The poetry of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

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0:55Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Before dawn in Cork, Ireland In the quiet hour where the world feels suspended between night and morning Award-winning Irish language poet Alvin Ygarvi sits at her kitchen table She's working on a new poem Inspired by her nine-year-old daughter's fascination with Greek mythology Lauren tuu l 'anfwy Persephone agus tuu i taith da dischint guwil an thallaf fúith suuric ar náus ghanav na gamací a leantu la chash na seann a viuttas You speak to me about Persephone as it comes to you the knowledge that the ground you stand on sucks at you like quicksand in those comic books you read alongside your mythology It's kind of about maybe observing her in her imagination where she's totally absorbed.

1:48And one day I asked her, where are you now? And she said, I'm in the Iliad. And I just thought, wow, I'm going to have to write a poem about this.

1:59Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Welcome to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service, the programme that investigates the creative process. My name's Dool de Haire, and over the next five weeks, we're following Alva as she takes her new poem from first draft to first public reading, at the Franco-Irish Literary Festival in Dublin. Alva's poetry has travelled widely in translation, reaching readers in English, French, Spanish, German, Czech, Macedonian and Greek. Much of this international reach comes through English translations by her husband, the acclaimed poet Billy Ramsell. He offers a rare insight into how poetry migrates and evolves between languages.

2:39What you try to do when you translate poetry, you're bringing something from one place to another of course not the full sonic complexity or the sonic texture of the language that would be impossible but I do try to bring something perhaps a reflection or a shadow of the sound

2:59Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Alva writes exclusively in Irish rooted in tradition yet unmistakably modern in outlook she's become one of the most distinctive literary voices of her generation Growing up, Irish wasn't enforced, was very much an option. But it was the favoured language of the house, I would say. And ultimately it was the language of love. It's how I like to express my love for my children as well. It's through this language. It is a gift, really. Siasan fóith a chrí yil. Bí cáir éisach lé dá béasa. Nú curfhú fúi lín a bíse ag dhéitha dhadoch á an láse. Hold your ground, my darling, be measured with good manners, for fear they'll put the screws to you, those dark gants of the lists.

4:00Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Before turning to Alva's new work, we'll pause to hear two existing poems from her back catalogue, both very different in subject and style. We'll hear the Irish versions first, followed by Billy's English translations. The opening poem comes from a project exploring unusual and endangered languages. This is about a shrieking language in the Basque country used to express emotion. Iran Sina. Ó dhám me mi stair búir náosna a Basquecha. Ag scuíle lé gach ráacht gátháard. Ag ligant lé gach góf. Gach góll. Gach gói. gach gordes is sra, geir, glorver, gaitach, veim ish suirch ish graagach. Irinsina If we could out with it like you, fine Basques, letting every outburst out out loud, releasing rats, laments, hosannas, gladnesses in an ecstatic, yelped, serrated flow, Oh, we would be frog-voiced and full of love.

5:11Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:And in this second poem, Alva turns to something far more immediate and personal. The experience of caring for a sick child and the quiet intensity of those moments when ordinary life is suspended by worry and tenderness. My youngest daughter was a very wheezy baby. She suffered a lot with asthma. And one of the nights I was up with her and I was trying to hold her upright. just to facilitate her breathing, I imagined that I heard seagulls as she was breathing.

6:14There are gulls in your breathing. I won't slumber tonight with such a hoarse chorus beneath your breastbone. You're in my bent arm, sheer as a seatlift, with me on the precipice. I won't give in to vertigo Nor to sinews exhaustion Wabbling but steadfast The ocean is furious There are gulls in your breathing I taste each wave's spray

6:50Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:It's fascinating to hear two very different poems from Alva's collection with the Irish originals and Billy's English translation side by side. Turning to the present moment, it's a busy year for Alva She has two new books due out and is working on several new poems. I've been lucky enough to view the drafts, and there's one in particular that I keep returning to. It's a triptych, and I'm keen to learn more. This new poem begins with your daughter's fascination with Greek mythology. It's a very open question. Can you tell me about that? I can't remember exactly when she began to become so obsessed with Greek mythology, but she is.

