Poetry in Expanded Translation: Audre Lorde, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Harryette Mullen, Don Mee Choi

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the politics and poetics of translation in the work of Audre Lorde, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Harryette Mullen, and Don Mee Choi, considering each poet's ideas about translation and translation practices, suggesting approaches to reading and thinking about their work in relation to translation and in relation to each other. I ask the following questions: in the selected poets' work, what are the relationships between the movement of people, the removal of dead bodies, and translation practices? How do the poets move between languages and literary forms, and what are the politics and poetics of their movements with regards to migration, dispossession, and death, as well as resistance, refusal, and rebirth? I select these poets because of the ways in which they confront relationships between the history of the English language and literature, imperialism and colonialism, racialisation and racism, gendered experiences and narratives, and their own poetic practices. These histories and experiences do not exist in isolation, nor do the poets attempt to circumscribe their approaches to language, representation, translation, and form from their lived experiences and everyday practices of survival and resistance. The selected poets’ work ranges in form, tone, and argument, but I argue that their refusal to circumscribe politics and poetics pertains to their subject positions and lived experiences as racialised and post/colonial women, and that this refusal is demonstrated in their diverse understandings of translation and translation practices.