In Landmarks (2015), British writer Robert Macfarlane’s meditation on place, he named Autumn Richardson, among other writers, as “particularizers … who seek in some way to ‘draw every needle’ … [with] precision of utterance as both a form of lyricism and a species of attention.” Reliquiae, the journal of landscape, nature, and mythology which Richardson co-founded and co-edits with her partner, composer, writer, and artist Richard Skelton, is guided by this ethos and mode of engagement. In its ten years, Reliquiae has published texts from antiquity: Navajo songs; the Song dynasty poet Wáng Ānshí; magical and medicinal incantations from Catawba, Klamath, Chuckchee, and Winnebago peoples; southern African beliefs in naming stars; fragments from the German Renaissance alchemist-theologian Paracelsus; evocations to Yoruba deities; the Náhuatl poet Nezahualcóyotl; Egyptian spells; and hymns of the now-extinct Eoran language in Australia. The journal has also introduced readers to English translations from, among others, the original Algonquian, Binisayâ, Old English, Ancient Greek, Hindu, Old Icelandic, Iglulingmiut, Old Norse, Scottish Gaelic, West Saxon—along with their source texts.
Speaking to the precision and attention that guides her work, Richardson tells academic journal Studies in Travel Writing, “My own writing is more concerned with movement through landscapes … the vertical, going down through the layers botanically, biologically, geologically, etymologically, historically.” In this interview, I asked about the wondrous archive of Reliquiae, and how she explores landscape, ethnology, (vertical) travel, ecology, botany, and occultism in her own art, writings, and translations.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Personally, I think of Reliquiae—and its disciplinary breadth of landscape, folklore, ecology, esoteric philosophy, animism—as a treasure trove of consequential importance not only to specialists, writers, and translators, but also for a generalist readership. In the submission guidelines, there is emphasis on “beyond plain nature writing.” Can you elaborate on this?
Autumn Richardson (AR): Fundamentally, Reliquiae fills a niche that is shaped by our own unique interests. We couldn’t find a single publication that focused on landscape and the natural world, whilst refracting that focus through the prism of myth, esotericism, magic, occult philosophy, and anthropology. One of the reasons we formed Corbel Stone Press in 2009 was to begin publishing work that connected these disparate but allied disciplines. We began by publishing our own writing, but our goal was always to edit a journal, and 2022 is the tenth anniversary of Reliquiae.
AMMD: Let’s talk about Heart of Winter, your 2016 collection of found-poems assembled from the journals of ethnologist Knud Rasmussen and botanist Dr Thorild Wulff which chronicles the Second Thule Expedition, their 1917 journey through the north-western coastal landscapes of Greenland. When asked about your translation process from the Danish (and Inuit), you responded that, “it was a process of simplifying ever so slightly … [not wanting] to change [Rasmussen’s] words hardly at all … want[ing] to preserve his voice.” As a translator who questions her own discursive presence in the text, does this imply that between the competing ideologies within the translation of myths and folklore, you favour linguistic faithfulness over stylistic realism?
AR: That’s a difficult question to answer. I’m not dogmatic in my choices—it’s more instinctual. I’m acutely attentive to the shape, texture, and colour of each word in both languages when I translate. However, I have noticed that provisional, literal translations are strangely compelling. There’s something about that interstitial state—between one language and another—that is extraordinarily powerful. This can often happen, for example, when the word order of the original is preserved, resulting in an unusual word-grouping in the translation. For me, I find this shadow presence of the original language unspeakably rich and evocative, and I always try to retain something of its colour in my work. My concern is always to mirror, as faithfully as possible, the poet’s choice of words, as well as what I perceive to be the emotions and motivations behind the poem or song itself. For example, within the Inuit songs in Heart of Winter, a primary and repetitive motif is the uncertainty of survival, and the consequent gratitude or joy when a new season is witnessed, when nourishment is attained. It was immensely important to me to try to carry these sentiments forward, because, to my mind, these expressions and emotions were the heart and the purpose of the songs themselves.