7:29she's not baptized so she's very proudly a pagan she says and she's currently in the class in primary school where the other kids are making their first holy communion i mean she was interested in it before but this has nearly become her identity you know she's she's the greek mythology kid and another morning she came downstairs and she said but mom like did did helen did she really love Paris? Really? Or did she just pretend to have to love him? So she's a deep thinker. It's wonderful. She asks very difficult questions sometimes. We don't always have the answers.

8:09Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:This is very much a family affair. You're writing the poem in Irish. It's being translated into English by your husband and the poem is about your daughter. Given the family connection and dynamic. Does it have an extra layer of care on top of it? It does. Yes. There's a gentleness there, I think. I want to kind of honour her because it's, you know, it's a child's imagination. You have to treat it with such care. And I'm really glad that Billy's taking this on because there's a nice closing of a loop there by having her dad translate it. Yeah. The recycle is in five weeks time. So between now and then, what are the steps to complete your poem, but then also to get it translated?

9:00I will spend another few more, maybe, I mean, I actually didn't realise it was five weeks until you just sent it there. Now I'm thinking, OK, I really need to hurry on. Now the panic sets in. I had been working on another poem in the early mornings, but it's definitely time to turn my attention again to this poem.

9:23Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Those early mornings are precious to Alva, a quiet space where the work can grow. Rather than interrupt it by turning up at the microphone before dawn, I've asked Alva to record the process herself. Over the next month, she'll keep an audio diary tracing the poem's progress, one early morning at a time. It's just after 6am I've just snuck down the stairs as quietly as possible and I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I can hear some songbirds outside as well but it's pitch black The title of the middle section in Irish is Cæst ele na chwilfragra agam ed? or another question I don't have the answer for In this section my daughter is asking was it through her own free will that Helen loved Paris.

10:15And I'm trying to figure out which sounds better. An rev, heilin ing rále a Paris, thá deon fénig? Or, an thá deon fénig, ahog heilin grá the Paris?

10:26Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:These early mornings at the kitchen table are when the fragments of the poem fall into place. Another update arrives a few days later amid heavy rain beating down in cork.

10:39it's early morning and the rain is pouring down outside and i'm looking at a problem in the third verse of a poem where i'm after introducing a chariot and two black horses and a warning from a fortune teller and i'm not sure if i'm going too far there to be honest unfortunately my time here is coming to an end because i can hear the kids moving around upstairs so maybe this is something i'll work out over the course of the day is there a better way to integrate this image.

11:07Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Alva sends me more early morning recordings, working through the imagery and structure of the poem as it moves from rough draft into something more complete and settled. It's a different kind of morning here today because the kids are off school and so I didn't set my alarm for such a punishing hour as I might ordinarily do. I said I'd give myself a break. So they're watching a few cartoons and I'm going to just have a quick look at this poem before breakfast. In thinking about a title, I think I've landed on a title in French, Où est-tu? Where are you? And Où est-tu? sounds a little bit like caw-wil-tu or call-tu in Irish, meaning where are you as well.

11:50And that line makes an appearance towards the end of the final section. Maybe a title in another language kind of speaks across countries and cultures and maybe even across ages, which is something I'm kind of interested in with this poem, because I suppose those Greek myths are so foundational to how we understand ourselves in the West anyway. I think in that context it might work. OK, I'll leave it there. Time to get them their breakfast.

12:24Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:It feels like Alva has made real progress over the past few weeks, but finding the time and headspace to keep moving the work forward is proving difficult. Perhaps a walk along the lock might help. I'm a bit stuck today, so I thought I'd come down to the lock for a walk. And now I'm trying to clear my head before I return to the triptych. it just needs one more stanza of advice, I think, to make up three bits of advice. And I think there's something kind of satisfying in the number three. I kind of know what I want to say, but I don't have the words to say it. So hopefully this walk will help.

