Blog Carnival #1: CROSSINGS

The first edition of the Aotearoa Affair blog carnival is online!

The carnival introduces German and Kiwi poets, storytellers, bloggers and artists as they travel and transform, wander and dream.

Connected through the theme “CROSSINGS”, this edition featured 24 writers from a variety of places and perspectives, including Keri Hulme, Marcus Speh, Christopher Allen, Kes Young, Emma Barnes, Rachel Fenton, Megan Doyle Corcoran, Hinemoana Baker, Tim Jones, Patrizia Monzani, Jürgen Fauth, Kate Brown, Helen Lowe, Linda Evans Hofke, Trish Nicholson, Piet Nieuwland, Raewyn Alexander, Rae Roadley, Martin Porter, Michael O’Leary and Aidan Howard.

Link: Blog Carnival #: CROSSINGS

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Highlight: Bub Bridger, trans. into German by Anja Welle

Wild Daisies

If you love me
Bring me flowers
Wild daisies
Clutched in your fist
Like a torch
No orchids or roses
Or carnations
No florist’s bow
Just daisies
Steal them
Risk your life for them
Up the sharp hills
In the teeth of the wind
If you love me
Bring me daisies
Wild daisies
That I will cram
In a bright vase
And marvel at

From: Up here on the Hill (Mallison Rendel, Wellington, 1989)

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Wilde Margeriten

Wenn du mich liebst,
Bring mir Blumen
Wilde Margeriten
Fest in deiner Faust
Wie eine Fackel
Keine Orchideen oder Rosen
Keine Nelken
Keinen Blumenladenstrauß
Nur Margeriten
Stiehl sie
Unter Einsatz deines Lebens
Hoch auf den spitzen Bergen
Wo der Wind dich mit den Zähnen packt
Wenn du mich liebst
Bring mir Margeriten
Wilde Margeriten
Die ich dann
In eine bunte Vase stopfe
Und bestaune

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Wild Daisies was written by New Zealand poet Bub Bridger (1924 – 2009) and translated by Anja Welle, whose background is in teaching German language and literature. Originally from the Rhineland, Anja is now based in Hamilton, New Zealand. She spends several months of each year in Germany, mostly in Berlin, and has been bridging the two poles of her personal and professional life ever since she first arrived in New Zealand in 1993. Anja belongs to the New Zealand literary translators’ initiative  and is a member of the Verband deutschprachiger Übersetzer literarischer und wissenschaftlicher Werke VdÜ. She is also a member of the New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters NZSTI. 

Readers can read more about Anja and her translations at her website.

Once upon a time in Aotearoa – Translating Maori Myths into the Now and into German

Tags

Anita Goetthans, Aotearoa, Maori, mythology, New Zealand, Tina Makereti, translation

In her short story collection Once upon a time in Aotearoa Tina Makareti explores a world where old myths become part of everyday life and encounters between reality and magic are taken for granted.

Tina Makereti lives in Wellington, and is of Ngati Tuwharetoa, Te Ati Awa, Ngati Maniapoto, Irish, Welsh, English and possibly even Moriori and Scandinavian descent. Included in this feature is “Kaitiaki”, a short story from her collection that reveals the loneliness of old age and city life and the consolation and protection offered by the mountains. Here are the opening paragraphs in English and German. Further below is the full short story in both languages.

Interview with translator Anita Goetthans

For readers who are only starting to explore New Zealand literature, we spoke with the German translator of the story Anita Goetthans about some key elements of the collection and its translation, and about her own transition from Germany to New Zealand. Goetthans is a free-lance translator and interpreter and also teaches at the Translation and Interpreting Centre at AUT, Auckland University of Technology. She has been living in Auckland, New Zealand since 1996.

Could you tell us a bit about the story Kaitiaki, and about the way it connects to the past and present cultural landscape of New Zealand?

When I read Tina’s stories I fell in love with almost every single one of them. Although there is only one author behind these stories each of them seems to have its individual voice and idiosyncratic language depending on the narrator.

In Kaitiaki it is the kuia, an old Maori lady, who’s been disenfranchised from her rural home near the mountains for a long time, living alone and isolated in a city environment which becomes stranger and stranger to her by the day.

This is a common enough occurrence in the big cities, especially following the huge influx of rural Maori when labour was needed in the 1960s. In this decade te reo Maori was almost forgotten and frowned upon in primary and secondary schools. When the language was in danger of becoming almost extinct a huge effort was made in the 1980s to revive it, with some success.

Highlight: Nicholas Messenger

TERRA COTTA.

Terra cotta terra incognita,
time’s brick-coloured country where the water
creeps on an interminable escape.
Enormous insects, one half leaf,
half-clay, with the ridiculous shape
of something thought up, and peculiar birds
all knees and neck, their cries like grief,
infest her drouth; while corpulent things
churn drowsily, becoming blurred
in last resorts of moisture. The explorer flings
his compass off into the sand
and enters on the last imaginable land.

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TERRA KOTTA.

Terra kotta terra incognita,
ziegelsteinfarbiges Gefilde der Zeit wo das Wasser
auf ein endloses Entweichen zukriecht.
Enorme Insekten, eines halb Blatt,
halb Lehm, in der lächerlichen Form
etwas Ausgedachtem, und eigenartige Vögel
ganz Knie und Nacken, ihre Schreie wie Leid,
übervölkern ihre Dürre; während korpulente Dinge
sich schläfrig drehen, sich auflösen
in den letzten Resten der Feuchtigkeit. Der Forscher wirft
seinen Kompass fort in den Sand
und tritt ein in das letzte vorstellbare Land.

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“TERRA COTTA.” was first published in blackmail press 17.
Translation by Dorothee Lang.

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Nicholas Messenger is a lifelong poet and story-teller, who grew up in the Bay of Islands, and has travelled and worked in several countries, in Latin America, Europe and Asia. He has been a seaman, security guard, demolition worker and various other things, and for many years a teacher of science, languages and art in high schools. His mountains are those of the West Coast of the South Island, but he has climbed those of the Andes and far and wide in Japan. He lives in Hokitika now with his wife Seiko.

Currently he focuses on the first draft of his latest novel, “The Upas Tree” and on his “Konuoi Imprint” printing project that offers thematic chap-books the author has been publishing himself, along with several illustrated childrens readers and traditonal-style fables. You can read more about the project, here: Konuoi Imprint.

Highlight: Patrizia Monzani

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Stadt-Fisch: a video-poem by Patrizia Monzani. Three characters cross each other – without really affecting one another, thoughts and voices overlap, strophes are repeated… Actually they are not alone and lonely, they just don’t see what they are surrounded by. Based on a poem by Jan Kummer.

Patrizia Monzani (Milan, 1976) has a cinematographic background and works as videomaker and editor. Her fields of interest are documentaries, animation and videoart. An author of several videopoems in collaboration with contemporary poets, she is involved in the videoart world, also as a curator. Her works had been screened at several videoart and movie festivals around the world. Since 2010 she is working with the artist collective Lithos19. In 2011 she finished the independent documentary about AIDS The science of panic. For more about her, visit her blog work/ing in progress and her website.