New Issue of Asymptote Features Brossard, Bergvall, Wolf et Plus

Holy fumi. The new issue of Asymptote is out, and features Montreal poet and translator Bronwyn Haslam's special anagrammatic translations of Nicole Brossard's "Soft Link 1, 2, and 3." "It’s fears dense and mesmeric that creep into a life at reveille, cereal time, as she questions conflict to come and as all mornings, in an unequalled queenly snap, slices baguette and brie."

Also here is writing from the likes of Uljana Wolf and Caroline Bergvall, visual work from Brandon Downing, an interview with Jennifer Scappettone, a review of Kenzaburō Ōe's Death by Water by Mark Molloy, and so, so much more.

From the editor's note: "Too often, translators are seen as prissy, when most of the time, as Jennifer Scappettone says in our interview, they face the toughest of tasks: 'Translation obliges that you be embedded, digging your way out of the enemy logic word by word.' Artist Caroline Bergvall also sees it as a big dig, 'a construction site with no definite end in sight, a bit like Berlin in the 1990s.'”

Haslam's translator's note explains her particular process:

These translations of Nicole Brossard’s Soft Links are anagrams: the English version uses the exact same number of each letter as the French original.

Translating through the constraint of an anagram poses unique challenges, specific to the French and English languages. Though both languages share the same alphabet, they use their characters at different and particular frequencies. A French text of course has more Es, Us, and Qs than an English one, but it has fewer Hs, Fs, Bs, and rarely, if ever, a K or a W. This means that my translation can’t use words like words or words like “like.” It means adopting a more Latinate diction and an atypical accreting syntax, as many English linking words include an H or W.

Though inspired by Oulipo practices, the constraint also embeds an ethics of translation, pushing the target language to absorb the source language. These translations, however constrained, also attempt to be faithful to Nicole Brossard’s poems.

Read the anagrams here.