The acclaimed Irish poet talks to translator Despina Pirketti ahead of his arrival to Cyprus.
On 24 November, the Irish Ambassador to Cyprus, Conor Long, will honour Desmond Egan for his contribution to world poetry on the occasion of the poet’s arrival to Cyprus. The ceremony will take place in the context of Limassol International Book Fair right before the launch of Egan’s Selected Poems in Greek (Armida Books). A second launch will take place in Nicosia, at the Prozac Café, on 26 November.
In this interview, the poet talks to his translator about his rapport with Greece, his ties to Samuel Beckett and the main components of his poetry.
Your Selected Poems in Greek, published in Nicosia by Armida, marks your second book of poetry in the Greek language, after the 2001 volume by Athens’ Nefeli Publications. Your work is now launched in a reading market that is considerably smaller than Greece’s. Was this an issue for you?
I am an Hellenophile; love Classical Greek (which I once taught) and have been influenced by it; and love its sculpture and architecture. When in Cyprus I’ll be looking to see as much of the latter two as I can – so be warned! And Cyprus turned to me – in your person. How could I refuse?
You are a translator yourself. Do you look at translation as a “necessary evil” or do you ‘trust the process’ so to speak, hoping it would do honour to your original work?
I have translated two plays: Medea by Euripides, and Philoctetes by Sophokles. Apart from that, I am not a translator in the sense that you are. The question of what is lost in translation is an age-old – and boring – one. I don’t know Russian yet my life has been changed by reading Dostoievsky and co. – whereas many who know Russian, have not.
A good translator, a careful and respectful one like yourself, is a treasure. On top of which, are we not all in one way or another influenced by the Bible?
You’ve met Samuel Beckett in the 1980s and kept contact with him until his death. What is your fondest memory of him?
As a wonderfully warm and modest human being, with an Irish sense of humour and the vulnerability of a compassionate person. I loved the man, enjoy his work and do not at all consider him an apostle of despair – au contraire.
You’ve been artistic director of The Gerard Manley Hopkins Literary Festival since 1987. Hopkins is not widely known among Greek speaking readers, largely for lack of available translation. How would you introduce him to a non-initiate? Why is Hopkins relevant today?
Because Hopkins is a great poet, one of the top few in English. He has had an enormous influence on world poetry for that reason – and the wide international clientele attending the Hopkins Festival yearly in Newbridge College is proof of that. He has all the gifts and employs them to go inland with his life-changing poetry. If people don’t yet know him, try reading his poetry: it will change your life. And, while I’m on the subject, come over to the Hopkins Festival. It is not pompous and dull but a celebration of a wonderful poet and all his interests.
One thing many scholars have said about your poetry is that it shows incredible restraint and austerity. How do you feel about poems that are not austere, poems promoted as “lyric and emotional” or “personal and confessional?”
Maybe I learned the virtues of restraint and austerity from the Greeks. Thucydides, for example, in his wonderful History of the Peloponnesian War, describing the plague in Athens during its first year, simply mentions in three words, almost casually – αὐτός τε νοσήσας – that he had been infected by the plague himself. Genuine feeling is always more powerful and affecting when expressed with restraint. There is another consideration: a poem should employ all the resources of language and should contain nothing, nothing, that does not contribute to the poem. I spent 7 years working and re-working the poems (if they are poems) in Laptop.
Many of your poems are imbued with art and classical music. Rothko is featured in your latest book of poetry (Laptop, The Goldsmith Press: 2024). How does this ‘interdisciplinarity’ factor into the way you work?
I love Art and maybe some of my experimentation with multiple voicings (Hugh Kenner called them ‘fractals’ as in Chaos theory) also owes something to music.
Music is crucially important to me: Classical, Jazz (the hard stuff!) and Traditional Irish Music. All my family and relations are musical and a cousin is a professional and distinguished Irish musician. My friends have always been among musicians and artists: the sculptor James McKenna was a close friend until he died; the painter Brian Bourke still is. The great Swedish Classical pianist Hans Palsson is a close friend. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ is not a conscious thing with me; it’s just a reflection of who I am.
In Cyprus, two generations of poets, one born before the 1974 Turkish invasion and the other after it, have dealt with the island’s division in their work, some of them implicitly, most explicitly. Ireland has had its own share of conflict in the 20th century. How difficult is it for an Irish poet to write elegiac poetry in a politically laden region – as compared to a Dutch or Swedish poet for instance?
The only political poetry I rate is that which – like all real poetry – comes from somewhere deep. I dread instant newspaper poetry: there must be a million bad ‘poems’ out now about Gaza and Ukraine. That said, I have written a few poems about the troubles in the North, and decry the presence of the British Empire’s last stand in our little Island. Borders run through a people and hold them back. You in Cyprus know what I mean!
Many of the 48 poems featured in this volume are inhabited by animals big and small: a shrew, fruit flies, a beetle, goldfish, a wasp, deer, dogs. Is there a specific reason for this?
I live in the country. Such creatures and such a landscape is natural to me. Poetry has to be unselfconscious or it is no more than journalism.
Envy (Hopkins in Kildare, The Goldsmith Press, Newbridge: 2012)
we chose smaller goldfish
carried them glinting in plastic
to be tumbled gently into our little pond
they skittered in fright
straight out of sight
now the pool was alive again
you could sense it
but next morning there was only one
it darted about
at the speed of terror
the next none
not a sign
were they lurking in the detritus of leaves
among the blocks and waterlilies
the tangled iris
not a sight
a heron maybe
but the pond is hidden under hazel
so strange
then someone noticed the bulbeyes
the long flippers
the non gold
Desmond Egan’s Selected Poems in Greek (Armida, 2024) is available at www.armidabooks.com and in big bookshops across Cyprus.
Limassol, Sunday 24 November 2024 | 13:00-14:00Stage 1 | Limassol International Book Fair | Lanitis Carob Mills
Nicosia, Tuesday 26 November 2024 | 19:00-20:00Prozac Café
