Word: sh
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...SH: I think now it’s unlikely that I’ll come back to a fixed position. I haven’t been asked anyway...
...SH: I don’t know the answer to that, really. I don’t believe that sociological conditions produce the oddity of talent. Talent is unpredictable. But it does seem to flourish when societies are in search of definition...
...SH: The world I grew up in was actual, but it was also previous, in a sense medieval. Well for water, light the fire, go to Mass. My first life on that farm in County Derry was hermetically sealed. In my twenties, when I had gone to university, it was almost like opening something that had been sealed. It belonged to me, but in memory, it was already a dream place. That’s very useful to a writer—to have somewhere that has a sense of dream-reality to it. I like things that have both...
...SH: It’s different in that you have the given, a shape to work with. You don’t have to conjure the material ‘thingness’ of the poem. It’s more like a jigsaw puzzle than anything else. At the same time, all the definitions of translation that I really like is that it’s writing by proxy. You get the satisfaction of finishing something without the penalty of having to start...
...SH: Yes, I think so. The first substantial translation I did was from the Irish called “Sweeney Astray” from an Irish poem called “Buile Shuibhne.” Working with a very heavy concrete element of Anglo-Saxon was a counter-weight to what I was hearing in America. It’s a much opener conversational weave. I think of myself as between the two, but I was glad at that time of the substantial element in the language. It brought me back to more of a substantial language...