Babel at the ORB

On the eve of International Women’s Day,  the second reading in the School of English International Poetry Series brought together an Italian and Irish poet, each speaking in her own tongue but reaching way beyond the language divide, writes MA student, Úna Ní Cheallaigh.

Poets Laura Accerboni (above) from Lugano, Italy and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh from Kerry treated us to a cornucopia of language and sound. The need to know the languages spoken was unnecessary; like music, poetry in its lyrical quality can be enjoyed for its soundscape. However, text translations were projected on screen, guiding and enhancing the experience.

When Laura Accerboni stood at the podium to read her seven poem sequence – La Parte Del L’Annegato,(Playing the Drowned, translated by George Tatge), we were taken by surprise.

She faced the audience and without introductions or reference to her script, she spoke not to us but beyond us. Her voice carried to somewhere else and she was a conduit, allowing each line to find its own way into the space. It had an eerie quality, reminding me of the voices from the urns in Beckett’s Play.

This was not a spoken word performance, as the presence of the speaker became irrelevant. There was no separation as she embodied the work. Once she spoke the first line in Italian,

Il freddo/e poco piacevole

(Coldness/is rather unpleasant)

I knew that for me, following the translation on screen would create too many degrees of separation from what was actually happening in the moment. I needed to keep eye contact with the source of the voice. It was mesmerising. Playing the Drowned  is powerful, haunting and elegiac in tone. The poems do stand alone on the page but hearing them spoken aloud by the poet was a gift, that can’t be defined. I was reminded of W. B. Yeats’ question in his poem Among School Children – How can we know the dancer from the dance?

The Irish language poet Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh also raises questions in her poems, an international landscape providing the terrain to explore issues of language, borders, identity and loss.

Such is the territory of Coast Road, (Gallery Press 2017), her recently published bi-lingual selection of the work of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, from her two previous collections in Irish, Péacadh and Tost agus Allagar, both published by Coiscéim Press. The poet’s joy in reading from this book for the first time was shared with us; she explained that she had also given birth to her daughter six weeks ago, and this was a special occasion for her to read to us now and a timely celebration.

Her poems, read in Irish and in English, brought us to the Bronx, Harlem, Antartica and back to Tuam. Her reading of Rianta, (Stains), dedicated to Jean McConville and the children of the Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam was poignant in the light of discovery of mass graves. Dán do Thadhg, by contrast, celebrated the birth of her nephew.

Her finale poem, a villanelle, Grasse Matineé was a fitting tribute to the festival itself and what it has achieved, the opportunity for languages to speak to each other. The poem was read in English first, a wonderful translation by Alan Gillis which managed to capture the sounds and rhymes of the original. The treat in store for us then was Laura Accerboni reading an Italian translation, which became a feast when Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh read her poem in Irish, the repeated line –

Íosfaimid oráistí ar ball

(We’ll eat oranges later)

Sensuous and tantalising to the listener, but we knew we did not have to wait until later; we had already been guests at a Babylonian feast.