The East and West Learning Club is thrilled to co-host a fabulous poetry series together with Sureway Culture Services and Lakeside Academy of Canada throughout this Summer and Fall!
Five poets laureate, sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets, are coming to our club’s online platform to share their poems, translations, and writing experiences. They will discuss the cultural commonalities and differences reflected in the translations. They will also mingle with our audience, and share their life stories, experience with cultural difference, and/or suggestions for immigrants on how to adapt to Canadian culture with a bit more ease and grace.
Anna Yin, Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate, will facilitate the following five sessions —
With Molly Peacock on Friday August 14, 2020 @8-9:30 P.M.
Molly and Anna will share thoughts about events and workshops they have participated and discuss the challenge of various poetic forms and the difficulties of translation.
With Albert F. Moritz on Saturday August 29, 2020 @3-4:30 P.M.
Albert and Anna will talk about how other poets’ work has inspired their own writing. They will explore how poetry help them refresh their memories, share mutual experiences and help them grow.
With Alice Major on Friday September 11, 2020 @8-9:30 P.M.
Alice and Anna will explore how to get inspirations from science and how to write poetry with an interesting and understandable view related to science.
With George Elliott Clarke on Friday September 25, 2020 @8-9:30 P.M.
George and Anna will discuss about how to write poetry related to political issues, difficult history and identity etc.
The five poets will have a group discussion and recitals on Saturday October 3, 2020 @3-4:30 P.M. to wrap up the series.
Language: Discussions will be conducted in English, with poem recitals in different languages.
Free online Zoom meeting. Maximum capacity 100 participants. Meetings will be open 15 minutes prior to the lecture time. Please click below link to enter:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87134664583
Meeting ID: 871 3466 4583
Everyone is welcome to enjoy the poetic moments with us! Let’s see how the shiny silk threads of poetry could touch our souls, and connect the world, whether you are from the East or the West!
Please see biographies of the prominent Canadian poets and more details below (based on the web page of Sureway Cultural Services)
Poetry in Translation /East Meets West
A series of online events focus on poetry and translation by reading and discussing original poems then translations between poets and translator. We will talk about the myth of lost in translation, tackle the art of re-creation and exchange the mutual gain through the process. The poets are George Elliott Clarke, Molly Peacock, Alice Major and A. F. Moritz, and the translator is Anna Yin
These events aim to engage the audience and stimulate wider and stronger interest and conversation for cross-cultural exchange in poetry.
Details on annapoetry.com, or contact anna.yin@gmail.com
The poets’ selected poems have been or will be posted on the discussion area at http://www.coviews.com/viewforum.php?f=55. Participants are more than welcome to submit their own translations of the poets’ works there.
Biographies
Anna Yin was Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate and has authored five collections of poetry. She won several poetry awards and her poems/translations have appeared at ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, World Journal etc. She teaches Poetry Alive workshops. Her next book Mirrors & Windows: a collection of translations will be published in 2021.
Molly Peacock’s latest poetry collections are The Analyst and Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems. She is the series founder of The Best Canadian Poetry and the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses. Her poems appear in leading literary journals such as Poetry, The Malahat Review and The Hudson Review, and are anthologized in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Author of a one-person play about poetry, The Shimmering Verge, she is working on Form with Feeling, a collection of essays.
Albert F. Moritz is the 6th Poet Laureate of Toronto. His most recent books are As Far As You Know (2020) and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018), both from House of Anansi Press. In 2015, Princeton University Press republished his 1986 volume in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, The Tradition. He has published nineteen books of poems, and several volumes of poetry translated from French and Spanish. His poetry has received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Beth Hokin Prize of Poetry magazine, and other awards.
Alice Major‘s 11th poetry collection is “Welcome to the Anthropocene”. published by the University of Alberta Press. Science has been a source of inspiration for much of her work, including an award-winning collection of essays: “Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science.” Alice served as the first poet laureate for her home city of Edmonton and her honours include an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Alberta.
The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke is a revered artist in song, drama, fiction, screenplay, essays, and poetry. Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960, George was educated at the University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Queen’s University. He is also a pioneering scholar of African-Canadian literature. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, George has taught at Duke, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard. He holds eight honorary doctorates, plus appointments to the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. His recognitions include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry,, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.
https://www.georgeelliottclarke.net/
Thanks to the kindness of the poets, we get to post a poem of each one of them here in the comments area for our members, before each session begins, respectively. Enjoy!
Why I am Not a Buddhist
By Molly Peacock
From Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. W.W. Norton / Penguin Canada, 2002.
I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire. I love the things I’ve sought –
you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll
from my billfold – and love what I want: clothes,
houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit
equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose
a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute
desire for nut gateau is driven out by death,
but the cake on its plate has meaning,
even when love is endangered and nothing matters.
For my mother, health; for my sister, bereft,
wholeness. But why is desire suffering?
Because want leaves a world in tatters?
How else but in tatters should a world be?
A columned porch set high above a lake.
Here, take my money. A loved face in agony,
the spirit gone. Here, use my rags of love.
Chinese translation by Anna Yin:
为何我不是佛教徒
我爱欲望，那种想要的感觉以及痴迷
如何去获取；在灵魂里建立王国之境
需要欲望。我爱我孜孜以求的所得所觅-
你，裹在无束腰浴袍里，成筒的现金，
闲置我的钱柜里 – 我也爱我想要的：锦衣，
房子，赎买。一套新潮的浅紫套装
能等同上帝吗？哦，不，欲望排着名次。
失去心爱的笔不等同失去信念。强烈的
对果仁奶油蛋糕的欲望被死神驱散，
但盘子上的蛋糕有着它的意义，
即使爱情岌岌可危，一切已不紧要。
我的母亲要健康；我的妹妹，曾经沧桑，
渴望完好。只是为什么欲望在煎熬？
因为欲望使得世界支离破碎吗？
世界还要应该怎样，除了支离破碎？
一座圆柱门廊高高矗立在湖泊之上。
来，拿去我的钱币。心爱的脸在痛苦中，
精神殆尽。来，用上我褴褛破旧的爱。
Thank you for joining us. Yes it is always a long journey to learn ourselves and others. I hope Poetry in Translation as Mirrors and Windows to help us see and reach each other.
