“Building an Architecture for the Wanderer”: A Conversation with Nathalie Handal

Abstract

12 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 photo : rachel eliza griffiths Building an Architecture for the Wanderer” A Conversation with Nathalie Handal by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren “ Q&A WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 13 Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren: Your books are written in English but laced with Arabic , French, Spanish, Italian, Creole, and even Russian and Sanskrit words. Given your fluency in so many languages, why did you decide to write primarily in English ? How do you think that impacts what and how you write? Nathalie Handal: I didn’t choose it. English just came to me, and I welcomed it. It doesn’t impact what I write. My work would be about a search for connectedness no matter what language I wrote in. The more languages you know, the more unique and complex your own language becomes. RMC: What languages did you speak growing up? Did you ever consciously learn a language, or do you consider all of them to be your hyphenated “mother tongue”? NH: I’ve often said I don’t have a mother tongue. In fact, they are all hyphenated mother tongues. Together they create a symphony, a new language, and the multiplicity of that new language reflects my identity and life. RMC: Has your work been translated into other languages? Which language would you most like to be translated into in the future? NH: My work has been translated into fifteen languages. There isn’t a language that I’d most want to be translated into—they all intrigue me, and it’s a gift to expand the conversation. But I would like to be retranslated into all the languages I’ve previously been translated into. I now have a deeper understanding of the fundamental importance of translating culture alongside the words themselves. I would like to work with translators who have an understanding of the multiplicity of cultures present in my work—the nuances and localisms, rhythms and beats, histories and idiosyncrasies —in order to better translate it into whatever the equivalent would be in their own language and culture. Still, I’m aware that at certain levels translation is impossible , and equivalents don’t exist. But a proximity—textually, musically, and emotionally —would be wonderful. RMC: Did you always know that you were a poet? When did you decide to pursue poetry “professionally”? NH: Poetry is a mystical and magical experience—it doesn’t come from what we know. The only time I feel whole is while writing. Along the way, I met mentors who helped me clarify to myself that wanting to spend a life with the page wasn’t such a crazy idea—they had the same impulse. Derek Walcott told me in my early twenties , and his words resonated with my nomadic spirit, “Do whatever you have to do to write; don’t settle in a job.” Lucille Clifton made me understand the generous power of poetry. She also taught me how to put a poetry book together when I took a workshop with her in London . I still remember her luminous face as she placed my poems on the floor and asked me how they spoke to one another. Gerald Stern, at a Poetry Society of America event on black iconic poets of the twentieth century that we both participated in, said, “Clifton is our prophet.” I agree. The first poems I ever published appeared in the British magazine Ambit, with the enthusiastic support of John Burnside. It took me nearly twenty years to cross paths with John and tell him that his support meant so much to me that it nearly eliminated the bloody rejections that writers are all too familiar with. I’ve always been dedicated to my craft. Earlier on, I was only thinking about the page, not the rent, the endless bills and headaches that slowly tiptoed behind me and for which I had no solution. So if your question is, when did I connect poetry in any way with income, I would say, when I moved to the United States in my early G roundbreaking poet, playwright, and editor Nathalie Handal is one of our most diverse contemporary writers, and as the Washington Independent Review of Books writes, it’s with “startling...