13:04Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Another voice note arrives, and with each one, the triptych feels more fully formed. This time, Alva's been reflecting on some suggestions from a fellow poet, feedback that's pushing her to rethink a small element of the poem. I got some good suggestions from a friend of mine who just has a great eye for poems and a great ear as well. And these suggestions, I think, are more to do with the beats and the rhythm of the stanza. So, for example, what is now the third stanza in this newer draft, the first two lines are Fáinachú Hén ar Anfáir a Vhrónach Gúlna Úrth. So that was my initial draft. And she suggested Fáinachú Hén ar Anfáir a Vhrónach Úrth Gúlna.

13:44and putting gulna or dress at the end, gulna means dress, it just creates this nice echo of the long U vowel sound and the last word in that stand-thin, which is chialúchis, a masch chialúchis. So fanna cuhé na ran fár al vránach arth gulna nú béd id bwín a masch a chialúchis. So a small change, but I suppose it kind of brings out the capacity, I think, in the Irish language to kind of have these nice echoes of long vowel sounds.

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15:36Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm following Irish language poet Alva Nígyárví as she creates a new piece of work based on her nine-year-old daughter's fascination with Greek mythology. Another morning, another voice note, but this one isn't in that quiet hour before sunrise. Instead, it's recorded outdoors in the sun where Alva sounds more reflective. I'm out in the garden this morning. This sun is shining, which is kind of a miracle given all of the rain we've had recently. The place in Ireland where I live now is called Cork and in Irish it's Corkach which means a marsh and certainly the imagery of a ground that is yielding and could even swallow you up features in this poem that I've written for my daughter and probably in a few other poems as well I've written since moving to Cork.

16:34I'm thinking a bit today about how you know if a poem is finished. So at the moment I have my triptych, my three shortish poems, and I'm not sure if you ever really know when a poem is finished, but I think the time has come to leave it. And given the fact that I have to get it translated in time for this upcoming festival in Dublin, it's a further push maybe. So I think I might just leave it at that and see what the translator comes up with.

17:05Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Now the process moves on to its next stage, translation, and with that in mind I'm off to Cork to visit Alva and Billy.

17:28Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:I'm standing at Cork Lock, a fresh water lake west of the city. It's a beautiful morning with clear blue skies and I'm about to meet Alva at her house nearby. Alva, hi, it's Doolta. Lovely to see you. Thanks a million for having me. Not at all, come on in. Hello Doolta, how are you? Good man. Great to see you. Great to see you. Thank you so much. Billy's an acclaimed poet in his own right and is also about to launch a new book soon. His role in this process is of translator and moving the poem from Irish into English. English and Irish sound is so different. Yes. How do you reconcile that? Or is that not even the aim?

18:10I aim to bring something of the sound over. Perhaps a reflection or a shadow of the sound. Of course, not the full sonic complexity or the sonic texture of the language. That would be impossible. But I do try to bring something. For instance, here now in stanza 3, we have Fóinacúfén Érnvár. So I've translated that as Mind Yourself with the Man. So I've tried to keep at least something of the rhythmic swing of the original. There's the same number of syllables in both versions. And we've got the F and F sounds that close the line in Irish. I've replaced those with M sounds in English.

18:54Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Could you read that again? Of course. When you did it, the rhythm of it was just lovely to hear. I'd be delighted. Phonic, hufein, er, and var. Mind yourself with the man. That's a short line, but I tried to bring something of the sonic texture over only a ghost or a shadow. And the last line of that stanza, Miasa Helukas, right? Among his possessions. So I went for among his accoutrements. Now, that's an unusual choice, but I felt there was an echo of Hjalukas in accoutrements, a sonic ghost again, so to speak. So that's the kind of thing I try to do, to try to register something of the original sound as best I can.

19:38With certain lines, it's harder than others, shall we say. Another thing I introduced actually in the kind of the difficult second verse, the notion of the lists, which is like a fairy fort, but not fairies as in sweet little fairies, but rather otherworldly beings. That's a very difficult thing to translate to English. And it's also kind of mixing it up as well. I mean, for me, the lists, yes, it's very much Irish and Irish mythology, but it's also the other world and the underworld where Persephone was brought. But it's difficult then to translate such a loaded term as lists when Faerie Fort really doesn't do the job.

