Expatriates

I was invited to contribute work to an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the poet R.S. Thomas in 2014, I asked my friend, the poet and musician Twm Morys (who had also been a friend of R.S) whether he could translate a selection of poems. ‘Amhosib’ he said. So I had to attempt it myself. I am not a poet, and not burdened with expectations of quality publishable work, so I feel (provided they are not too carefully examined) that I made a fair fist of it with ‘Expatriates’ and with ‘The Woman’, both poems that move me. At least they ‘read’ and ‘sound’ passably poetic. The latter poem is somehow not what one expects of R.S, and the former is. 'Expatriates' involves his gloomy view of the diminishing of that ‘core identity’ that is so precious to him, through migration out of the Welsh speaking areas. ‘The Woman’ is a timeless paean to the female, as a universal and transcendental force, more than an equal to God, with whom She strikes a deal. The act of translating these poems and then ‘scribbling’ them onto the paper, combines an attempt to simulate the pages of a writer’s notebooks, and the hastily written school blackboard, or ‘learning aid’ of the past; an act of ‘making’ and of ‘instruction’. But, as they are my own attempts to translate the poems, they also become double translations, from English to Welsh and from text to image (though the text in effect becomes the image here). My translations were worked directly into the drawings with the erasures and mistakes visible to all. Thus, they are contingent, not fixed as they are on the printed page, subject to change, blotting, seepage of ink and erasure of charcoal. Fragile, in a sense, like the very culture and language of Wales, but here presented in glass boxed frames, like objects in a museum.