Asymptote Podcast

In honor of Asymptote's Summer 2018 edition, which marks our milestone 30th issue and includes a dazzling Multilingual Writing Feature, Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James explores what it takes to create multilingual spaces by taking a visit to the IV Encuentro Internacional de Artistas de la Kasbah in Alicante, Spain. This festival, now in its fourth year, brings together over twenty artists from around the world in an effort to foster greater cultural exchange and artistic friendship. There, she chats with Colombian artist Manuel Antonio Velandia Mora about his work, as well as founders Nourdine Tabbai and Natalia Molinos about the event's origins.

Layla Benitez-James is an Asymptote Podcast Editor, poet, translator, and artist living in Alicante, Spain. Translations can be found in Waxwing and Anomaly. She currently works with the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid as their Director of Literary Outreach. Her first chapbook, God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure, was selected by Major Jackson for the 2017 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and published in April 2018 by Jai-Alai Books in Miami.

Produced by: Layla Benitez-James Featuring: Natalia Molinos, Nourdine Tabbai, Manuel Antonio Velandia Mora.

Music: Semseyemin Ucu Kare with Oud Solo by Haig Manoukian by Orkestra Keyif used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

On this month’s Asymptote Podcast, the second of two episodes focusing on language and dance, former contest judge Sawako Nakayasu is interviewed by Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle. They discuss her unique translation of a dancer’s notebook, Costume en Face: A Primer of Darkness for Young Boys and Girls. The notebook documents the development of a work by Japanese choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, as transcribed by his dancer Moe Yamamoto. The founder of Butoh, a style of dance known for its darkness and at-times contorted movements, Hijikata developed a way of communicating with his dancers that choreographed not only external movement, but internal states as well. To translate Hijikata’s notebook, Nakayasu had to reconcile the drive to translate as faithfully to the text as possible with the contingent and highly personal nature of a notebook never intended for publication. Listen to the podcast now!

 

Music used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

In this episode of the Asymptote Podcast, we explore the identities of translators and authors via an interview with translator Lawrence Schimel whose groundbreaking translation from the Spanish of Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda was recently reviewed on the Asymptote blog. (Obono is the first female author from Equatorial Guinea to be translated into English.) Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James, returning from her sabbatical, sits down with Schimel in Madrid to discuss the challenges of translating this novel in the light of John Keene's essay, “Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness.” We also delve into Schimel’s work at the helm of A Midsummer Night’s Press, the challenge of getting more female authors translated into English, and how to advocate for a more inclusive global literature.

Produced by: Layla Benitez-James Featuring: Lawrence Schimel Music: Studio Mali - Wake Up - "It's Africa Calling" by IntraHealth International. Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://freemusicarchive.org/. Some changes were made to these tracks. Photograph: Nieves Guerra

Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual poet and translator based in Madrid. He translates in both directions between Spanish and English. Schimel has translated poems by Vicente Molina Foix, Luis Antonio de Villena, Jordi Doce, Sofía Rhei, Jesús Encinar, Care Santos, among others. Writing in both Spanish and English, he has published over 100 books as author or anthologist in many different genres, including one collection of poems written in Spanish, Desayuno en la cama (Egales), as well as a chapbook in English Fairy Tales for Writers (A Midsummer Night’s Press). His poems have appeared in diverse periodicals, ranging from The Christian Science Monitor to Physics Today to Gay Scotland, and have been widely anthologized. He has won the Lambda Literary Award (twice), the Spectrum Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, and the Rhysling Award for poetry. His writings have been translated into Basque, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

Layla Benitez-James is an Asymptote Podcast Editor, poet, translator, and artist living in Alicante, Spain. Translations can be found in Waxwing and Anomaly. She currently works with the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid as their Director of Literary Outreach. Her first chapbook, God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure was selected by Major Jackson for the 2017 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and published by Jai-Alai Books in Miami, April 2018.

In this first installment of a two-parter about language and dance, Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle speaks with Switzerland-based dancer and choreographer Kincsö Szabó, who trained in Eurythmy, a form of dance created in the 1920s by philosopher Rudolph Steiner. In Eurythmy, aspects of language are taken as direct impulses for movement in a codified way—certain letters have certain sounds, and these sounds have movements associated with them. Szabó says that this process helps dancers to understand abstract concepts in a more natural and embodied way. Take a listen to the podcast now!

