you caught me Arni, it was very late last night but i anyhow wanted to know
who wrote and what and i was almost dozing off when you said, "I'll stop
here otherwise you might fall asleep", that woke me up for a minute,
:-)
anny, enjoy your week-end to all,

> Is there any chance you could post a sample?
> Perhaps you might say a word about the highs and lows of such a long term
> project?


Thank you, Randolph! And Douglas Barbour!

Sorry about the length of this post, but since Randolph asked, I can only
respond. Here's a sample, the opening poem of the new volume (A Kind of
Song):



EINS KONAR SÖNGUR

Látum snákinn bíða undir
illgresinu
og skrifin
eiga orð, hæg og kvik, beitt
til höggs, kyrrlát í bið,
svefnvana

- með líkingu skal sætta
fólkið og steinana.
Yrkið. (Hvergi hugmynd
nema í hlutum). Uppgötvið!
Steinbrjóturinn er blómið mitt;
hann sprengir klöppina.



As a project it wasn't planned at all, for if I'd known it would be a 30
years sentence I'd probably never have committed the crime and made it into
a project. In fact, I didn't consciously make it into a project. Before I
realized it, the thing had sort of evolved into a project of it's own
accord. For me it / this dabbling began as an impromptu, fun kind of method
of reading poetry in a foreign language properly.

I believe I first came across WCW in the Penguin Modern Poets series in 1971
or 72, the volume number 9 which features Levertov, Rexroth and WCW, but I
had been using that method of reading through translating for at least a
couple of years before that.

There is the danger when you half know a foreign language and think you're
better at it than you really are, that your reading of it becomes
superficial and only when you try to transform the words, metaphors,
thoughts into your own language you begin to fully appreciate what the text
is saying and how it's doing what it's doing. With a poem written in English
this is very important, because a) of the endless variations of English /
number of Englishes there are; and b) because English has ten times more
words than, say, Icelandic has. So there quite often is a far more complex
etymology involved, especially for someone who's a foreign speaker and
unhappily unaware of the complexities.

Back in early 1983 I realized that it was Williams' centenary, which it
would be appropriate to celebrate in mid September. So I vowed to do
something at least, have a few poems in translation published or write an
article, so I hoped to get some time to work on the poems I'd got down thus
far.

(It is important to know that no one in this country seemed to know of
Williams at that point, nothing of his, not even a single poem had been
translated, let alone printed in the language. Pound and Eliot were well
known. Eliot the chief inspirator for the generation of modernist poets
emerging immediately after WWII, and an entire selection of poems by Pound
(minus Cantos) had been translated and published in 1970, a very rare
occurrence indeed for a foreign poet to have an entire volume all by himself
in those days or before that in this miniscule market.)

Meanwhile, before September (February or March of '83), an actor friend I
greatly admire and whom I had had the good fortune to work with on several
occasions, asked me to write a solo piece for him and his own, one-man Egg
Theatre. I said I would (I find it hard to say no). But, come September my
angst began to take control of me, since I had neither found enough time to
work on the WCW poems nor even come up with an idea for my actor-friend. So,
on the night of September 17, Bill's birthday, I went to bed accompanied by
this great big lump of guilt.

Falling asleep took a longish while and my sleep was very troubled that
night.

I woke up with a start at around five thirty in the morning and qwanged up
like a burst spring in an alarm-clock.

I had just had this incredible dream.

In it, vividly, I had seen my friend in the role of Williams, alone on a
tiny stage delivering this amazing monologue.

So I jumped out of bed, sat at my desk and began hammering away on my stiff
old sea-green plastic Olivetti. Some time later, one or two hours or so, I
was unaware of the time, I had written two monologues. Neither was as good
as the dream, but one was the long opening speech and the other was a
reverse-reflection of it and sounded like a fitting conclusion.

The play was born then. It took me about 10 months to write everything that
came in between those two speeches. And find a title for it: 'The Turtle
Gets There Too'. Through that process those two speeches never changed, it
was a question of building a passable bridge between them (a 'bridge of
sighs', if ever I saw one).

We opened my production of the play on November 9, 1984, in The Living Arts
Museum in Reykjavik. We had hired the location for a period of two weeks,
the average duration of art exhibitions, thinking what we were doing was so
private and unaccessible only a handful of family, friends and weirdos would
come to see it.

The reviews were totally stunning and they floored us, and the house was
packed every single night. So we extended the run for another two weeks, but
that was as far as we could strech it as 'other' exhibitions were waiting to
get in. And in the heat from the lights the grass was growing from the mound
of earth central to the decor. We had to cut the grass as you couldn't see
the earth!

So we closed. But the ripples went on. I was asked to do a radio program on
Williams, which I did in December 1983 and a magazine printed three of my
translations. So Doc Williams was on the map, it seemed.

The Turtle went on to get there too. It was produced in Helsinki, Finland in
March 1985 (the worst theatre production I'd ever seen in Finland). And then
my original production got invited to all sorts of theatre festivals. I.e.
Copenhagen 1986, The Dublin Theatre Festival 1986 (at The Damer Hall nr.
St.Stephen's Green) and The Brighton Festival, England, 1987. We were also
invited to The Hong Kong Festival, but were unable to raise more money for
air-faires. Shocking!  But there were two more Icelandic productions of it
in the next four years. The play's since been produced in  New York (1999),
stage-read at The Nottingham Playhouse, England, and published in Poland in
a Polish translation).

Through all this, my reading and translating of WCW became central to my
being and writing and the translated poems kept accumulating. Until, in 1995
or 1996 I took the batch to a publisher who'd already published something by
me and shown a genuine dedication to poetry in translation (he changed that
landscape). We looked through it all and realized that we had two books. The
first part was more or less ready for publication, while the second part
needed more time. Which was perfect for it. Generaly I prefer poems to be
kept on pickle or in brine until they're ready. During that time I come to
them ondce in a while, take a look at them and put them back. Sometimes I
may change a word or two, or even upturn a line or a metaphor. But it does
take time. And time is essential to the process. And with poetry in
translation it takes such an effort to get used to them in your own somewhat
narrower language, that setting them aside for a time can only make them
better.

A high, obviously, was the premiere of the play and to experience the effect
it had. Anothe high was to see the amazing response the first volume had.
And now I'm terrified the second volume will be received less well.

One more thing about the play. Through the process of writing it I realized
the dramatic bridge couldn't be made without Ezra Pound. The lifelong
argument those two were engaged in was pertinent to the early eighties in
Iceland. You can read more about the play on my website, which also has some
pictures from productions.

Having the second volume finally out (and I'm very glad I was given the time
for revisions and fermenting) makes me feel I've accomplished at least that.
And that I'll probably give dear old Bill his well earned rest now. At least
I'll not take the initiative to translate anything more by him unless asked.

Btw. this new volume features at least one poem if not two that I translated
30 years ago.

I'll stop now before you all fall asleep.

Best

Árni


--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland

tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/