Interview
with Diana
Kuprel & Marek Kubisa
1) What are your
thoughts about participating as a Reader at the POW! Festival in Cobourg?
We are delighted, and honoured, to take part in an event that promotes
the power, beauty and relevance of poetry.
2) Please tell us about your recently published book "I Wrote
Stone" and also a little about any other books you've had that
"saw print."
This book introduces one of the most internationally acclaimed journalists
as a poet to the English-speaking world. I Wrote Stone brings
together a selection of poems from his two previously published collections,
Notes [Notebook], published in 1986, and Prawa natury
[Laws of Nature], published in 2006. Until their appearance in
English, these works remained untranslated except for a bilingual edition
in Italian. Kapuscinski believed that poetic discourse is able to illuminate
dimensions of human existence that otherwise would remain unknowable.
His poems, a special kind of dispatch from an inner world, are an incessant
inquiry into the essence of being human. Inspired by his extensive travels,
meetings and observations, the poems complement his better known reportages:
the external journeys to faraway places are recast through the poetic
form into a journey of the human spirit. Kapuscinski's thoughtful, philosophical
verse is often aphoristic in tone and structure and as one would expect
engaged politically, morally and viscerally with the world around him.
(Diana) It is serendipitous that I came to Kapuscinski's work,
and met him in person for the first time in Toronto, when I was translating
Zofia Nalkowska's masterpiece of Holocaust literature, Medallions.
The premier Polish woman writer of her day, she was a source of inspiration
for Kapuscinski: he has said that would reach for her books to reengage
with the purity of Polish language. A series of reportages/short stories
about the Nazi war crimes committed on Polish soil, Medallions in certain
respects was a precursor to the literary reportage that Kapuscinski
practiced.
Marek, who was a professional colleague and personal friend of Kapuscinski's
for 25 years, has published several volumes of poetry in Polish, and
is also a columnist for a Polish literary weekly in New York, where
he has written a number of articles on Kapuscinski and a very popular
feuilleton. In English, he wrote a concise biography of the Polish experimental
pilot, Janusz Zurakowski, who flew fighter planes during the Second
World War and was a pioneer test pilot for the first British jets, then
moved to Canada, where he test piloted the famous Avro Arrow; he retired
to a property outside Barry's Bay, Ontario.
3) What inspired
you to translate Ryszard Kapuscinski's poetry? Can you describe (a little)
your process in doing this translation, e.g. how did you work collaboratively?
We started translating
the poetry in 1995, 12 years before it was published and a decade before
his second volume appeared in Polish, simply because it hadn't been
done before; it was a very little known aspect of his creative life
in Poland, and completely unknown outside of his homeland. Also because
poetry as an art form was so important to the great journalist, as a
reader and as a writer!
(see answer to the last question below)
Regarding process, since I know Polish and am the native English speaker,
I would do the initial draft and then consult with Marek, as the native
Polish speaker who was also a poet and journalist and knew Kapuscinski's
work intimately. He would clarify some of the nuances; we would argue
about some points, experiment with rhythms and beats and language. Eventually,
we would hit upon solutions that we thought were the closest approximation
to the "letter and the spirit." We also had a good editor,
who had the necessary distance and good sense to challenge us in a few
instances!
4) How would you describe Ryszard Kapuscinski's poetry -- describing
it both in the original language and in translation in your book?
(See the response
to the first question above.)
5) The POW! Festival is built on the notion that poetry should not
be relegated to an existence as "a niche art form" that the
average person doesn't care about. How do you respond to that?
We could think of no better response than one which Kapuscinski himself
gave. As he once explained in an interview with Wojciech Kass: "I
cannot imagine that I would be able to write anything without first
having read poetry. It is the highest form of language…. I believe
that a poet is someone who preserves language and for that reasons stands
at the gates of its inexhaustible wealth, its simultaneous beauty and
threat. I value poets and poetry because poetry is something more than
a transmitter of information or a well-told story; it's a strange form
which is comfortable in what is hidden right before our eyes, where
in a few stanzas one can raise to a boil a powerful freight of experience
and transgression at the same time. Poetry is the greatest alchemy of
language because the poet concentrates what is happening when words
strike against themselves and new meanings arise-meanings thanks to
which the world has a more comprehensive form, both visible and invisible."
And this is from someone who as a reporter in the Third World was "a
transmitter of information" and, as a celebrated author, certainly
told stories very well indeed!