In my above translation, there are a few places could be improved, please feel free to point them out.
Join us and have fun!
Anna Yin
Poetry by A.F. Moritz
You chose the right path in life
though as it assures you it abashes you
with crushing beauty – like these lines of Neruda
you desire the way at eleven you desire a girl.
To write just one verse like that. To know
the fruitful softness, the whispering of shadows
in light-sprinkled entrances, the female
strangeness of their male force.
As Neruda’s century passed and the astonishment
his coming had aroused decayed, in you it grew.
As the dead fall away, the living is laid bare
more living. You look up from his book
and are in a world more world, and you look up
from that new world and are in his book
more book: another earth, another early home
and childhood. He shelters as he overshadows,
an older brother still a child himself.
You two are orphans, and guarding you through forests
and the eyes of crowds he reaches manhood,
and yet he’s still the youth of the good promise,
alpha point of unhewn roads. You feel
abundance and the void rise alert, tender
as they watch him pass and engulf him – a love so dark
you have to long to pierce it repeatedly.
诗 by A.F. Moritz Trans by Anna Yin
你选择人生正确的路途
虽然它迷醉的美宽慰你
也困惑你—— 就像你渴望聂鲁达的
诗句如同十一岁时渴望一个女孩。
谱写一首那样的诗。知悉那果实般的柔软，
光线闪烁的入口处的阴影私语，
那男性力量中的女性神秘。
聂鲁达的年代已去，他的来临唤起的惊愕
朽化了，在你这里却生长。
随着死的逝去，活着的被裸露
越发生动。从他的书你仰望，
你抵达一个更普世的世界，
从这个新世界仰望，
你抵达他的更神明的书里：
另一个地球，另一个早期的家园
和童年。一个兄长，自己也不过一个孩子，
他庇护你也让你相形见絀。
两个孤儿的你们，他引导着你穿过森林
和人群的眼睛，抵达成年，
但他仍然是美好承诺的少年，
未凿之路的起始点。
当她们温柔地看着他经过并吞没他，
内心的丰沛和空虚让你警惕——
一种漆黑深切的爱，
你不得不渴望反复地穿戳它。
more poems: http://www.recitationroyale.com/?page_id=1254
The muse of universes by Alice Major
Once in a trillion years
the muse of universes
claps her hands. And, with that shock
of light, reverses
an aeon of drift, dilution,
the outward-rolling wave
of dark and the illusion
of end times.
A new draft, she orders
and the universe erupts
into rhyme, fields and forces
echoing. She rebuts
formlessness, sparks stanzas
from an alphabet of particles,
spells out what matters, what
radiates, what tickles
the fancy into galaxies
with gravity’s feather pen.
She unrolls the scroll of space,
says, There. Now try again.
宇宙缪斯女神 trans by Anna Yin
曾经一万亿年前，
宇宙的缪斯女神
拍了一下手。接着，
随着一道闪电，逆转
亿万年的漂移和稀释，
以及向外滚动的黑浪
暗波和末日的
幻象。
新的草案，她责令，
于是宇宙爆发成
韵律，场和力
呼应。她驳斥
无序，从微粒表中
激发诗章，
用引力羽笔书写
什么重要，什么闪耀，
什么激励幻想
形成星系。
展开宇宙卷轴，
她说，那儿。现在再试一次。
The muse of universes by Alice Major
Once in a trillion years
the muse of universes
claps her hands. And, with that shock
of light, reverses
an aeon of drift, dilution,
the outward-rolling wave
of dark and the illusion
of end times.
A new draft, she orders
and the universe erupts
into rhyme, fields and forces
echoing. She rebuts
formlessness, sparks stanzas
from an alphabet of particles,
spells out what matters, what
radiates, what tickles
the fancy into galaxies
with gravity’s feather pen.
She unrolls the scroll of space,
says, There. Now try again.
– by Alice Major
from Standard Candles, University of Alberta Press
宇宙缪斯女神 trans by Anna Yin
曾经一万亿年前，
宇宙的缪斯女神
拍了一下手。接着，
随着一道闪电，逆转
亿万年的漂移和稀释，
以及向外滚动的黑浪
暗波和末日的
幻象。
新的草案，她责令，
于是宇宙爆发成
韵律，场和力
呼应。她驳斥
无序，从微粒表中
激发诗章，
用引力羽笔书写
什么重要，什么闪耀，
什么激励幻想
形成星系。
展开宇宙卷轴，
她说，那儿。现在再试一次。
Self-Composed by George Elliott Clarke
It’s today
That I can see
Daisies play
At being me.
Beaming gold,
They bend and sway –
Limber, bold,
Anarchic, gay.
Holding out
Their leaves like hands,
They don’t shout
Or make demands.
They’re quiet,
Quite, but not shy:
Their riot
Is their beauty.
If I seem
A weed to some
Eyes, I dream –
And flower I am.
泰然自得 trans by Anna Yin
就在今天
我得以见识
雏菊扮演
原本我自己。
闪着金光，
弯腰轻摇晃 ：
机敏大方，
自由且舒畅。
捧出绿叶，
像手儿一样
从不索要，
也不去叫嚷。
好生安静，
却并不害羞：
精彩缤纷
朵朵显灵秀。
如某些人
看我似杂草，
我梦也真——
花儿，我就是。