Some Accidental Encounter
There is always some accidental encounter—a situation, a scene, a saying, an image or detail—that provokes and serves as a key to open a new poem:
Catherine Graham interviews the 2019 Griffin International Poetry Prize Shortlist writer Luljeta Lleshanaku
The author of seven poetry collections, Luljeta Lleshanaku was born in Elbasan, Albania, in 1968, and grew up under house arrest during Enver Hoxha's Stalinist regime. She has worked as a teacher, literary magazine editor, journalist, screenwriter, and currently is the research director at the Institute of Studies of Communist Genocide in Albania.
Luljeta Lleshanaku. Ani Gjika, trans. Negative Space. New Directions Publishing. $25.50, 112 pp., ISBN: 9780811227520
Catherine Graham: Congratulations on being shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin International Poetry Prize for your collection Negative Space (Bloodaxe Books / New Directions), translated from Albanian to English by Ani Gjika. This book is divided into two sections, poems from Almost Yesterday (2012) and Homo Antarcticus (2015). How did the book come to be? Did you and Gjika work together to choose the poems?
Luljeta Lleshanaku: Thank you! In fact, Ani has translated almost all the poems from the two books (which I'm grateful for), but some poems are not included in this selection. It was me, not Ani, who decided to leave them out to create a solid volume, without redundancy or topic repetition—something you can’t avoid from book to book. I don’t have any regrets about the poems I’ve left out; more does not necessarily mean better.
The only poems I would have some regret about are the "Sicilian vespers", a series of portraits from Sicily, which, along with our editor, we agreed to omit from the English collection. In those poems, the characters retrospectively confess their lives through very few details. It was very difficult to create local and original experiences from culture perspectives beyond the characters, but it was also entertaining. They are sketches of the moment these characters make peace with their lives. They are Mediterranean characters, Sicilian as much as Greek or Albanian—a reality I am very familiar with. Perhaps for this reason, I have a sentimental connection with these poems. There is nothing new in the concept (I realized this after reading Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology), but they recall that earthly Mediterranean wisdom where everything, even the simplest rituals, seems to have their own god, accompanied by a light fatalism from a powerful connection with nature.
CG: Yours is a grounded voice, confident even as it questions and explores. Plain spoken and direct as it shape-shifts, surprising the reader with its leaps, cuts and swerves, unpredictable yet sense-making. Time, hope, family history, dislocation and return, as well as the unseen and unspoken are themes that emerge. Can you tell us something about your process when writing a poem?
LL: There is always some accidental encounter—a situation, a scene, a saying, an image or detail—that provokes and serves as a key to open a new poem. This provocation is the only spontaneous, accidental element in my writing process. It brings together experiences and thoughts, things I have reflected about for a long time. For example, when searching for something on the internet, I accidentally found a scripture written on an Ancient Roman gravestone that made me think about the women from my childhood. This led me to write the poem “Commit to memory.” These lucky accidents can be ordinary or sparked by mundane objects we touch every day, also gestures and details. Especially details; details are pure intuition. For example, the poem “Inside a suitcase” emerged from seeing a dirty car window. This reminded me of my first trip from home.
For years I was thinking about writing a poem that dealt with Communism crimes and the sufferings in Albania, but I didn’t know how, and from which perspective. Suddenly, I remembered the confession of a man, whose first act after his liberation from an internment camp where he was isolated for 47 years, was to visit the sea. That’s the embryo of the poem “Water and Carbon” which explores the following: is a human being a socio-biological creature or a moral one? The world is fed up with hearing about injustices, sufferings, cruelty, dictatorships, wars; all of these only make sense in the context of an existential dilemma.
My “confidence” and “plain and direct spoken way” are probably the result of my life experiences, the aging process, and the need to conclude without expecting confirmation.
CG: Did you learn anything new about your poems during the translation process?
LL: I already have 13 books published in other languages, five of which are in English. The collaboration with translators started in 2002 with Fresco. Negative Space is my fifth book in English. For several years, I worked with different translators, but since I understand English (and not German, Polish, or Spanish), my interactions with my English translators have been more dynamic. And in the case of Negative Space, this back and forth communication with Ani Gjika, I found myself editing my text, too. Perhaps it’s the potential a new language imposes, that helps to create some physical and emotional distance from the work so you become more critical to it. It’s a similar feeling you have in front of a mirror at the tailor’s atelier, excited but also thinking that you should lose some weight here and there. The revisions had something to do with adapting cultural expectations to a new audience, but mostly it had to do with the economy of the text. I cut phrases, lines, and sometimes even one or two stanzas.
