Posts featuring Alexander Dickow

Reaching for a New Home: An Interview with Alexander Dickow

I’d rarely encountered a work that seemed to draw at once on so many different registers and languages; it’s an incredibly heteroglossic work.

Longtime readers may remember our Close Approximations international translation contest, which saw Asymptote give away more than USD20,000 to twenty-five best emerging translators (over four iterations in 2014, 20162017, and 2019)—some of whose translations we promoted to a wider readership through our partnership with The Guardian. One of my thrills as editor-in-chief is to see texts that we have championed—with money we raised by ourselves, or out of our own pocket, since we are not supported by any institution—find permanent homes with publishing houses. Among these is Alexander Dickow’s translation of Sylvie Kandé’s The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore, which judge Eliot Weinberger picked as runner-up in the inaugural contest back in 2014, and which was finally released as a book with Wesleyan University Press three months ago, eight years after its debut on our website. Naturally, I was curious about the journey Dickow, also a former Communications Manager between 2017 to 2020, undertook to publication. Here is the conversation that ensued after I reached out to him.   

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

How did you first encounter Sylvie Kandé’s poetry and what drew you to translate her The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore?

In fact, poet Susan Maurer posted an excerpt on a listserv—WOMPO, the Women in Poetry listserv, I believe. I’d rarely encountered a work that seemed to draw at once on so many different registers and languages; it’s an incredibly heteroglossic work. I was impressed enough with the excerpt that I sought The Neverending Quest out shortly after, and then reached out to Sylvie to compliment her on such a remarkable epic. We entered into conversation, and I ended up translating the portion for Asymptote’s contest without the intention of translating the whole book—but then got drawn into the project further, and decided to tackle the entire thing.

Much like, say, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, Neverending Quest offers readers an alternate history—in this case, what would have happened had explorers dispatched in pirogues by Malian Emperor Abubakar discovered America before Christopher Columbus; in the final canto, though, there is a fascinating pivot: from the ordeal of the fourteenth-century voyager to that of the twenty-first-century migrant crossing treacherous waters. What do you think the poet is trying to achieve with this?  

As for the comparison with modern-day migrants, it postulates that Abubakar’s outsized heroism (dangerously close to pure folly) is similar to the heroism of these men and women searching for their destiny. A common misperception is that African migration happens because of economic or political desperation. But in fact, that migration, which mostly happens within the African continent, is more a kind of initiation, an Adventure! rather than an act of desperation, and that’s true even when economic or political hardship may be present also. Alassane, the migrant of whose name we are unsure and whose name echoes that of Ulysses, is very much this kind of hero: we see him leaping into the ocean to swim for shore, evading the coast guard and deportation. Does he make it to shore? I don’t know! But he is likely to look more and more like a hero in days which will see huge numbers of climate refugees striving for a home. Alassane is reaching for a new home. Abubakar also, or the people of Mali who accompany him, in their own way. Aren’t we all?

I want to give credit where credit is due: the above response comes as much from hearing Sylvie speak, and from conversations with her, as it does from my own imagination.

The edition that Wesleyan University Press released three months ago sets the French original with your English translation side by side, and it was great to be able to compare the two. It’s thrilling to see how much you were able to get across in the English translation—plus, it also sings! What were some of the challenges you faced in the translation process? I’m eager to find out about the nuances that were perhaps sacrificed, in your opinion. 

Nuances I sacrificed: at the end of certain “laisses” (groups of verses of unequal length that constitute the epic’s segments, modeled on the laisses of the Song of Roland for instance), Sylvie turns to metrical verse. I decided that would be a bit jarring in some cases for Anglophone readers. In other works, such as my translation of Max Jacob’s Central Laboratory (Wakefield Press, forthcoming around July 2022), I translate in metrical verse, as well as I can. But it didn’t seem worth the risks in this case. I waffle about whether that was the right decision, and still can’t really decide. Another thing that doesn’t translate as well are the Africanisms of the French, borrowed from linguistic habits of West Africans who speak French, particularly in Senegal. I did my best, but there are obviously no direct equivalents. The same ultimately goes for some ordinary French colloquialisms—slang and the like is always challenging in translation! READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (May 2020)

From hypermedia performances to publications, Asymptote staff have been keeping busy—even under lockdown!

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow’s co-translation, with Sean T. Reynolds, of Gustave Roud’s “Air of Solitude” followed by “Requiem” is now out with Seagull Books.

Executive Assistant Austyn Wohlers, who has just been admitted into Notre Dame’s MFA program in Fiction, recently published a story, “Lila,” in Short Fiction.

