Poet Laureate and Emeritus Distinguished Professor Niyi Osundare has just had some of his poems translated into Korean. The 240-page anthology is a collaboration between the multiple literary award winner and Joon- Hwan Kim, a Korean university professor with extensive literary experience in translation. In this interview, the National Merit Award winner who is billed for two international meetings in Korea in October, one of them taking place in Paju, also called The Book City of Korea, speaks on the project and related issues.
Tell us about this new work of translation taking you to Korea, Prof.
Actually, I have been invited to Korea for two major deliberations. The first is a keynote lecture at an international conference under the overall topic DMZ Peace Literary Conference, taking place in Paju, also called The Book City of Korea. (DMZ is the short designation for Demilitarized Zone, the strip of land that was portioned out as demarcation between South Korea and North Korea in 1953, and which is still there, 70 years after). . . . I will be keynoting the second session of the conference with the topic “Global Crisis and the Role of Writers” You will remember that this kind of subject has been in the very centre of my literary and political engagements since the publication in 1986 The Writer as Righter, my very first extended monograph. It is a session on a theme that has been around for a long time, but which has refused to go away, especially here in Africa where literature and political commitment have found it impossible to stay far apart.
Now, the book of translation. Yes, this is a 240-page book containing Korean translation of selected poems from about 15 of my poetry books. The translator, Joon- Hwan Kim, is a Korean university professor with an extensive literary experience The translation was methodically done such that I actually gained a lot of experience from the process myself, from the way he handled the two languages. That is, English and Korean. Prof. Kim usually sent me questions, and at times he would send two possible translations of a phrase or expression for us to work out in a bid to arrive at the more appropriate choice.. This practice took me to the depth of many of my words and many of my poems because a thoughtful translator brings out a new kind of consciousness: you become more aware of the words and more watchful of their hidden meanings, and their endless nuances . A patient, meticulous scholar himself, he was very interested in the collocation and complex leanings of words and ideas. He was aware of the company words keep and the company they avoid. My dealing with him frequently took me back to the creative process itself, reminding me of the agonies and pleasures I felt during the original composition of many of the poems. I began to wonder: how did I choose this word and not that? Is this word really working in this poem? Did I write what I thought? Did I mean what I wrote?
At times I wished I knew that language, Korean, so that I could actually know how both languages interact with each other in this translation process. As you know, my English is not “English English”. My English has been enriched, complicated, and ‘contaminated’ by Yoruba, my mother tongue. People who are familiar with my poetry will know that I think in Yoruba most of the time and write in English. This phenomenon is captured in my creative ‘confessional’ piece of many years ago: “Yoruba Thought, English Words: A Poet’s Journey through the Tunnel of Two Tongues”, originally presented as a conference paper at the University of Birmingham, UK, and later published in my book of essays, Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture. Most of the time, I operate between the two languages and cultures, an act and practice I find frequently fruitful and sometimes frustrating. So, in a very intriguing way, what Professor Joon- Hwan Kim did was a translation across three languages, three semantic deep structures, three stylistic and rhetorical frameworks. Trying to translate into English and Korean was thus an adventure of many delightful journeys, of many roads. A delightful learning process for both translator and translatee. No wonder his thoughtful title for his Korean translation is Bridge across the Seas.
Is it likely to be a recommended text, the new book?
‘Recommended’? Oh well, I wouldn’t know. But from my experience during my first two literary/professional visits to Korea, one in 2007 and the other 2019, I know that Korea is a country that takes matters like this very seriously. Matters relating to literature and culture which they regard as enabling, indispensable companions to their phenomenal scientific and technological development. For example, in 2019, after participating in a major international conference in Seoul, I was invited to a night of reading and scholarly deliberations on my works by Korean academics, in Busan, Korea’s second largest city and a thriving port and business hub. The venue for the evening’s book business was a place instructively named Book Café, run by the energetic and personable Kim Soo-Woo. It was an evening of surprise and delight for me. A 50-page booklet of my poems in Korean translation was already waiting, with an impressive introduction of the poet by Kola Olatubosun, himself a highly adventurous poet, translator, and linguist, and son of Tubosun Oladapo, one of my favourite Yoruba akewi. Wonderful evening as I read/performed my poetry, listened as the scholars went to work with their analyses, and spent time responding to the questions and comments that came towards the end of the programme. Wonderful audience; lively and responsive. My highlight of the evening was my meeting with Professor Jaeyong Kim, an influential Korean scholar and internationalist who was the moving force behind the translation project. He is a member of the Asian African and Latin American Literature Forum in Korea.