Another thing that the poems gain during translation is precision. A good translator can’t recreate a poem without digesting, assimilating every cell of the text and without visualizing and understanding the context and the main idea beyond the figurative language. So the communication between translator and author in terms of explanation and clarification is necessary. This process of translation is similar to what happens in surgery, I think. Poetry loses something and gains something else: it loses some ambiguity and magic, but gains precision.
CG: The poem “Homo Antarcticus” is told in the voice of ‘Shackleton’s Right Hand Man’, the explorer Frank Wild. What drew you to Wild?
LL: The unfortunate adventure of Shackleton's expedition, which because of its tragic turn, gained more popularity than all the other pole explorations of the Heroic Epoch, is something I can engage with a million times with the same curiosity . Those two years at the edge of existence served as a merciless incubator of human nature. The paradox here is that given the extreme conditions for survival, the more physically the men approached their situation through their primitive essence, the more their moral qualities and virtues unfolded. The poem is about the challenge of civilization.
For some unexplainable reason, after watching many documentary films on the subject and seeing photos of the expedition, I became captivated by the portrait of one particular man. He had an extraordinary determined expression and an intense, and at the same time, gentle stare, which I thought was disproportionate to his small and modest body. This was Frank Wild, the 'forgotten hero' of Antarctica, the second in command, Shackleton's right hand man.
A whole industry is created around ‘leadership’ these days. Since childhood we are educated on how to become a leader, a protagonist, the first one, egoist, as a way of being successful in life. This perhaps explains, in some ways, the widespread social and identity crisis we are currently having. By choosing Frank Wild as the narrative voice of this story, I was trying to bring attention to figures who play an extraordinary role in our lives without ever being noticed. Loyalty, friendship, trust, devotion— these are the qualities that made Wild a special person in this history and are underestimated in our time. Perhaps without Wild’s support, Shackleton would not have succeeded in running that incredible salvation mission.
Even if I’d chosen the voice of Shackleton for the poem, the main idea would remain the same. Since Shackleton's figure is already canonized, choosing Wild as narrator gave me greater flexibility. I knew only a few things about Wild but enough, I think, to create a vivid character.
CG: Growing up in an era of political oppression, you were given advice from adults: Don’t talk, don’t. As a way of coping you went into your imagination. Is this where poetry began for you? The budding poet at work, the fertile ground?
LL: All these preventions and self-preventions, which used to be a way of protecting yourself and others around you, were indeed isolation from society. On the other hand, the thing I still can’t explain is this: how could the adults talk so openly to us as children at home? How could they discuss such dangerous political topics right in front of us? How could they lean on us, and have the confidence that we’d keep our mouths shut when we were no more than 8 years old?
Being an outsider has its advantages, too: you develop a more distant perception of reality, more analytical than sentimental. You also start to turn that sense of being rejected into rejection. We ‘painted’ the wall the others built around us so it looked like it was ‘us’ who built the wall. Certainly, reading and living with the imagination was the most important way to escape from that reality. To this day I feel more alone when surrounded by people than when I am physically alone. There is something healthy and productive in being alone. Many do not understand this, and they mistake it with depression. So, one day alone in a corner during those meditative hours, my first poems came as a discovery not as a creation. I still remember my impatience, waiting for my Uncle Fadil to return home from a hard day’s work in construction so I could read my poems to him. In exchange, I had to give him a massage by walking on his back. Funny, yes?
CG: In Toronto, we chatted briefly about poetry and the importance of pacing, the seduction of a poem as it unfolds. Can you share some thoughts on that?
LL: It’s about the art of communication. For example, some people know how to tell jokes and stories, and some don’t. The same news can have a different impact told by different people. You have to be a good psychologist and know how to play with the expectations of your audience. I think I learned a lot from movies in this aspect (I currently teach script-writing at a film school). The dramatic structure is nothing else but a seduction scheme—technique, with its ups and downs, with its real and fake turns, with its predictions and surprises and wide variety of intonations. It also has to do with a smart distribution of texture and arguments. In time you learn how to alternate the concrete with the abstract, the natural elements with the human presence, etc. Each poem is like a city with its monuments, places, buildings, stations, and of course, parks! The reader asks for drama, but also for some time to digest, to rest in between and prepare for the next step. I mean, it seems like a tricky craft, and asks for a huge patience. Everything starts from being a good reader. During the writing, you have to simultaneously play both roles: writer and reader.
