For Valentine’s Day I decided to post a few poems, from my last book, that I’ve translated to English. The translation is not finished and might be flawed. If you’d like to use them; feel free as long as you mention that I’m the author.
Last night I recieved a literary award called the Blix-award for my book. It is my first award. It goes to an outstanding author living in nothern Norway writing in «nynorsk» («new Norwegian»), preferrably young or writing for youth. I’m really flattered and proud!
I’m very excited! This weekend will be my first trip to London. I’m invited to keep a workshop (actually a speak and reading poetry) at this fabulous festival for transart. The title of my workshop is «My body is my logo», a quotation from Framandkar.
I’ve worked on translating a lot of my poems the past few days and realize that I should have done it a long time ago. As you may have discovered; I don’t write english flawlessly… I’m doing my best. Hopefully someone will see the need to make better translations and publish some of it in english. And actually, I’m doing better at the translations than I thought I’d do originally.
Thanks to my friend Mette, I’ve been able to record some of my poems in Norwegian. She gave me a microphone for my computer, so I could install skype and talk to her for free. One of the first things I used it for, was to record some of my poems. They are now uploaded to my website http://www.tarald.net. Go directly to http://www.tarald.net/framandkar/opplesning.html Each number is a link to a reading of one poem. The numbers signify where you’ll fint the poem in my book. I guess they don’t make a lot of sense if you don’t understand Norwegian, but at least they document my voice before starting testosterone.
It’s strange how one percieve one’s own voice. I’ve always been surprised when I’ve heard recordings. It’s nothing like how it sounds in my head. OK, I know that is pretty normal. But to me, it resembles how I see my image in the mirror. I’ve always thought I looked more like a boy than a girl, and for a while I tried to cover it up with makup. Now, after realizing that I am a boy, I’ve discovered how much my self-image differs from the image others see. It’s just so strange.
As you may have noticed, english is not my mother’s tongue. And although my mother urged me to have some more english-classes at school, I didn’t like it and quit as soon as I could. So please leave a comment when you see something not right!
And if anyone would help me translate more poems, I’d be very happy. I can do the word for word translation (with the help of a dictonary, I know I have one, somewhere…). What I need is someone with a sense of proper english language, and maybe some poetic strings, to make the poems good literature in english as well. And hopefully my book will some day be ready to be published in english.
Tarald Stein 