In your keynote address at Prof Teju Olaniyan Foundation, you expressed concern about young Nigerian writers’ seeming disdain for our local publishers and literary awards save for those from foreign sources . Could you please shed more light on this?
Let me start by saying straight away that I have no problems with prizes and awards from any part of the world as long as they are genuine, recognized, and with no kind of strings attached. Remember: I have been lucky to be a recipient of many such prizes in the past four decades or so. The beauty of literature, of art, is inherent in its power to transcend its local habitation, no doubt. And prizes, literary prizes anywhere in the world, are a measure of the excellence of works of art, excellence of whatever work …What bothers me is our people’s disdain for local recognition vis a vis their heedless craze for any nod coming from abroad. This is an indication of our akotileta (prodigal) dependency, neo-colonialist syndrome, a situation that has befouled scholarly valuation in our universities where works published abroad are frequently rated higher than those published locally. You just need to see the degree of racketeering this has engendered in our so-called ivory towers.
The instances I mentioned in the Teju Olaniyan lecture actually took place, I am bothered that quite a number of younger writers I know and interact with, very talented young people who want to get published, do not want to get published in Nigeria. You know, they say they want to get published abroad because they do not want to die in obscurity. Many of them do not have good things to say about Nigerian publishers. They say that the publishing houses do not accept your book easily and when they eventually publish your book, you are not really sure of how many copies they have sold. They never send sale statements, and they hardly give you any royalty.
But most important of all, they do not do anything to promote your work. So, in a way, I sympathize with them to a large extent. I am also one of the victims of the cheating, non-accountable Nigerian publisher.
But as I keep telling them, it is not all Nigerian publishers that behave that way. Yes, there are others who are credible. I think I must have more than 10 publishers in different parts of the world. The difference between my publishers abroad and my publishers here is that, while the one abroad will send you a statements to let you know how many copies they have sold and then give you whatever royalty they owe you, over here in Nigeria, our publishers hardly ever do that, such accountability is absent here. I have publishers I haven’t heard from in 10 years! So, there is a lot to complain about.
But I also tell them that publishing abroad is not always the solution. I still remember one of my young interlocutors saying something to this effect: “Mo fe jaja ( I want to bolt away/abroad). I know I have more than enough in me. I want to go conquer America with my talents. This place (Nigeria) is too small for me.” I remember reminding the young man about the possibility of America conquering him, and that we are not short of heart-breaking examples.
(Cuts in) How so?
Why? Art grows and blooms more spontaneously, more bountifully in specific contexts, basically. That does not mean that artists cannot thrive in other parts of the world, but every work of art has a “local habitation”, as the immortal Shakespeare has put it, before it can have a “name”, you know. The Achebes, the Soyinkas, the Okigbos, Clarks, Mabel Seguns , and other members of the first generation of modern Nigerian writers, did not have this japa problem, Their works grew from the soil where they stood on their feet. The cocks (Yes, cock: my infinitely more evocative preference over ‘rooster’!) that woke them up on creation day blew their trumpets in their backyards. They lived the culture that nurtured their talents and powered their imagination. They got the outside world to come and appreciate their essence right here in their roost.
The point that I am making is that the fate of the artist and his/her environment are intertwined and inter-dependent. What happens when an artist lives outside on an alien soil? How can the song grow from there and still remain authentic and African? Where would the writer find an audience, particularly, for poetry? When the poem is a song raised like a solo by the poet; what kind of chorus will complete the singing? When the poet makes a call, what response will he get; what kind? There is a lot that the environment does for the work. It gives it its source and meaning, depth vitality, and sense of usefulness.
I have taken my poetry to different parts of the world, and I remain grateful, even lucky, for many of the responses they have received. But in many instances, the appreciation, interpretation, and significance of the work abroad are different from what obtains in the “land of [its] birth”
And now, this caveat: it is the nature of art to be able to “travel”, but as the Yoruba say “ajo ko le dun dun dun ko da bi ile” (No matter how sweet a foreign land may be, it can never be like home in its entirety). Things Fall Apart in Busan is still like Things Fall Apart in Aracataca, or Things Fall Apart in Morogoro, or Things Fall Apart in Tegucigalpa, or in Glasgow; or Mumbai; or Sidney . Each relocation is legitimate, challenging, and compelling.
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