First, Peter Snell, New Zealand; Second, Roger Moens, Belgium; Third, George Kerr, Jamaica. It’s the Olympic result I first had wonder and reason enough to remember. Perhaps it was the little seed of The Song Atlas: that levelling of nations, those unusual, even strange, combinations and meanings. That knowledge that a little country only needs one good thing to be amongst the given Powers.
This great gathering voyage began in Italy, and ended two and a half years later in the Comoros. It was a wandery route, and upon it I visited every country in the world, spending more or less equal time pondering each one. They were all shiningly interesting. At each stop a poem was given to me in a plain, line by line, prose English translation. If it reached the qualifying standard (in other words, it was pretty good), it was in, re-poemed by me. My task was to restore what had been lost in translation, from 1500 BC (Egypt) to now (Democratic Republic of Congo), in other words, to make of each the most poetry I could. The ‘Flags of All Nations’ approach was childlikely satisfying, and did, thankfully, give a shape to an enterprise that could have become addictive and never-ending.
None of the 196 poems seeks to represent its country. It is taking part that counts. Citius, altius, fortius: some rattle, some soar, some hustle. And one Vanuatu can contain four USAs.
Students, embassy staff, national librarians, excited individuals, internet junkies, the poets themselves, their relatives, my relatives, workmates, friends, colleges, universities, travellers, expatriates, newspapers, reporters and Eminent Authorities, The Mongolian Society of Indiana, Staff of the Afghan Embassy in Canberra, The Markfield Islamic Institute, Favorita '68. The Friends of Niger, Brother Anthony and the National Libraries of Andorra and Estonia all galloped in to be part of the team.
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| The Song Atlas |
Equatorial Guinea, given to me, with translation, by Alan Brierly, (one of many African poems generously allowed me from his fading and meticulous notebook in which he had collected poems in situ fifty years before), is like a slap in the face after a custard cream. Finland, in this context, revealed what mental fidgets (we) Europeans are in verse, so personal, so wobbly. The son of Leon Laleau (Haiti) wrote me a description of his father writing in a sun-filled room. The political, feminist Honduras made me stand up and cheer. Ireland can be seen in the margin of an 11th Century Bible: the copier’s impatience poking his task-master.
And who would not want to go to Yala (Kenya) and see the Kamnaras on their bikes? The translation of little (four line) Lebanon, such a knot of triple-meanings, took six weeks. And what mad conjunction (Mali) sets a blind vulture upon a fallen lamb at the sound of its falling in the dust? And the tiny, surreal perfection of Malcolm de Chazal’s 'it was / so hot' (Mauritius) makes the reader desperate for more. The Morocco proverb-poem was given to me on a hotel roof that looked out on a sheer cliff unbelievably populated by standing goats: the translation followed a year later.
What modern, minimalist poet would not have wanted to write Niger? Palau was given to me in Samoa by the man who wrote it, though he forgot to give me his name. I watched Qatar being translated with meticulous slowness in the quiet of the Markfield Islamic Centre: at the end, the writer put his hand on his heart but did not smile. Rwanda’s gentle wisdom must be the envy of tortured poets. And San Marino: how we all searched and searched and searched, until this little anthem arrived in the post from Alessandro Della Balda in Belfast. Can anything prepare any reader for the steamy vegetable sex of the Seychelles? And Somalia came handwritten on a torn piece of lined paper, for all the world as if it was the sender’s camel who had died, and ended his world. There were eighteen translations to hand of Ferdowsi’s 'I’ve worked so hard …' (Tajikistan) – so four friends made a new one. An English version of 'Moonstruck Storks' (Turkey) in the old Penguin Book of Turkish Verse sent me back to the original, and a beautiful dip in the elegant calm of a perfect poem. Yemen came via Germany: could there be a prouder declaration of unrewarded faith?
All the world is here. Its people, thoughts, feelings, climates, plants, animals, habits, proverbs, worries, triumphs, politics, pride, and wisdom. It is a world show that is complementary, and not competitive, where the parts somehow do not fit, and yet make a Whole. Where Peter Snell, and Roger Moens, and George Kerr can be a fantail, a spade and a free weekend, and we can watch them run and run.
John Gallas was born in 1950 in Wellington, New Zealand. He came to England to study Old Icelandic in 1972, and stayed. He has been a teacher of children with special needs for twenty years, most recently with the Leicestershire Student Support Service. John Gallas has published six earlier collections of poetry with Carcanet and edited the anthology of world poetry The Song Atlas (2002).
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| Fresh Air and The Story of Molecule |
Fresh Air is an exhilarating, freewheeling ride through landscapes and languages. The poems, all written on the move have the fizz of travellers’ tales, the enchantment and the melancholy of the open road.
The Story of Molecule tells the tale of Molloy Gillies (‘Molecule’), a semi-detached twelve-year-old who one night takes his bike from the shed and pedals off to escape Evolution in Gallas's comical, heartbreaking sonnet-picaresque.
Together, these two books explore a world newly discovered in the imagination: ‘Imagine: in the atlas of my soul / I could not make a thing so lovely.’
You can find John's own website at www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk.