Necessary Crossings: Bridge, Flux, and Raft at “Translations” the 2011 Callaloo Conference

Translatability is an essential quality of certain works . . . it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability.

—Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” trans. Hannah Arendt

And this doesn’t answer the question of translatability. It is a circular assertion. If it is translatable, it has an intrinsic translatability? I couldn’t get this quote out of my head as I travelled to the 2011 Callaloo Conference: “Translations.” What would be translated and how? What type of arguments would be made and what could I as a poet lend to the conversation? How would my presence be translated? I began to look up definitions of the word “translation” and became a bit obsessed with translatability. As a visiting writer at an arts college, for most of a year I had been thinking of translation in it most open sense as an act of interpretation of one mode or set of conditions to another which led me to consider not only what might be translatable but how that might be done outside of the textual, especially as I explored ekphrasis with my students. As a poet, it was clear to me that the poet understood and admired the power of the visual to speak to what cannot be seen, through symbolism, space, the play of light and shadow, point of view . . . and as so many poets do, I used visual arts as a way to stir my own imagination and transfer my discoveries through the use of other symbols, letters to words, words to utterances I hoped would resonate within my reader as much as viewing the art had for me. But how slanted is this relationship? The poet looking dog-eyed, tongue wagging toward the visual artist as visual arts contains far fewer nods to the poet, or so I thought. It was while I was wrestling with this question, trying desperately to get my students to see the value of poetry, even as I could not help but admire the products of their prodigious talent as visual makers, and searching for art that clearly took its inspiration from the lyric that I was invited to read my own work at the Callaloo Conference.

One of the principle aims of the Callaloo Conference is to provide opportunities for exchange between scholars and creative writers, and this intention was decidedly met at the 2011 Callaloo Conference. I was invited as a creative writer, with an interest in criticism and commentary concerning poetics at large. Arriving from Detroit, where I was a Visiting Poet/Assistant Professor at the College for Creative Studies, a school for visual artists, just in time for Wednesday evening’s reception at the Texas A&M Physics Building, I joined the eclectic company of novelists, poets, critics, editors, scholars, and visual artists (and various combinations of these categories) assembling around Foucault’s Pendulum. I was scheduled to give a poetry reading the following evening alongside poets Dawn Lundy Martin and Gregory Pardlo. After greeting old friends and of course Dr. Rowell, I wandered around the room where between hello’s and hugs there was clearly another weight in the room, the press of communication across disciplines. All of us knew, in light of the aforementioned aim, that the days would not rest with heartfelt greetings and hors d’oeuvres. We were tasked to listen to each other, speak to each other, and in effect to utilize ideas around translation in an attempt to bridge the gaps.

I’d like to touch here on specific events where the acts of translation were particularly impactful for me personally. Indeed, the things I discovered at the 2011 Callaloo Conference have changed the way I look at scholars, creative writers, and the possibilities between us.

1. A Night of Poetry: Thursday, October 13, 2011

ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen . . .

—Rilke

In another space, at another conference, such readings might have acted as highlights to end the day. Instead the evening readings (and the discussions that...