CG: You also spoke about the importance of household objects when one is living under severe political oppression. They take on certain energy, a life even. I believe you said, “Objects become more than objects.” Can you talk more about that?
LL: In my childhood, I was surrounded by very few objects. It’s not about minimalism as a lifestyle, but about material poverty, typical for the communist countries. We never threw things out and most objects were in common possession. My high school bag for example, was used by three generations before me; it was orange to brown, with different names written inside, and with eaten corners. Nobody had his/her own shelf or personal devices, let alone a private room. The one pair of scissors, comb and luggage, had its own unmistakable ‘sacred’ place in the house to be found by anybody at any time. We were tied to each other through these objects; they were a part of our common identity ("…The children of an era/ are like dogs tied to a sling/ in their search for gold:/ they either run together/ or fall together," as I wrote in one of my earlier poems, ‘They hasten to die”). Because these objects were with us for such a long time, they gained status, a kind of soul. They became witnesses. I have an old chair, a finely designed piece of furniture bought in 1940 by my grandfather that I still hesitate to throw out. It’s ugly and lame, but it has seen and experienced more than a human life: weddings, funerals, interrogations, séances, strangers’ houses during the five years of family deportations, anxiety, hope, different body vibrations.
Not until I considered emigrating did I become aware of the power these objects have. Almost none of my current possessions were worthy enough to take with me. They elicit no memories. These days I consume more than I bear; I am a victim of consumerism.
CG: What were some highlights of your Griffin experience during your time in Toronto?
LL: My stay in Toronto was very short, two days only, and the jet lag made it even shorter. But of course, it was one of my most important trips. The Griffin Prize recognition marks a peak in the career of a poet. Furthermore, there are not many competitions in poetry, especially international ones. I am especially impressed by the serious way poetry is taken in your country; reading in front of a theatre full of people who make very original comments afterwards, is something rare in our time. I felt spoiled by the way everything was organized— from the airport arrival, to the welcome bunch of flowers in my room, to the mixed tables and friendly conversations during dinners, etc. I met different readers, writers and publishers, Canadian and non-Canadian. I met you among them. I left your country with a sense of something ‘unfinished’, that I will come back again. It’s a good thing.
CG: What’s next for Luljeta Lleshanaku?
LL: After Negative Space I felt that nothing is left for me to say. I am referring to the two long poems “Water and Carbon” and “Homo Antarcticus,” as they both consumed me with their complex thematic involvement (morality, freedom, identity, love), and historical and personal references in extremis. In general, because of its verticality, poetry consumes you much faster than fiction does.
Recently, my thoughts have been focused mainly on death. This is probably because I have experienced the loss of some relatives, one after the other, within a short time, and because every morning and evening, I face the desperate and wandering eyes of my mother, 83 years old, who has to deal alone with the nightmare of death. There is a kind of sad and transparent barrier between us now. She looks at me like a flower from inside a greenhouse; we live and do not live in the same reality. Death is a cliché, like love, but still a new thing, since there are innumerable perspectives to think and talk about. At the core of my mother's vulnerability for example, I find her greatest strength. However we perceive death, from the atheistic or religious perspective, it remains incomparably the most terrifying thing that human conscience is destined to bear, so dealing with it and writing about it only promotes respect for humankind.
In addition to working with this and some other new poems, I plan to go back and finish a novel I started two years ago. I don’t know if I will succeed, but I am approaching it as an adventure, as a flirt.
Catherine Graham is an award-winning writer of poetry and fiction. Among her six poetry collections The Celery Forest was shortlisted for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, named a CBC Best Book of the Year and appears on their Ultimate Canadian Poetry List. Michael Longley praised it as “a work of great fortitude and invention, full of jewel-like moments and dark gnomic utterance.” Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Award for Poetry and her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for fiction, “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction and was a finalist for the Fred Kerner Book Award and Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction. She received an Excellence in Teaching Award at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and was also winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors Poetry NOW competition. While living in Northern Ireland, Graham completed an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies around the world and she’s appeared on CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. Æther: an out-of-body lyric will appear in 2020 with Wolsak and Wynn, Buckrider Books. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @catgrahampoet.