TRANSLATIONS
Cargo Hold of Stars
Coolitude
Khal Torabully
Seagull Books, January 2021
Cargo Hold of Stars is an ode to the forgotten voyage of a forgotten people. Khal Torabully gives voice to the millions of indentured men and women, mostly from India and China, who were brought to Mauritius between 1849 and 1923. Many were transported overseas to other European colonies. Kept in close quarters in the ship’s cargo hold, many died. Most never returned home.
With Cargo Hold of Stars, Torabully introduces the concept of ‘Coolitude’ in a way that echoes Aimé Césaire’s term ‘Negritude,’ imbuing the term with dignity and pride, as well as a strong and resilient cultural identity and language. Stating that ordinary language was not equipped to bring to life the diverse voices of indenture, Torabully has developed a ‘poetics of Coolitude’: a new French, peppered with Mauritian Creole, wordplay, and neologisms—and always musical. The humor in these linguistic acrobatics serves to underscore the violence in which his poems are steeped.
Deftly translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Cargo Hold of Stars is the song of an uprooting, of the destruction and the reconstruction of the indentured laborer’s identity. But it also celebrates setting down roots, as it conjures an ideal homeland of fraternity and reconciliation in which bodies, memories, stories, and languages mingle—a compelling odyssey that ultimately defines the essence of humankind.
The Dancing Other
Suzanne Dracius
Seagull Books, November 2018
The Dancing Other takes readers to France and Martinique to reveal the struggles of people who belong both places, but never quite feel at home in either. Suzanne Dracius tells the story of Rehvana, a woman who feels she is too black to fit in when living in mainland France, yet at the same time not dark-skinned enough to feel truly accepted in the Caribbean. Her sense of dislocation manifests itself at first in a turn to a mythical idea of Mother Africa; later, she moves to Martinique with a new boyfriend and thinks she may have finally found her place—but instead she is soon pregnant, isolated, and lonely. Soon her only reliable companion is her neighbor, Ma Cidalise, who regales her in Creole with supernatural tales of wizards. Rehvana, meanwhile, watches her dream of belonging fade, as she continues to refuse to accept her multicultural heritage.
REVIEWS FOR THE DANCING OTHER:
Drunken Boat introduced an excerpt of this novel by commenting that "translators Nancy Naomi Carlson and Catherine Maigret Kellogg perform a high-wire act with Dracius's relentless word play and juggling of Creole, Latin, and French slang...a jaw-dropping accomplishment."
Naming the Dawn
Abdourahman A. Waberi
Seagull Books - The Africa List (Distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press). May 2018
The poems in this new volume by Abdourahman A. Waberi are introspective and inquisitive, reflecting a deep spiritual bond—with words, with the history of Islam and its great poets, with the landscapes those poets walked, among which Waberi grew up. The sage yearns here for the simplicity of each individual moment to somehow become eternal, for the histories and people that are part of him—his mother, his wife, his unborn child, the sacred texts that ground his being—to come together harmoniously within him, and to emerge through his words. Lyrical and personal, but with powerful historical and cultural resonances, these poems are the work of a master at the height of his powers.
REVIEWS FOR THE FRENCH EDITION OF NAMING THE DAWN
“With Naming the Dawn, Abdourahman A. Waberi delivers a magnificent poetic art, where the deciphering of the poem—the patient rhythm of reading, listening to signs—is a discovery of self and sacred texts, and ultimately, of the religious spirit . . . Mingling indiscriminately poetic writing and reading of the sacred texts—of the Quran—the author proposes here a formidable plea in favor of tolerance and openness.”
--Elera Bertho, Diacritik
Hammer with No Master
René Char
*2017 FINALIST, FIRECRACKER AWARDS FOR POETRY BY THE COMMUNITY OF LITERARY MAGAZINES AND PRESSES (CLMP)
Tupelo Press, November 2016
In his foreword to Stone Lyre, Nancy Naomi Carlson’s previous collection of René Char translations, Ilya Kaminsky praised “the intensity, the dream-like language, the gravity of tone, and the constant impression that one is reading not words in the language, but sparks of flames.”
