Check-in 2

This semester is doing its best to crush me, but I won't let it. I was ill last week, leading up to the weekend, and it caused me to get slightly behind on my work. That said, I was a little bit ahead before this, so I suppose things have just evened out. I still need to get caught up in Pragmatics and Love Poetry – those were the two classes I missed last week – and so right now I'm working through our second homework assignment for Pragmatics, which includes some interesting wordplay involving unicorns, and recreating a Sappho poem for my Love Poetry course.

Our assignment for Love Poetry is to take what fragments are left from a Sappho poem of our choosing from the Anne Carson translation I mentioned before, and 'fill in the blanks' as it were, recreating the poem as if it were written in Sappho's time. Currently I am struggling with this as I fight the urge to modernize the poem and as I try to find a voice not my own.

Speaking of poetry, I have recently undertaken a new project. I know, I know, I don't exactly need more things to keep me busy, but I have to have fun sometimes right? This side project can definitely be considered fun. When I was at Bread Loaf early in the summer I had the privilege of attending many panels and talks, as well as individual/small group meetings with various editors and agents. One of the people that I ended up talking to was Chad Post, who was there as a publisher/editor for Open Letter at the University of Rochester. In addition to publishing, Open Letter runs a weblog and international review source called Three Percent. After leaving Bread Loaf, I decided that I would sign up to write occasional reviews for Three Percent, and I received my first book today (October 4th) and so far I love it. It's a book of poetry, but I shan't say more than that here. Once I finish writing the review and it goes through editing I will be sure to post a link to it on this blog.

On the topic of editing, my work in the Student-Scholar Partnership is going well, and I continue to be very happy with this project. To have a paying job, part-time or no, that is in my desired field is an absolute dream for someone my age, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity.

Literary Translation is my dream, as readers of this blog may know, and as readers will also know, my thesis is centered around Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and translations of her poems. At present I have scaled back the active translations as I am focusing a bit more on the content of my secondary source material for the critical introduction, although I of course work on bits and pieces when I have those rare spots of free time. I have an annotated bibliography of sources for my research seminar due next Monday, so I have also been working continuously on that.

Another research project that I am working on this semester is for my Pragmatics course. I'm still not entirely sure what I want to investigate yet; but our initial proposal (topic & research question, methodology idea, list of proposed papers) is due on the eleventh, so I'll have to come up with something soon.

Although I enjoy all of my courses and projects, I am developing a soft spot for my course on Ancient Greek. Learning this new (to me) language is a bit like solving a puzzle and slowly unwrapping a gift, and seeing all the pieces come together and getting a closer look at the prize is very enjoyable to me. When I am stressed out over bibliographies and papers and poems, untangling a sentence is oddly therapeutic.

Getting out all my thoughts on paper (or on screen I suppose) has a similar affect, so in a way I feel indebted to this blog for helping me process my strengths and weaknesses this semester. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my mind.

Cheers,
Talia

Updates

I haven't updated this blog since the start of the semester. Not because I don't want to, and not because of a lack of content, but because I am thinking about what direction to take when thinking about this space in my own little corner of the internet. This blog was originally designed for me to talk about my assignments and the progress of various projects that I'm working on, and turned into something a little more personal and a bit more philosophical than that. That isn't to say that I think those things to be unimportant, but they aren't exactly what I had in mind when I started up writing these posts. With that in mind, I've decided that, while I am going to be occasionally making posts on more personal subjects, I've decided that my main focus on this blog is going to switch to more of a progress log focusing on my projects (both personal and academic) to not only keep all of you updated, but also to keep myself accountable in terms of working to a deadline. I believe the best approach to this will be regular check ins twice a month, or rather every two weeks, preferably on Sundays. The first of these check-ins will take place in two days, Sunday the 17th. See you then!

Cheers,
Talia

Bread Loaf 2017 Part II

I meant to have this post out last Friday, but since I spent most of Friday morning in a car, and my posts now come out at noon, that seemed a little impractical. And I didn't want to rush this. Last Friday was the last day of the Bread Loaf Translators' Conference. Even so, I wrote the beginning of this post on Thursday night, which was the last full day of the conference.

As I wrote the original beginning of this post, I sat in the Barn, which has been the main social location for the conference. True, I probably should've been socializing instead of writing, but as far as things typical to my life go, I have much more experience with the latter than the former, but I try to overcome that tendency

Socializing went reasonably well, and when the time came to have dinner I wasn't exactly sure what I could eat, so I sat down with a glass of wine and my notebook until I found some people to sit with. That said, you don't want a blow by blow, so I'll just say we had peanut butter chocolate pie and it was good.

The dinner was a bit fancier than our others, what with the wine and all, but as our last one together it was nice. We've built a great community here at Bread Loaf, and I feel greatly connected to all the friends I have made, and thanks to social media it seems I'll even be able to stay connected.

From Bread Loaf I have gotten more than just book recommendations and publishing tips, I've made friendships and gotten life advice and generally have had a grand old time. This was a great learning experience for me, and I'm so glad that I made such meaningful connections.

I've learned what it means to have found my narrative twin, learned more about my work, seen the great work of others, and heard beautiful poetry and prose that has made me understand that there is suffering, but also beauty in the world and I truly feel that together we can make a change. But this blog isn’t a soap box, and I don't want to get too emotional, so here are the top 5 things I have learned and had reinforced over the course of this conference.

1. Understand the emotional heartbeat of your piece
2. Translate the author that is right for you
3. Create a dialogue between translator/author/work
4. Tell the stories you want told
5. Translate for the love of translating

As two bonus economical tips, 1. make sure you know who has the rights to your piece and 2. don't sign a work-for-hire contract. I've gotten much more out of this conference than I could put in a single post, but I don't want this to go too long. Thanks to everyone who was at the conference who made it such a great atmosphere, and thanks especially to my workshop leader Idra Novey for guiding us all so well!

Cheers,
Talia

P.S. It rained for most of the conference, but we had a couple days where we workshopped in the sun when it finally came out!

#selfie with my workshop group!

A post shared by Talia Fluff (@taliafluff) on Jun 7, 2017 at 10:20am PDT

Digging Up A Bush

So today I dug up a bush. I'm currently staying at my grandmother's house, and decided to give her a bit of a hand with the gardening. I'm not sure that the dirt stains will ever come out of my jeans, and my shoulder hurts like hell, but that bush is no longer in the ground and I feel better for it.* This would be the time for me to come up with a great philosophical quote, or say something moving, but really all that went on was that I fought with a bush all day. It took me three large shovels, a fork, a spade and some pruners, that bush got torn out of the ground and I was victorious. And that's all I really have to say.

Cheers,
Talia

*And not just because I got pizza as a reward.

P.S. I've been working on a new/old project. Stay tuned for more.