Incisive and confessional, Raised by Wolves collects the most acclaimed work of Taiwanese poet -filmmaker Amang. In her poems, Amang turns her razor-sharp eye to everything from her suitors ("For twenty years I've loved you, twenty years / So why not say yes / You want to see my nude photos ?") to international affairs -"You'd have to win the lottery ten times over / And the U.N. hasn't won it even once." Keenly observational yet occasionally absurd, these poems are urgent and lucid, as Amang embraces the cruelty and beauty of life in equal measure.
Raised by Wolves also presents a ground-breaking new framework for translation. Far from positing the transition between languages as an invisible and fixed process, Amang and translator Steve Bradbury let the reader in. Multiple English versions of the same Chinese poem often accompany dialogues between author and translator: the two debate as wide -ranging topics as the merits of English tenses, the role of Chinese mythology, and whether to tell the truth you have to lie a little, or a lot. Author, her poems, and translator, work in tandem, "Wanting that which was unbearable / To appear unbearable / Just as it should be."
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(@PhonemeMedia, 1 September 2020, ebook, 152 pages, copy from @edelweiss_squad and voluntarily reviewed, translated by Steve Bradbury)
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I'd never heard of the poet before but the blurb made it sound like something I'd enjoy. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to its potential for me. I enjoyed most of the poems. However, there are large chunks, more than half of the collection actually which are discussions between the poet and translator on how to translate certain ideas / images etc. I don't know what the point of this was but it really put me off. I wanted to read poetry, not chit-chat between the poet and translator. Maybe some people really enjoyed this but I didn't. I find it distracting and irritating for the most part. These sections ruined the whole collection for me.
