellow acid, a gull
        - its beak clearing a dead beach of mines. There is also
        the knife's fine odour (memory shifting towards
        the two halves of a sea-urchin) and it is the blighted
        sea-rose, its sting that lingers when all else has gone.


                                XLV
        I am the dream in your dream
        the mirror of the mirror
        multiplying your gestures inventing for your lips
        a dialogue liberated from the weight of grammarians

        I am the shadow who stays after this lukewarmness
        of the body still living in the bed's furrows
        your witness your lover your alibi when God
        accuses you of going naked

        as the sword raised for the day of battle
        as the statue seized in the sea that one listens to
        telling of the faded city and last empires

        (Poems from 'The Sleepwalker with Eyes of Clay'/'Le Somnambule aux
Yeux d'Argile'  by Jean-Jacques Celly, translated by Katherine Gallagher,
with an Introduction by Peter Florence  -  ISBN 1 - 85610 - 029 - 4)
                        * * *
As well as being a poet (seventeen books last count), essayist and
novelist, Celly is also a  translator and it was very  useful and rewarding
to be able to refer back to him with queries and so on. . .

Best wishes,
Katherine

Katherine Gallagher,
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