Stone Lyre was a selection of poems from Char’s numerous volumes of poems; Carlson’s new Hammer with No Master is a discrete and continuous work, the first English translation of Char’s Le marteau sans maître, first published in 1934 — a time of rumbling menace that our time resembles.
REVIEWS FOR HAMMER WITH NO MASTER:
“René Char died at 81 in 1988, which means he fills the heart of the history of twentieth-century French poetry. More than that he is among those figures who represent the consequences of Modernism. Finally more symbolist than surrealist he broke away from André Breton’s movement right before the war in which he served in the Résistance. All of that experience and the long post-war focus his fierce and severe imagination. Nancy Naomi Carlson’s new translation of an important selection from Char’s career is both accurate and alive to Char’s lyric vitality and wonderfully strange prose-poetry.”
—Stanley Plumly
René Char
*2017 FINALIST, FIRECRACKER AWARDS FOR POETRY BY THE COMMUNITY OF LITERARY MAGAZINES AND PRESSES (CLMP)
Tupelo Press, November 2016
In his foreword to Stone Lyre, Nancy Naomi Carlson’s previous collection of René Char translations, Ilya Kaminsky praised “the intensity, the dream-like language, the gravity of tone, and the constant impression that one is reading not words in the language, but sparks of flames.”
Stone Lyre was a selection of poems from Char’s numerous volumes of poems; Carlson’s new Hammer with No Master is a discrete and continuous work, the first English translation of Char’s Le marteau sans maître, first published in 1934 — a time of rumbling menace that our time resembles.
REVIEWS FOR HAMMER WITH NO MASTER:
“René Char died at 81 in 1988, which means he fills the heart of the history of twentieth-century French poetry. More than that he is among those figures who represent the consequences of Modernism. Finally more symbolist than surrealist he broke away from André Breton’s movement right before the war in which he served in the Résistance. All of that experience and the long post-war focus his fierce and severe imagination. Nancy Naomi Carlson’s new translation of an important selection from Char’s career is both accurate and alive to Char’s lyric vitality and wonderfully strange prose-poetry.”
—Stanley Plumly
The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper
Abdourahman A. Waberi
*2016 FINALIST, BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD (BTBA) IN POETRY
*SELECTED AS ONE OF "BEST BOOKS OF 2015" BY BELTWAY POETRY QUARTERLY
Seagull Books - The Africa List (Distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press). May 2015
Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makes The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country’s landscape, drawing for us pictures of “desert furrows of fire” and a “yellow chameleon sky.” Waberi’s poems take us to unexpected spaces—in exile, in the muezzin’s call, and where morning dew is “sucked up by the eye of the sun—black often, pink from time to time.”
Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Waberi’s voice is intelligent, at times ironic, and always appealing. His poems strongly condemn the civil wars that have plagued East Africa and advocate tolerance and peace. In this compact volume, such ideas live side by side as a rosary for the treasures of Timbuktu, destroyed by Islamic extremists, and a poem dedicated to Edmond Jabès, the Jewish writer and poet born in Cairo.
REVIEWS FOR THE NOMADS, MY BROTHERS, GO OUT TO DRINK FROM THE BIG DIPPER:
"W.S. Merwin said translation is impossible yet we do it. Carlson is a seasoned translator who has, with her gift of languages, translated René Char among others, and now premieres an African poet. From Waberi’s eyes we see his country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. His is a graceful presence allowing us into his consciousness via geography — his universe, his desert. (“There”) I live several leagues/from memory’s inland port/old silent structure/by claws of weather and time.” His poems in the section “Postcards” are not longer than those lines. The wars of East Africa are in the background; but in this poet’s commitment to poetry does not fully explore the obvious. It’s found within the expressionistic imagery of the natural world — such gentle perception — such careful depictions and messages — yet Waberi makes his points about the deepest questions of what is beautiful and what is violated."
—Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
“With Waberi, the juxtapositions—surprising, provocative, and original—form a good part of the thrill themselves.”
