Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Digital Poetry Ark and Tawara Machi

Back in February, I was invited to take part in a project being carried out at the Southbank Centre. This project was the digitisation of the Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre. I quote from a memorandum from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport:

The Poetry Library magazines archive is a free access site to a full text digital library of 20th and 21st century English poetry magazines from the Poetry Library Collection housed in the South Bank Centre. The archive is part of an ongoing digitisation project at the Library funded by Arts Council England.

My own part in this project was very small. Through the kind intervention and good offices of Mami McGuinness, I was given the opportunity to translate some of the poetry of Tawara Machi into English for the Spring 2006 issue of Magma Magazine. Tawara Machi is a contemporary Japanese poet working in the tanka form - the thirty-one syllable poem from which the seventeen-syallable haiku is derived. I was not really a fan of Tawara Machi when the opportunity was first presented to me, though I knew of her work. However, once I had accepted the task, and sat down with the poems in order to translate them, I discovered what a knack she has for conjuring up subtle and sometimes strong emotions with great precision and economy.

Being called upon by the Soutbank Centre after my translations of Tawara Machi appeared in Magma was something of a surprise. More than anything, it made me feel the thoroughness of the archiving taking place. I believe that Kew Gardens has a kind of domesday seed bank project. This felt like something similar for poetry. They had not even missed me out, that's how thorough they were, though I suppose I should only be modest on my account and not on Tawara Machi-san's account. Anyway, it did feel a little bit as though I was the aye-aye, or, no, perhaps more appropriately, the silverfish, that Noah had not neglected to round up for the Ark.



I went along to the Southbank Centre on the 3rd of May, as instructed, and waited in the lobby until I was called up. I was met there by my friend, who had edited the issue of Magma being recorded, and taken to a room where I was stood in front of a microphone and a reading lectern. I asked for some water, wet my throat, and read the translations in question. I realised that I had not given all the necessary information in my introduction, and we did a second take. The whole thing was over in about ten minutes or so, and then I donned my coat again, and left.

The results are now available on the Internet. You can hear me reading the translations from Salad Anniversary here, and those from Pooh's Nose here. The text may be read here and here.