20:17No. So with the lists, you've kind of got a portal to the other world. And even if you don't think of these structures in that kind of magical, supernatural way, they're still very old structures, inexplicable stone eruptions in the landscape. That's got a lot of potency, that term lists. And a part of me wants to not translate it, to just leave the term sit in the Irish amid the English text. And perhaps the strangeness of that term could echo the strangeness of these formations in the landscape as something that is sort of untameable and unknowable.

20:54Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:It feels to me like translation is such a poor word for what you're doing. How would you describe it? Well, what we have here is Transloharu, the title of the third section of this triptych. We were suggesting yesterday evening that that could be translated as translocation. So perhaps that might be a more accurate term for what you try to do when you translate poetry. You're bringing something from one place to another. It's old Scotty there in the Starship Enterprise, you know. You're beaming things from one environment into another and hoping all the molecules survive the transition, or at least some of them.

21:36Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Yeah. It's a beautiful way of putting it. So this is going to happen in two days' time? Yes. And I'd like Billy into the room. Are you feeling a little bit under pressure? You know, it's all good. I've got this. Let there be no excuses. this translation will be ready to take the stage in Dublin in two days' time. I have absolutely no doubt you will make the deadline. As I leave Alva and Billy's house, there's still more work to be done. Billy continues to refine his translation, or as we might now call it, his translocation. I'm struck by the care, imagination, dedication and indeed love poured into shaping these words and this poem, and by the unique creativity of having two acclaimed poets under the one roof.

22:26Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:I arranged to meet Alva in Dublin, two days later, for the first public reading.

22:43Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:So I've arrived in Dublin, and it's bright and unexpectedly warm, with parks and pub terraces filling up as people make the most of the weather. It still looks like winter, but it feels, unmistakably, like spring. I'm on my way to the Franco-Irish Literary Festival to meet Alva. For more than a quarter of a century, it has been gathering writers from diverse backgrounds, brought together by their passion for literature and cultural dialogue. I'm just about to meet Alva backstage. I think she's in the room here. Alva, how are you? Good to see you. Good to see you. Do we have a finished translation?

23:23I really like what he's done and I'm very kind of excited actually about debuting the new work. He came up with the goods in the end.

23:30Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:And those changes made, were they the ones that we discussed two days ago? They were indeed, yeah. So it was that evening, I think, that he just typed up his thoughts as they kind of evolved from our conversation. Your recital and Q &A are just sort of minutes away. How are you feeling? I'm a bit nervous, to be honest. We're here in the Allianz Francaise on Kildare Street in Dublin. There's a really good audience mixture of French speakers and there's some Irish speakers here and, of course, English speakers as well. So there's a real trilingual element to the festival. Well, listen, I've got to let you go because we're only minutes away now.

24:06Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh:Thanks so much, Dulta. Alva is now on stage. The half-hour session is entirely in Irish, with occasional translations in English and French. About three-quarters of the way through, It's time to debut the new work.

24:50So this is what I'm saying. Chodh ach re yil, bí cauréisach le da bíase, nú curfhú fúilíne bíse ag deitha dyracha an laise. Hold your ground, my darling, be measured with good manners, for fear they'll put the screws to you, those dark gods of the lis. Fánach ho heinne ar un bár, a vránach ar tu gúlna, nú béd id dvvín, e masch e chialúchis. Mind yourself with the man who'd proffer a dress to you Who'd set out to hoard you among his accoutrements Sachan carabod le rá chapald doth Filáre bach gíafóg ma ná dham báhár fén fadó Sidestep the chariot pulled by coal black horses Fair warning a gypsy woman gave to my mother once Sílan tú gyr a gomste táan illa chúacht Ach thá mi bert arang ar cacht sa, is thá cianthar na nawrith pachtú, pachtú.