Editor-at-large for Romania and Moldova Chris Tanasescu (aka MARGENTO) will be presenting in late May a Twitter-based (@GraphPoem) hypermedia performance preview of a computationally assembled Belgian poetry anthology he is editing in French and in English translation and in early June an interactive coding computational poetry performance at Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2020.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation of Robert Perišić’s novel No-Signal Area, out recently with Seven Stories Press, was reviewed by Ken Kalfus in The New York Times.  

Editor-at-large for Guatemala José García recently published the final instalment of a four-parter about the migrant caravan at The Evergreen Review. Click here, here, here, and here for the full series.

Editor-at-large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood recently translated an essay by Czech journalist Apolena Rychlíková for the anthology Europa28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe published by Comma Press in March 2020.

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What’s New with the Crew? (Feb 2020)

We’re bursting out of the gate with publications galore!

Other than editing your favorite literary journal, what have Asymptote staff been up to in the New Year? Catch up with our talented team with this latest quarterly update.

Gustave Roud’s “Air of Solitude” followed by “Requiem,” is finally coming out with Seagull Press at the end of February 2020 in Communications Manager Alexander Dickow and Sean Reynolds’s English translation; it is already available for preorder here. Alexander also published the story, “Rican’s Tale of the Expedition to Perigonne,” in Big Echo Critical Science Fiction.

Assistant editor Andreea Scridon read excerpts of her translations from the Romanian at a poetry reading in Pembroke College, UK, on February 12.

The  TA First Translation Prize was announced on February 12, and the runner-up went  to People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated by Charlotte Whittle and edited by our new Copy editor Bella Bosworth.

Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac published her translation of Croation author Kristian Novak’s Dark Mother Earth with Amazon Crossing on January 14.

Editor-at-large for Morocco Hodna Nuernberg‘s co-translation, with Patricia Hartland, of Raphael Confiant’s Madam St. Clair, Queen of Harlem was published by Lavender Ink / Diálogos in January 2020.

Editor-at-large for Iran Poupeh Missaghi published her debut novel trans(re)lating house one with Coffee House Press on February 4. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (May 2019)

With new publications and festivals, Asymptote staff are being celebrated all around the world!

We have such an amazing collective of literary talent over here at Asymptote. Check out some of our news from the past quarter and stay tuned for more of the international literature you love! If you are interested in being a part of the team, please note that we will be extending our recruitment drive for two more weeks through May 21, out of consideration for those of you who are busy with end-of-semester work and graduation! 

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow published a long poem, The Song of Lisaine, at the journal X-Peri.

Copy Editor Anna Aresi recently ran her Italian translation of Pulitzer-winning Forrest Gander’s “On a Sentence by Fernanda Melchor” on Interno Poesia’s Blog.

Criticism Editor Ellen Jones had an excerpt of her translation of Nancy by Bruno Lloret—forthcoming from Giramondo Publishing in 2020—showcased in a feature on Chilean domestic life in Words Without Borders. Her review of Samanta Schweblin’s Mouthful of Birds was also printed in The Irish Times. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Catch up with the latest from our very international staff!

Curious about what our team has been up to in 2019? Read about our staff’s many achievements in the new year, including publications, art exhibitions, and reviews. 

Writers on Writers Editor Ah-reum Han received a distinguished mention in The Best American Short Stories 2018 for a story of hers originally published in StoryQuarterly.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow’s latest book, Appetites, was reviewed on The Blunt Post by Linda Rijel.

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An Interview with Alexander Dickow

I think poetry and translation have always been intertwined.

Alexander Dickow has been Asymptote’s Communications Manager since April 2017. He is also a talented translator: in 2018, he received a prestigious PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant to translate Sylvie Kandé’s Neverending Quest, and was a runner-up in Asymptote’s 2013-2014 Close Approximations Translation Contest. As a scholar at Virginia Tech, Alexander Dickow specializes in French and Francophone literatures and cultures. And as if all of these activities didn’t keep him busy enough, he’s also a respected bilingual poet. He published his very first book, Caramboles, a French/English bilingual poetry collection, with publisher Argol in 2008, and a French poetry collection, Rhapsodie curieuse, with Louise Bottu in 2017. His first poetry collection in English, Trial Balloons, appeared in 2012 with Corrupt Press, and his latest work, Appetites, has just been published in 2018 by MadHat Press. As a bilingual poet herself, Asymptote’s Assistant Managing Editor (Issue Production) Lou Sarabadzic wanted to know more about his views on multilingualism, poetry, and the creative process.

Lou Sarabadzic: Your latest collection, Appetites, has just been published by MadHat Press. In a 2016 interview, you said that you were “fatally allergic to titles.” However, with such a strong theme connecting your poems, eloquently announced by a single word, “Appetites,” I have to ask: what came first? Was it the collection’s title? The idea? Or individual poems which happened to share this common theme?