Music used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

One of the most unique features of Asymptote is that, with almost every piece published, a reading in the original language is published along with it. So start out 2018 right by taking a listen to our favorite readings published over the last year. Hear work read by Swedish author Ida Börjel, leading Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut, rising French author Maryam Madjidi, and Syrian poet Omar Youssef Souleimane. Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle puts each piece in context, including a special interview with Hamut’s translator, Joshua Freeman.

 

Music used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

Music and literature meet at the crossroads of Portuguese and English—what happens? Arto Lindsay. In this episode of the Asymptote Podcast, Editor-at-Large Lara Norgaard speaks with the experimental Brazilian-American musician of DNA and Ambitious Lovers fame. They discuss his unique combination of Brazilian and American influences which range from candomblé to Emily Dickinson. Together, they unpack his expansive and multilayered works while reflecting on the role of language and translation in negotiating identity.

Produced by: Lara Norgaard

Editor and Host: Dominick Boyle

Audio Editor: Dominick Boyle

Music: “Ilha Dos Prazeres” “Unpair” and “Seu Pai” by Arto Lindsay, used with permission.

Before we translate with a language, we have to pick it up. In this episode of the Asymptote Podcast, learn about people’s first interactions with new languages. Discover the funny stories about linguistic misunderstandings unearthed by Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle as he stands on a bridge between two countries. Plus, hear what's in store for the podcast this fall.

Podcast Editor and Host: Dominick Boyle

Music by Podington Bear, used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

In this episode of the Asymptote Podcast we feature an interview with translator Suchitra Ramachandran. Her translation of the short story, Periyamma’s Words by B. Jeyamohan, won Asymptote's 2017 Close Approximations Prize in Fiction. Ramachandran and Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle delve into the rich world of language that the two main characters of Periyamma’s Words find themselves in, which is filled with symbolism that reaches epic proportions. Ramachandran says that this creates a text both incredibly challenging to translate, but also incredibly rewarding.

They also discuss her own journey of linguistic discovery, which motivated her to become a translator. Frustrated by the inadequacy of Indian literature written in English to speak to her own experience, Ramachandran turned to literature in Tamil. Now, she hopes that translation can bring it to a wider audience. She says that translations of Tamil literature, surprisingly, are helping other Indians, and even native Tamil speakers, to discover the tremendous wealth of stories available in their own backyard.

Podcast Editor and Host: Dominick Boyle

Music is “Divider” by Chris Zabriskie and “El Tranva” by Jenifer Avila. Used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.

(Editor's Note: Ramachandran would like to add that it is incorrect when she says in the podcast that students of English read translations of Mulk Raj Anand—Anand was an Indian author who wrote in English.)

In this episode of the Asymptote Podcast we return to the world of Mundartliteratur in Switzerland in an exclusive interview with Pedro Lenz, one of the best known Swiss authors who writes in dialect. His engaging and immediate works of prose and poetry present life in modern Switzerland as it really is: a far cry from the idealized herders of Heidi. His 2010 novel Der Goalie bin ig has been translated out of the Bernese Swiss-German into 8 languages, including Glaswegian English, and adapted as a film.

Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle talks with Lenz about the relationship between language, sound, and story. Lenz believes that the highly deliberate but ultimately artificial way he constructs his texts paradoxically allows a work to connect to its audience with fewer boundaries. We also speak about how his work was given a new life and context when translated into Glaswegian.

All sound recorded and produced by Dominick Boyle, or available in public domain.

In this week’s all new podcast, dive deeper into our Special Feature on Literature from Banned Nations from our Spring Issue with exclusive interviews with two of our contributors. Writer and educator Lauren Camp speaks about the experiences that inspired her poem Given a Continuous Function, We Define a New Function and what it’s like navigating family history though fragments. Then, translator Ghada Mourad talks with us about the striking work of Syrian poet and journalist Omar Youssef Souleimane, and her translation of his poem, Away from Damascus, which powerfully distills the experiences of Syrian refugees. We also discuss what it’s like to translate the work of those in exile and others from the in-between, and the power of poetry across borders. Welcome to the Asymptote Podcast, available to download today!

Podcast Editor and Host: Dominick Boyle

All sound recorded and produced by Dominick Boyle, or available in public domain.