Poetry
At the moment it feels a bit like
those times I would try to find
a hiding place behind
the gym building yep, a dank place
with views of chip packets
and chlorophyll.
From far away something
gnaws at me, it could be
a lost sense of safety or something, but
really that’s how I always feel
as if I’ve just cum
and now all I can do is smell
the mildew on the sheets. I tried
the whole day to remember
the name of this particular
brand of biscuits
and when it finally happened I didn’t move
from the bed. Poetry
today seems to me like a place
I’ve not been given a ticket to, an old love
whose number I still can’t
bring myself to delete, a distant island
populated by penguins.
Man with Hat (3)
I’m walking through the sungrey city to the doctor
and then from the doctor to the bookshop
where they’ve still got a copy of this collection
I’ve wanted for a long time, just one display copy left
and the front cover has a crease on it
but I don’t make a fuss
the woman behind the counter asks if I want to use my card
and I say no actually I don’t want to do that at all
as I produce a note and we laugh
but the woman in the bookshop is the man
from the computer shop
who I’ve moved over here
because poems
and the man with the hat
has become a woman, even though
she isn’t much more than an outline of herself
the thought clashes against
the strong light in my eyes
that makes my arms and legs feel weak
and painful, around me everything grows hot
or maybe it’s just me
here swaying through the streets with throbbing wrists
saying: it still feels like yesterday
maybe yesterday with a really long
sleepless night in-between
but still yesterday
actually who am I speaking to?
Because I Was the Hero
(1)
They came streaming out of the barracks with faces like linocuts and rolled up our sleeves, ready to cut off an arm or two. For a moment I thought some of their profiles looked familiar. Then I watched as I shot each one of them in the chest. Afterwards, you carried me away on the stumps of your shoulders and, back at the camp, I made a toast because I was the hero. In other dreams I only see strangers, people I don’t recognise at all, and I worry that in these dreams I’m already dead, that I died before the story that is the dream began.
(2)
Suddenly I have a clear thought. I want to be the father! I want to be the father who has a daughter who comes to me saying Oh, father.
‘Daughter,’ I would say, ‘never forget that we were once all precarious little creatures who crept out of our eggs simply in order to prove a point. They don’t know who they’re dealing with, so let’s tell them. I’m a dragon. You can be a tiger. If you give yourself to someone, they may lose you. You may lose yourself. Hum a tune. I’ll find you. You might begin to think that nothing is familiar to you, even though your memories say otherwise. Stay in the present. That’s where I am. You might begin to think that you’re terrible at just about everything, but really you can get whatever it is that you want, even if in the end you decide it’s not worth the trouble. Use those little claws of yours. Always make your own plans. You might begin to think the newsreaders are speaking directly to you. Make sure to listen. This is important. Don’t wait for anyone. Always sing about the rain in the rain. Eat as often as possible anything containing puff pastry. Put a fleece on. Never let anyone tell you to run faster than a tiger. You are so much better than a tiger. Look, over there in the distance is your dragonmother swooping down with her big soft potbelly for us all to take a rest on . . .’
from Man with Hat
Lieke Marsman
translated from the Dutch by Sophie Collins
Listen to "Poetry" read in the original Dutch by the poet:
When I first met Lieke last winter in Amsterdam she told me that she’d done a pretty intense philosophy degree at university. Her work, which comprises poems, fiction, and nonfiction (Het tegenovergestelde van een mens is a new novel of Lieke’s on personhood and climate change that incorporates all three forms), feels like a subversive space where the tenets of that discipline can be played out in surreal, smart, charming, and sarcastic ways. The humour, true to its cultural context, is always bone dry.
I’m still getting to know the make-up of the Dutch poetry scene. I grew up in Holland and, not living too far away (in Bergen, near sand dunes and blustery north coast beaches), spent all of my teenage weekends in Amsterdam. But I was there for music (among other things); poetry was not yet on my radar. From what I’ve made out over the past few years, however, and from what Lieke told me that night over whiskeys in a candlelit bruine kroeg on the Prinsengracht, there is a growing faction of political and aesthetic dissenters in what is otherwise a highly conventional lyric landscape (she was surprised, she said in a recent email, that the novel-including-verse had received such positive reviews in the Dutch broadsheets).
I don’t have a great deal to say about the process of translating Lieke’s work. Like poetry criticism and the poem, I think discussion of strategies and intentions is mostly something that should be conducted by readers after the fact. What I would like to say, however, is that I like to think of my approach to translation in terms of ‘intimacy’ rather than the dominant notion of ‘fidelity,’ given that the former suggests shared ideas and a sense of willingness between source text author and translator. I’ve begun to evaluate others’ translations on this basis too, replacing ‘faithful’ with ‘intimate’ as a way in which to conceive of and discuss the achievements of translations. The hope is that this will release the translator from the capitalist and gendered language that has characterised translation metaphors for years while maintaining the broader and entirely appropriate analogy of human relationships.
I’m still getting to know the make-up of the Dutch poetry scene. I grew up in Holland and, not living too far away (in Bergen, near sand dunes and blustery north coast beaches), spent all of my teenage weekends in Amsterdam. But I was there for music (among other things); poetry was not yet on my radar. From what I’ve made out over the past few years, however, and from what Lieke told me that night over whiskeys in a candlelit bruine kroeg on the Prinsengracht, there is a growing faction of political and aesthetic dissenters in what is otherwise a highly conventional lyric landscape (she was surprised, she said in a recent email, that the novel-including-verse had received such positive reviews in the Dutch broadsheets).
I don’t have a great deal to say about the process of translating Lieke’s work. Like poetry criticism and the poem, I think discussion of strategies and intentions is mostly something that should be conducted by readers after the fact. What I would like to say, however, is that I like to think of my approach to translation in terms of ‘intimacy’ rather than the dominant notion of ‘fidelity,’ given that the former suggests shared ideas and a sense of willingness between source text author and translator. I’ve begun to evaluate others’ translations on this basis too, replacing ‘faithful’ with ‘intimate’ as a way in which to conceive of and discuss the achievements of translations. The hope is that this will release the translator from the capitalist and gendered language that has characterised translation metaphors for years while maintaining the broader and entirely appropriate analogy of human relationships.
Lieke Marsman (b. 1990) is the author of two books of poetry, Wat ik mijzelf graag voorhoud and De eerste letter, for which she has received several awards, including the C. Buddingh’ award and the Van der Hoogt prize. Her first novel, Het tegenovergestelde van een mens, about climate change and loneliness, was published earlier this year by Atlas Contact. She received her M.A. in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam.
Sophie Collins (b. 1989) is a poet, editor, and translator. Her first collection, Who Is Mary Sue?, will be published by Penguin in March 2018. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Glasgow Women’s Library. small white monkeys, a non-fiction text on self-expression, self-help, and shame, will be published by Book Works this winter.