Alexander Dickow: The poems came first—I wrote a whole slew in a short period, maybe a month, with the culinary themes. It occurred to me at some point that more or less everything I’ve done is related in some way to eating: my first book was Caramboles, which designates the starfruit, among other things, and it contains a culinary poem or two also, and Rhapsodie curieuse, in French, is based around the central emblem of the persimmon. My first publisher found the title Caramboles, but the others were my choice. So I guess what came first was the obsession—then the poems, and then the actual title. Of course, food is what I refer to elsewhere as a “paravent” topic—i.e. it’s a vehicle for talking about something else, much like love or politics as subjects of poems.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

See how the unstoppable Asymptote crew is finishing up 2018!

As the year draws to a close, Asymptote staff members have been as busy as ever. Here is a selection of what our colleagues have been up to, from reviews written, to panels spoken on, and new blogs too.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow contributed a review, “Mystery and Surprise: Two Chinese Poets,” and translations of Swiss poet and photographer Gustave Roud, to the 88th edition of Plume.

Senior Editor (Chinese) Chenxin Jiang discussed the political power of literary translation as part of a conference at the Centre d’études de la traduction at Paris VII.

Romania & Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO jointly (along with Raluca Tanasescu) contributed a book chapter entitled “Translator networks of networks in digital space: The case of Asymptote Journal” to the hot-off-the-press Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies from Routledge (eds. Kobus Marais & Reine Meylaerts).

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Delve into the latest literary news from our ever-industrious Asymptote crew!

Apart from working hard on the Fall 2018 Issue, Asymptote staff have also been busy making waves in the literary world. Join us in celebrating their achievements!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado published a chapbook, Prologue Emporium, with Garden-Door Press. She also discussed her editorial work at Asymptote and her translation of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia with the Wash U Translators Collective.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow reviewed From the Files of the Immanent Foundation by Norman Finkelstein for Rain Taxi.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Keep up with our staff's impressive literary news as the summer comes to a close!

As we celebrate Asymptote‘s 30 issues in September, join us in congratulating our team members who also kept themselves busy with spreading our love of translation and literature. Take a look at this list and see where else we are bringing you the latest and the best of the literary world.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has released a new collection of poetry, Appetites, with MadHat Press.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich received the 2018 Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre from ATHE (Association of Theatre in Higher Education), and she has also been awarded a Tanne Foundation Award.

Assistant Interviews Editor Claire Jacobson had her translation of a short story by Mortada Gzar published by Words Without Borders.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac will participate in the Boston Translators Group’s (aka Dolet’s) International Translation Day/Month on 27 September at Cambridge Public Library.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

The Asymptote staff have been keeping busy!

Fresh from working on the fabulous Summer 2018 issue of Asymptote, our team members have been busy with their own creative endeavors. Read on to find out what we have been writing, doing, and learning!

Contributing Editor Aamer Hussein recently judged the McKitterick Prize. The prize, which honors the first novel by a writer over the age of forty, went to Nigerian writer Anietie Isong for his debut novel, Radio Sunrise.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has had quite a summer: other than publishing poetry in Place de La Sorbonne, he also recently wrote for Paragraph and Plume (which also ran his translations of Max Jacob’s poetry). His work also appeared in La Revue des Sciences Humaines, Littérature, and larevue*.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Touch base with our industrious team's literary achievements as we approach the halfway mark of 2018!

We have such an amazing group of creative people over here at Asymptote. Check out some of our recent news and stay tuned for more of the international literature you love!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado’s book of poetry, Some Beheadings, has been awarded The Believer Poetry Award.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has published an article in French on the creative imagination in Apollinaire’s Méditations esthétiques in Littérature’s 190th edition.

Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO delivered a computational poetry paper at a major Artificial Intelligence conference, presented a Digital Humanities paper at Congress2018, and has flown to Europe to launch a computationally assembled poetry anthology.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Stay up-to-date with the literary accomplishments of the wonderful Asymptote team!

Contributing Editor Aamer Hussein participated in the Sixth Annual Lahore Literary Festival on 24 February, 2018 at the Alhamra Arts Center.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow won a PEN/Heim grant for his translation of Sylvie Kandé’s Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich published an article entitled Six Hundred and Ninety-Two Million: On Art, Ethics, and Activism on HowlRound. Her play, An Acorn, recently opened at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Check out what the team has been up to thus far in 2018!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado has created a teaching guide for her recent book of poetry, Some Beheadings (Nightboat Books, 2017). She was also interviewed by Chicago Review of Books about the translatability of poetry.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow released a short monograph in French on Max Jacob called Jacob et le cinéma (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Jean-Michel Place, 2017).

Guest Artist Liaison Berny Tan’s first solo exhibition, ‘Thought Lines’, opened last month. She also currently has work displayed in an exhibition called ‘Journeys with “The Waste Land”’ at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK.

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