In my collaborative work with Richard Skelton, we use place-name and list poems frequently, as a way of amplifying voices from the distant past and to illuminate the world as it once was. For example, Ulpha Fell in Cumbria, England, can be translated as ‘hill of the wolf’. Place-name poetry is a poetic method of conveying time, and of sharing the (often immense) alterations that may have been wrought upon a landscape due to human habitation. To sum up, I like to keep things simple, and I try, as a translator as well as a poet, to get ‘out of the way’ as much as possible. I want the original voices to sing through.
AMMD: Exhilarating selections—some appearing for the very first time in English—have been published in Reliquiae’s decade-long run so far. From Inuit to Bagobo, from Polynesian to Mesopotamian, from Kwakiutl to Sumerian, the myths and folklore in your pages cross eras and cultures. How do these particular texts (and performances, as in the case of oral literature) get lifted into another language and culture, while remaining—for the lack of a better word—true to their original artistry, as well as to the symbolism and significance of the culture from which they originated?
AR: Much of the work we publish is gleaned from archival research, and many of the Indigenous texts in particular are excerpted from ethnographic works. In most cases, the ethnographers are scrupulous in documenting the original languages—often employing highly unusual orthographies. Richard and I take extreme pains to reproduce these graphemes in the journal, and often include footnotes to acknowledge our inadequacies in reproducing them. Of course, the ‘original’ is still a highly mediated and therefore compromised document, due to the limiting factors inherent in the ethnographic process. This especially holds for the resulting translation, which is subject to the ethnographer’s cultural biases. The Christianising effect is not inconsiderable—for example, we’ve seen the Algonquian power-concept ‘manitou’ translated as ‘God’ on numerous occasions, which, of course, is incredibly problematic. The whole project of ‘lifting’ (to use your term), from one culture to another (especially when there are imbalances of power) is therefore fraught with difficulty, and we have to be incredibly careful about which source texts we use. Undoubtedly, we have made inadvertent errors along the way; however, we strongly feel that western culture can learn from these different philosophical perspectives. Britain—where we currently live and publish from—is becoming increasingly insular, and we therefore strive to become more global, and more embracing of other cultures and the knowledge they can share with us regarding our place in the natural world.
AMMD: A lot of the contributions in Reliquiae are published alongside their original. You’ve said in a previous interview that this act of publishing both the source and the translation
gives the reader the opportunity to experience the music and rhythm of a different language; to observe connections and differences between languages, to find equivalences and to learn new words. Even if we may not know the language, exposure to it through simply sounding the words is surely a beneficial experience.
AR: Much of what both myself, and Richard, write is elegy—a wanting to not forget—and this intention extends to the translations we publish. Hence, the source text is of immense importance—it is the place of origin, the seed of all future translations, and as such, it has the potential to grow and extend, or to disperse, into other languages, other cultures. Sharing the origin text is both a gesture of respect for the original language, culture and poet, as well as one of transparency, because, as previously noted, a translation will always carry within itself some aspect, bias or limitation from the translator which will then surface within the target language.
There is also the aesthetic gesture—the immense beauty and wonder of languages themselves; their mark-making upon the page, and the sharing of the multitudinous ways in which humans have devised to communicate their thoughts and desires to others. Reliquiae is a celebration of that fecundity of expression. For a number of years now, each section of the journal has been partitioned by a page dedicated to a particular language that features a sequence of words forming a kind of incantation. The original language is featured in large text, with the English translation in small text beneath. Some of the words have no simple or direct translation, or have multiple meanings. For example, the Dakota word wa-kiη’-yaη means ‘to fly’, ‘a great bird’ and ‘thunder’ (and is therefore a probable allusion to the thunderbird myth). Such examples expose the chasms between languages, where there is no direct, word-for-word comparison, and thereby expand our notions of what language can be, in its breadth and depth of association. And where there is like-for-like similitude, it opens up connections between languages and cultures, like a string resonating in sympathy.