—Words Without Borders
Abdourahman A. Waberi
*2016 FINALIST, BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD (BTBA) IN POETRY
*SELECTED AS ONE OF "BEST BOOKS OF 2015" BY BELTWAY POETRY QUARTERLY
Seagull Books - The Africa List (Distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press). May 2015
Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makes The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country’s landscape, drawing for us pictures of “desert furrows of fire” and a “yellow chameleon sky.” Waberi’s poems take us to unexpected spaces—in exile, in the muezzin’s call, and where morning dew is “sucked up by the eye of the sun—black often, pink from time to time.”
Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Waberi’s voice is intelligent, at times ironic, and always appealing. His poems strongly condemn the civil wars that have plagued East Africa and advocate tolerance and peace. In this compact volume, such ideas live side by side as a rosary for the treasures of Timbuktu, destroyed by Islamic extremists, and a poem dedicated to Edmond Jabès, the Jewish writer and poet born in Cairo.
REVIEWS FOR THE NOMADS, MY BROTHERS, GO OUT TO DRINK FROM THE BIG DIPPER:
"W.S. Merwin said translation is impossible yet we do it. Carlson is a seasoned translator who has, with her gift of languages, translated René Char among others, and now premieres an African poet. From Waberi’s eyes we see his country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. His is a graceful presence allowing us into his consciousness via geography — his universe, his desert. (“There”) I live several leagues/from memory’s inland port/old silent structure/by claws of weather and time.” His poems in the section “Postcards” are not longer than those lines. The wars of East Africa are in the background; but in this poet’s commitment to poetry does not fully explore the obvious. It’s found within the expressionistic imagery of the natural world — such gentle perception — such careful depictions and messages — yet Waberi makes his points about the deepest questions of what is beautiful and what is violated."
—Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
“With Waberi, the juxtapositions—surprising, provocative, and original—form a good part of the thrill themselves.”
—Words Without Borders
Stone Lyre: Poems of René Char
Tupelo Press, February 2010
"This new translation of Char’s work …shows us …the intensity, the dream-like language, the gravity of tone, and the constant impression that one is reading not words in the language, but sparks of flames…"
“Carlson brings her ear to Char’s work in English in a compelling way. Anyone who opens this book…will love her musical use of our language.”
From the Foreword to Stone Lyre, by Ilya Kaminsky, poet and author of Dancing in Odessa
REVIEWS FOR STONE LYRE:
"René Char is the conscience of modern French poetry and also its calm of mind. Nancy Naomi Carlson, in these splendid translations, casts new light upon the sublime consequence of Char’s poetic character, and in Stone Lyre the case for sublimity is purely made."
—Donald Revell, poet and translator of Rimbaud and Apollinaire
"Early Surrealist, resistance fighter, anti-nuclear activist, and exquisite poet, René Char is at the heart of 20th century French poetry…. Carlson gives English-language readers a real sense of Char’s depth and breadth. And her masterful translations catch the barely contained drama that gives Char’s work such tension and presence…"
“[Carlson’s] excellent ear picks up not only the sound relationships that weave through the originals, but also their delicate, seductive rhythms. A beautiful accomplishment.”
--Cole Swensen, poet, translator, and founding editor of La Presse
"René Char, intrepid explorer of the marvelous, witness to the catastrophe of history, plowman of 'the metered field,’ stands revealed in Nancy Naomi Carlson’s splendid translations as a guiding spirit of our time…"
--Christopher Merrill, poet, journalist, and director of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program
"In a new translation from Nancy Naomi Carlson, the enchanting voice of the visionary René Char is once again brought to life. Stone Lyre, a collection of selected poems from across nearly fifty years of Char’s career, charms the reader with its mysterious and unfettered imagery. But the poet’s particular blend of the personal and the cosmic spheres should not be considered an easy read. Carlson, in her introduction, remarks on the difficulty of Char’s “lyric intensity,” but the results of her translations amount to a compelling success."
—Adam Palumbo, The Rumpus
"Carlson’s translations flow easily, rhythmically, and are a pleasure to read. They are a reflection of Char’s energy and complexity and the literary register is just."
