Spain: Where is it? What does it do?, Query about Spanish poetry

I moved to Spain last year. One thing that I would like to know, and which interests my poet friends here, is the perception of Spanish poetry in the UK.

Does anyone in this forum (presumably all of you are intelligent and interested, and widely-read in poetry of all sorts) have any sort of instinctive sense of peninsular Spanish poetry in the C.20th? Who the big names are, what the major movements are, what the debates are, and so on?

Just for interest's sake, I was wondering what sense British poets have of contemporary Spanish poetry. I imagine that there would be less of a received idea of what Spanish poetry is like than there would be for French or German or Swedish poetry, but I'd like to hear more concrete opinions.

This is a slightly vague post, but any thoughts appreciated.

I think you'll find that post-war Spanish poetry has a profile so low here that it's almost invisible. I've published the Collected Poems of Claudio Rodríguez (last year), and a Selected Juan Antonio Villacañas just recently, and am looking into a couple more, but everyone seems to think that the grand old man is Antonio Gamoneda. There are some translations in preparation in the US, I believe, but I found his work pretty uninteresting. There is a huge, and very problematic, anthology called Las ínsulas extrañas, published by Galaxia, which purports to give an overview of Spanish and Latin American poetry at the turn of the century. From my point of view, its Latin American coverage is patchy, and all non-mainstream writing is excluded. Its coverage of Mexico is lousy. BUT, it does seem to be reasonable guide to non-experimental writing in the peninsula, at least as seen from the official centre.

[Only just noticed this post, otherwise I'd have said something a few days ago.]

I only posted it today, so no need for explanations.

I think I share your feeling that the idea people (even poets) in the UK have of Spanish poetry is very patchy: I was astonished by my learning curve when I arrived here, coming across vast anthologies or collected editions of writers I had never even heard of, but who seemed to be pretty central (or if that's a difficult word, say 'well-regarded'). I wonder why the profile of Spanish poetry should be so much lower than that of other countries: no foreign poetry is very well known, but poetry from Spain seems to be less known than that of e.g. Germany, and certainly less known than writing from Poland and what used to be Czechoslovakia.

What comes across the other way is also weird, of course: the latest big anthology of UK poetry from Lumen, La isla tuerta, is very much an anthology of a particular tendency in British poetry, even though it bills itself as being much more comprehensive.

I know the guy who did that Lumen anthology, actually, although I've not seen it yet.

One of the reasons for the invisibility is that, during the Franco years, most of the best poets were in exile and those that weren't were ignored by outsiders (somewhat unfairly) as fellow-travellers. Aleixandre won the Nobel, but he was the only one who was read outside the country, and then mostly because of the Prize. Basically, Spain's poetic reputation has never really re-established itself. Spain also has a problem in that some of the most interesting writing in Spanish is being done on the other side of the Atlantic. There are major figures active in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Peru, to name but 4 countries.

I suppose some blame could be laid at the door of the cultural authorities. They probably should be sponsoring an anthology that gets decent distribution in the USA and the UK -- covering the costs of rights, etc.

If it's any comfort there's no serious anthology in the UK of more recent German or Italian work either (the little ones done by Faber don't count, for a number of reasons). French? The last major anthology of contemp French poetry came out from Random House in the US in 1984 or so, and was edited by none other than Paul Auster. It was never released here. Does that tell you anything?

Interesting: why would you say the little anthologies by Faber don't count?

They're extremely personal, sure, and I went to an interesting conference where Jamie McKendrick spoke about his principles of selection for the Italian anthology and was rather roughed-over by the translation maven Lawrence Venuti for not making an attempt to be absolutely representative. And also, commissioning contemporary poets to do the translations means that the anthologies move away from being 'about' Germany or France and end up being more about Paul Muldoon and Don Paterson. But at least they exist.

There is nothing at all similar for Spanish poetry as far as I know, and that's a shame: I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the Faber anthologies are inadequate or 'don't count', but even if they are and don't, they at least gather together some contemporary translations of some contemporary poetry into one place, and give readers a list of names and samples of work by these names so that they can go and find out more if they want to. That such an object doesn't exist for Spanish poetry, which is as far as I can see at least as interesting as French and German and Italian (the Faber languages), is not good.

