This unique anthology centres around a poem by award-winning Cameroonian writer, Jean-Claude Awono––Le Poème de Yambacongo––and nineteen very distinct translations of that poem from across the globe. Inspired by 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger, this collection highlights the diversity of Englishes in existence worldwide, with each translator rendering Awono’s poem in their own form of English including Nigerian Pidgin, Jamaican Creole, Shetlandic, and “Sesotho-fied” English. Others show the diversity in so-called standard English, with every translator speaking in their own idiolect, taking a personal approach to rewriting the poem; some more literal, others adaptive, proving that no translators work in the same way, always influenced by their background and life experiences.
Translations by Aileen Ruane, Alyssa Salzberg, Bonnie Chau, Christine De Luca, Elizabeth (Betty) Wilson, Georgina Collins, JK Anowe, Jean Anderson, John T. Gilmore, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Khadijah Sanusi Gumbi, Maneo Mohale, Mary Noonan, N. Kamala, Nfor E. Njinyoh, Prudence Lucha, Rohan Ayinde,Sarah Ardizzone, Sophie Herxheimer and Stephanie Smee.
“In translation you meet the music of different languages. In Nineteen Ways of Looking at Awono the poetry meets the music and beauty. And we get to hear translators talking about their imaginations."
Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ
“This collection of English translations demands that the reader think of their own Englishes and how many they use without necessarily being aware of it."
Kadija Sesay
“Inspired in equal measure, in different ways, by 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei and by the literal as well as literary topography of present-day Cameroon, this collection of nineteen translations from French to different Englishes offers not just a snapshot but a moving image of African poetic life. Animated here by influences reaching from Central Africa to the West Indies, and from Shetlandic to Sesotho, Jean-Claude Awono’s work now partakes in and advances a dazzling array of local conversations."
Jeanne-Marie Jackson