—William La Ganza, Cerise Press
Calazaza's Delicious Dereliction
Suzanne Dracius
Tupelo Press, November 2015
In her polyphonic poems, Suzanne Dracius creates protagonists—usually calazazas, light-skinned mulatto women with red or blond hair—who fight like Amazons against racial and gender discrimination. Dracius’s voice is leaping and exalted, often sexually charged, and infused with allusions to Greek and Roman mythology.
Nancy Naomi Carlson has translated Dracius’s Exquise déréliction métisse, poems written in French yet including some Creole versions, and with Creole expressions sprinkled throughout. In French, this book was awarded the prestigious Prix Fètkann, whose judges cited the poet’s richness of language, with varied linguistic registers.
REVIEWS FOR CALAZAZA'S DELICIOUS DERELICTION:
“Nancy Naomi Carlson [has] transported these verses into English with verve and piquancy, aural skill and consummate knowledge.”
—Orlando Ricardo Menes
“Nancy Naomi Carlson… beautifully renders the dense word and sonic play Dracius trades in.”
—Sidney Wade
Suzanne Dracius
Tupelo Press, November 2015
In her polyphonic poems, Suzanne Dracius creates protagonists—usually calazazas, light-skinned mulatto women with red or blond hair—who fight like Amazons against racial and gender discrimination. Dracius’s voice is leaping and exalted, often sexually charged, and infused with allusions to Greek and Roman mythology.
Nancy Naomi Carlson has translated Dracius’s Exquise déréliction métisse, poems written in French yet including some Creole versions, and with Creole expressions sprinkled throughout. In French, this book was awarded the prestigious Prix Fètkann, whose judges cited the poet’s richness of language, with varied linguistic registers.
REVIEWS FOR CALAZAZA'S DELICIOUS DERELICTION:
“Nancy Naomi Carlson [has] transported these verses into English with verve and piquancy, aural skill and consummate knowledge.”
—Orlando Ricardo Menes
“Nancy Naomi Carlson… beautifully renders the dense word and sonic play Dracius trades in.”
—Sidney Wade
POETRY BY NANCY NAOMI CARLSON
An Infusion of Violets
*SELECTED AS ONE OF "TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2019" BY BELTWAY POETRY QUARTERLY
Seagull Books, August 2019
Using the same musical sense of language she applies to her translations, Nancy Naomi Carlson masterfully interprets herself in Infusion of Violets. The sometimes erotic, sometimes melancholy landscapes she creates as the self-appointed sitar’s “ragged throat, pitched/ between here and when, / caught in quartertones,” take our breath away. Carlson describes an interior world where tears can produce “so much salt a body floats away,” where “music tuned to loss descends with rain,” and where hope is placed in the “kill-cure.” Here we encounter Carlson’s ex-husbands and luminaries such as Rachmaninoff and Monet, among others. Filled with striking images and sensuous language, Infusion of Violets is an evocative mix of formal and free verse poems.
Reviews for An Infusion of Violets
"Carlson, who also works as a translator and editor, uses controlled lines and a lyrical voice to plumb the self, often with biblical overtones."
—New and Noteworthy/Poetry, The New York Times Book Review, 6/23/2019
"Solitude and quiet strength run throughout the elegant, understated writing in 'An Infusion of Violets' (Seagull Books) by poet and translator Nancy Naomi Carlson. Early on, the speaker recalls her broken marriages and unfulfilled desire for love. Other challenges follow as she battles cancer and watches her father slide into dementia. Despite her own difficulties, she honors those struggles and others, including the anguish of teenagers whose stories are overlooked by most of the people around them. Like Persephone, Carlson moves through various seasons, creating some stunning moments. She also welcomes the heat of transformation, as in the poem “Glass, Glorious Glass!”: “Fill me with your fire and make me conform/ to your breath, writhing in the heat but not/ consumed. Make me blossom birds of paradise/ or weave me wings of indigo or white.”