Well, I can't take an anthology seriously which chooses to represent decades of great poetry by a few single poems by a few authors. The German one misses out huge swathes of significant work, and the youngest people in the book seem to be personal friends of the anthologist. And, yes, also because anthologies are about the literature being selected, not about the anthologist. The moment the anthologist steps in front of the camera, the book ceases to be a relevant artefact. They exist, true, but you will know nothing about German poetry of the last 50 years by reading Hofmann's book. Worse, you might actually think you do because you've read it. I can't speak for the Italian book as I have no knowledge of the literature in question, and have no Italian, but on size grounds I lumped it in with the Hofmann (lazy thinking there, perhaps). I'm trying to do something about the general problem, up to a point, and am working on a Mexican anthology and a German one (edited by others, I should add, albeit with some input from me), although the latter will take a while yet. As for Spain, someone's proposed a Selected Aníbal Nuñez, so I've just ordered the Antología from Cátedra.

Thanks for this.

I can't help thinking that this is a slight overstatement. Maybe the Faber anthologies are hampered from the start by personal and publishing concerns (they all fit into a standardised 160pp format, so are limited in the amount of work they can fit in to start with), but really, will you know nothing about German poetry from the 1960s and beyond after reading Hofmann's book? Starting from no knowledge at all?

My feeling is that given the position foreign poetry starts from, anything that opens the gates even the tiniest amount must be worthwhile.

I know nothing about contemporary Spanish poetry.

However, I shall use this thread as an excuse for a related plug. I'm starting a series of translations of contemporary foreign language poetry in Horizon. In the next issue, due out early October, we've got some translations of contemporary German poet Norbert Hummelt. I'm also working on getting some translations of a contemporary French poet, Albane Gellé, but email negotiations seem to have stalled. Probably due to the fact that it's les vacances. But if she doesn't make this issue, it'll be the next.

New translations of contemporary Spanish poetry welcome.

I just picked up Hofmann's Faber anthology again to check if my memory was failing me. It wasn't. Poets born after 1950 occupy 22 pages:

Uwe Kolbe 2 (1 poem)
Durs Grünbein 9 (7 poems)
Lutz Seiler 4 (4 poems)
Marcel Beyer 2 (2 poems)
Volker Sielaff 2 (2 poems)
Hauke Hückstädt 4 (4)
Matthias Göritz 1 (1)
Jan Wagner 1 (1)

The first 4 are good, and I've translated Seiler myself -- the translations here by Susan Bernofsky are superb by the way -- although the first 3 are late-DDR poets and the 4th is actually mainly a novelist. The last 4 in my humble opinion don't deserve to be here, with a couple of them being no more than lit-political players, making a lot of noise, rather than serious poets. So, I stand by my statement that you will learn nothing (at least nothing worth knowing) by reading this part of the book. It's a travesty, and not only because there's not one woman on the list -- there are a number of superb women poets at work today in Germany. [If I gave the impression that I condemned the entire book, then I was out of order... see below.]

Pre 1950, Hofmann goes with the general consensus, about which I could argue a little, as I could with any selection, but it does not misconstrue the field in any serious way.

Jane:
Shearsman will publish the Selected Poems of Norbert Hummelt next year, assuming we can get Luchterhand to grant the rights. I assume the translations are by Catherine Hales? If so, they're excellent.

Thanks, Jane: I will bear that in mind.

And Tony, thanks for the quantitative analysis. Maybe the problem is that such an anthology is made useless by the facts of its conception: it's standard Faber size, c. 13 x 20 cm, and they were limited (so Jamie McKendrick said when I heard him talk about it) to a maximum of 180pp. It seems to me impossible that any anthology could represent a whole country's whole century's poetry in that scope, especially when you have to include e.g. Rilke and Brecht and so on generously. Even before we get into the realm of deciding that some poets should be included who aren't and some are who shouldn't be, the tiny space available means that any talk of being representative is unsustainable.

I would not disagree with you there, James. I still think, though, that there's a danger that unwitting readers will actually think "this is it".

Maybe you and your friends could do something about the paucity of contemporary Spanish poetry being seen over here? The expat poets in Berlin are doing a grand job for half a dozen fine younger German poets; it looks a good model to follow.

Well, of course that would be nice. I've submitted a few Spanish translations to various magazines here in the UK, the ones I've had published are a version of Luis Rogelio Nogueras, who is dead and Cuban, and one by Mariano Peyrou. Baby steps.

Hi James,

I spend a lot of tme in Extremadura, blog on contemporary U.K. and Spanish poetry (see the link below), read as much in Spanish as in English and regularly attend readings in Spain.