AMMD: I’m curious how occultist spirituality, divination practices, and your own belief systems not only surface in your own works, in the way you translate, and in the choice of texts you translate, but also—quoting from a previous interview—[how they influence] your “intuitive or instinctual response” towards place, and the “decisions about what to shine a light upon.”
AR: A complex question to answer, but what I can say is that, for myself, there is no separation between the spiritual and the material. My belief in a sentient universe informs all of my decisions, including how I choose to live, and what I choose to publish and to write. I believe the cosmos is vibrant and alive, and I see myself as only one cell in an infinite and incandescent array of life-forms, no more nor less valuable than any other. Life, approached in this way, engenders a sense of humility whilst also expanding one’s sense of self; everything is understood to be precious. This inclusive worldview or philosophy may have been, at one time, held by much of humanity. Perceiving in this way has deeply enriched my experience of the worlds surrounding me, but it has also made me keenly aware of that which goes unnoticed, or is seen, not as itself, but as a commodity for human use. Hence my concern with shining a light upon this imbalance wherever possible.
AMMD: Corbel Stone Press launched Xylem Books, an imprint of place-themed monographs, a little while back. What else can your readers and subscribers look forward to?
Richardson: We’ve just published the fifth title in our Lign Series: Figured Stones by Paul Prudence. It’s a remarkable book—what you might call a ‘manual’ of visionary geology. In September we’ll publish the paperback edition of Canadian metaphysical poet Don Domanski’s Selected Poems, which we released in a beautiful hardcover last year. We’re also thrilled to be working with the incredible Mexican poet Gaspar Orozco and his translator, Ilana Luna, on a Selected Poems. For those wishing to sample what’s to come, we published excerpts from his visionary poem ‘El Libro de los Espejismos / The Book of Mirages’—concerning a peyote ritual in the Chihuahuan desert—in Reliquiae Vol 9 No 1.
Regarding my own work, Corbel Stone Press will soon be unveiling a limited-edition pamphlet series entitled Polyhymnia, in honour of the Greek Muse of sacred hymn and sacred poetry. Each will comprise poetic texts and fragments presented in English and in translation. I am also presently preparing another special edition of ritual incense, which will be offered for Samhain / Día de los Muertos. And finally, I have both prose and poetry manuscripts nearing completion which continue to explore ancient philosophies, such as those of metempsychosis and animism, through the prism of my own meditative and ritual practices. Hopefully these will come to fruition within the coming year.
Autumn Richardson’s poetry, texts and translations have appeared in literary journals, pamphlets, anthologies, books and exhibitions in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, India, Norway, Ireland and the USA. Along with her partner Richard Skelton, she co-directs Corbel Stone Press, its imprint Xylem Books, and its flagship journal Reliquiae. Her first full-length collection, An Almost-Gone Radiance (2018), was selected by The Scottish Review of Books as a Scottish Book of the Year. Other publications include Field Notes (2012) and Memorious Earth (2015) (with Skelton), and Heart of Winter (2016). Ajar To The Night (Scarlet Imprint, 2020) is her latest book.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (they/them) is Asymptote Journal’s editor-at-large for the Philippines. They’re the author of Towards a Theory on City Boys: Prose Poems (UK: Newcomer Press, 2021), assistant nonfiction editor at London-based Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Iowa-based Atlas & Alice Literary Magazine, and editorial reader at Creative Nonfiction. Their works of translation have been featured in Modern Poetry in Translation (England), Asymptote (Taiwan), Reliquaie (Scotland), Rusted Radishes (Lebanon), Tolka Journal (Ireland), and anthologised in the Oxford Anthology of Translation and elsewhere. A student of tarot cartomancy and ancient Hellenistic astrology, they currently translate from the archives of pre-World War II Philippine literature written in Spanish and Binisayâ. Find more at https://linktr.ee/samdapanas.
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