—Elizabeth Lund, The Washington Post, 10/15/2019
"The multifaceted Nancy Naomi Carlson delivers poetic riches in her third collection, spooling out lines that engage all the senses while weaving threads of spirituality, eroticism, and art into one rich tapestry. With poems that traverse that spectrum from formal to free, An Infusion of Violets offers readers an opportunity to join Carlson in the great conversation of poetry that effortlessly spans cultures, languages, and time."
--Autumn 2019 Book Reviews, Word Literature Today
"The title foretells the lushness of lines. As a translator, Carlson knows the value of the rarefied word — she makes decisions from other languages in terms of cadence and sound. [...] These poems, years in the writing, radiate inward. She’s right to call it an infusion."
--Grace Cavalieri, Midwest Book Review
Complications of the Heart
*WINNER OF THE 2002 ROBERT PHILIPS POETRY CHAPBOOK PRIZE
Texas Review Press, June 2003
REVIEWS FOR COMPLICATIONS OF THE HEART:
"Is Nancy Naomi Carlson a prophetess or goddess? One ponders this question while reading Complications of the Heart. What will encourage the reader to genuflect is the range of her work as well as the mixture of passion and intellect. Carlson’s poems at times can be caught wearing lace. Maybe this is the formalism clinging to the hem of her muse. There is balance in this collection because Carlson once wore cigar bands and pop-top rings.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Offering up sensuous language which is sometimes memorably formal and always musical, Nancy Naomi Carlson manages an eerie, provocative blend of poems about the different bodies of love a woman may inhabit. When she writes in ‘Sari-Covered Nights’ that ‘My five mouths roll their uvulas, / guttural as high winds crossing desert dunes,’ she speaks not only of the multiple lives we must recognize in ourselves, but also of the poet’s need and obligation to render many possibilities at once.”
—Stephen Corey
*WINNER OF THE 2002 ROBERT PHILIPS POETRY CHAPBOOK PRIZE
Texas Review Press, June 2003
REVIEWS FOR COMPLICATIONS OF THE HEART:
"Is Nancy Naomi Carlson a prophetess or goddess? One ponders this question while reading Complications of the Heart. What will encourage the reader to genuflect is the range of her work as well as the mixture of passion and intellect. Carlson’s poems at times can be caught wearing lace. Maybe this is the formalism clinging to the hem of her muse. There is balance in this collection because Carlson once wore cigar bands and pop-top rings.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Offering up sensuous language which is sometimes memorably formal and always musical, Nancy Naomi Carlson manages an eerie, provocative blend of poems about the different bodies of love a woman may inhabit. When she writes in ‘Sari-Covered Nights’ that ‘My five mouths roll their uvulas, / guttural as high winds crossing desert dunes,’ she speaks not only of the multiple lives we must recognize in ourselves, but also of the poet’s need and obligation to render many possibilities at once.”
—Stephen Corey
Kings Highway
*CO-WINNER, WASHINGTON WRITERS PUBLISHING HOUSE
Washington Writers Publishing House, April 1997
REVIEWS FOR KINGS HIGHWAY:
"In this taut gathering of lyrics, lyrical narratives, and dramatic monologues, Nancy Carlson reminds us that the poet’s true arena is not human experiences-which all of us undergo-but the articulation of those experiences via language. A mother grieves for her dead newborn and celebrates her living children, composer Robert Schumann offers a passionate lament from his asylum cell, a beekeeping wife and husband discover in their shared work a strange, luminous image of their love:
“Veiled and gloved, / we hold our ground, / handfuls of bees! balanced between us.”
Articulation: “the way in which parts are joined together; utterance or enunciation, a way of talking or pronouncing…”
—Stephen Corey
"Kings Highway is freighted with loss, though loss is the poet’s route to understanding and acceptance. Poems here reiterate and expand on this theme. At their center, literally and metaphorically, is breath, as in the acute attentiveness to a newborn’s giving breath up, to a drowned baby’s breath “resurfacing,” to a starling “still formed, it looked asleep,” to a violin’s breath rising from the “rosined bow! against each string.” These are poems attuned to the subtle motions of grief and love that give need to words in the first place."
—Merrill Leffler