You'll find that many of the key polemics in Spanish poetry would be seen as ridiculous in the U.K., while the reverse would also be true for many Spanish poets if they were to read this forum! In other words, clashes in aesthetics mean that translations of much contemporary Spanish poetry struggle to gain widespread acceptance with British readers. Even "La poesia de la experiencia" often seems very esoteric and abstract in U.K. terms, something which amazes many Spanish poets with whom I've discussed the issue.

Why? Can you expand on that, Matthew?

Yes, indeed. You should have had an email about this by now from Catherine. All hunky dory.

Hi Jane,

A full reply to your question would need a book, but I'll do what I can within this format!

Spain's sociocultural and thus poetic points of reference are inevitably far from ours. Their very own Poetic Wars were fought on a different battlefield.

For instance, when translating virtually all contemporary Spanish poets, an intrinsic problem is their interpetation of the use of certain elements of language such as abstract nouns and adverbs. What sounds superb in the context of the original Spanish sounds twee, kitsch or just bland to a British ear. Antonio Gamoneda is such a poet. Let's imagine a U.K. poet writing in English as he does in Spanish: the result would struggle to find a readership. He's revered in Spain and I love reading him in the original version.

This problem is obviously shared to a greater or lesser extent with all translated poetries, but the clash is even greater when taking the example of Spain and the U.K.. Contemporary Spanish poetry is therefore little known in the U.K. and many big names in Iberia don't have a publisher over here.

Thanks for all your comments, Matthew.

I'm not so sure that it is anything intrinsic in Spanish poetry itself (in any poetry) that forces it necessarily to fail in English: if one is capable of reading it and 'getting' it in Spanish, then there must be a way of getting it across into English, this is the translator's job. If a translation of a good poem sounds twee, kitsch or bland in translation, that says more about the translator than the poem, surely? (I'm not talking personally here, of course.)

I'll admit that there are grammatical and syntactic difficulties in translating Spanish poetry (and Spanish in general): the genitive, the attitude towards neologism, the way Spanish rhythms can work etc... But most e.g. French poetry seems a lot blander, kitscher, twee-er to me than Spanish.

The argument that the sociocultural and poetic reference points of Spanish poetry are inevitably far from ours is obviously true, but doesn't explain why Spain should lag so far behind other European countries in having a low profile for translated poetry in the UK. And such an argument works both ways of course: the vicarious access to suffering which a lot of readers enjoy in some Eastern European poetry, founded on a completely alien set of political reference points, was a key tool in finding it readers in the 1970s.

A thought / question: how much of Spain's low profile is to do with regionalism? Does the fact that significant and interesting work exists in Asturian, Basque, Galician, Valencian, Catalan etcetera as well as Castilian dilute the possible impact that 'Spanish poetry' as a whole might have?

The choice of Gamoneda was a good one there, Matthew. I heard him read a couple of years ago and disliked it quite intensely -- as did most of the other non-Hispanophone audience members. It was not helped by his very portentous style, accompanied by glances at the heavens, by breast-beating, and cries of Mi corazón, mi corazón! I exaggerate somewhat, but you'll get the picture. There are in fact two translations of his work underway in the US, although the US is not usually very receptive to contemporary poetry from Spain (as distinct from Latin America).

Regionalisation should not be making too much difference, James. In fact the regions have been supporting their own writers, at least those with their own distinct languages (by which I mean Galician, Basque & Catalan -- Asturian, Leonese dialects, etc, don't get anything like that kind of support). Shearsman has had sponsorship from Galicia for a couple of books, but I've also managed to rustle up support from Castille for another project. My reading of the situation is that we now get to see some poets who were invisible under the old regime, but that might be at the expense of our view of the centre. An anthology in translation is certainly needed, and the Instituto Cervantes or some such body should probably sponsor one. I shudder to think of the politics involved, though.

Gamoneda is a great poet, a lovely man and terrific company - I was lucky enough to have some tapas with him after a reading in Zafra a few years ago. However, I agree entirely with Tony: at the reading I was enthralled yet struck by just how ridiculous he would seem to a U.K. audience.

James, good luck, but one point should be made: translating Spanish poetry appears easier in the early years: the longer you spend in Spain, the better you'll speak the language and the more Spanish poetry you'll read, which is when your task will get even tougher! Nuances will appear beyond nuances, in meaning, form and music. At least, that's my experience after a degree in Spanish and fifteen years out there living in a town where no one speaks English!