SINGAPORE – On this month-to-month characteristic, The Sunday Instances strains up 5 hot-off-the-press home-grown poetry collections for readers to dive into.
1. Tan Swie Hian: Chosen Poems 1964 to 1997
By Tan Swie Hian, translated by Tee Kim Tong
Candid Creation Publishing/Paperback/156 pages/$21.40/Accessible right here
Cultural Medallion recipient Tan Swie Hian is not any stranger to translation.
Throughout a storied literary profession, he has rendered works by different greats akin to English writer Aldous Huxley, French poet Jacques Prevert, Romanian poet Marin Sorescu, Malaysian artist Latiff Mohidin and lots of extra into Chinese language.
Now, it’s his flip.
Tan, who turns 79 this yr, has had a big swathe of his poetry translated into English within the quantity Tan Swie Hian: Chosen Poems 1964-1997.
Essentially the most vital translation of his work into English to this point, it consists of greater than 80 poems from throughout his poetic profession.
The interpretation is the fruit of 10 years’ effort by Malaysia-born poet Tee Kim Tong, 65, an affiliate professor at Nationwide Solar Yat-sen College in Taiwan.
“I used to be very touched,” says Tan.
He provides that reviewing and revising the translations was a “painstaking course of” for him as the unique creator of the poems.
“Translation of the poem isn’t the writer’s job, it’s the job of a translator,” he says. “My poems are tough – they’ve many layers. They have been written initially as inventive items in Chinese language, however additionally they should work as inventive items within the English language.”
Finally, nevertheless, he reached the stage the place he was happy with the translated works. “With out translation, how can we talk?”
In his studio in Telok Kurau, surrounded by portraits of well-known writers akin to Lord Byron and Jane Austen that he did in ink on newspaper for the Bodleian Libraries of the College of Oxford, he jokes that he’s a “newcomer within the English area”.
However within the area of Singapore Chinese language literature, he could also be mentioned to be a “big”, to cite his poem of that identify.
The Large was additionally the title of his debut poetry assortment in 1968, printed underneath his nom de plume Mulingnu and thought to be a landmark in Modernist Chinese language literature of the area.