Photo credit: Lisa Kalloo | Interview by Zoë Brigley
“[I]nstead of having two separate language versions of the poem, I ended up with one, which brings the languages together… This, I think, reflects how the brain of a bilingual/multilingual person works”
EMBROIDERY. HAFT
Myślę o haftach babci Kazi. O jej obrusach i serwetkach. Każda naznaczona dotknięcim jej
palców, gęsto pokłuta jej igłą. Każdy ścieg nafaszerowany po brzegi. Nigdy za nimi nie
przepadałam.
I think of Grandma Kazia’s embroidery. Her tablecloths and napkins. Each
single piece bearing the touch of her fingers, thick with the piercing of her
needle. Every stitch full to the brim. I never liked them.
Co mi próbowałaś powiedzieć, babciu? Wyciągam te stare obrusy, serwetki, pościel; staram się
odczytać ich język. Czemu mnie do nich nie ciągnęło?
What did you try to tell me, Grandma? I take out those old tablecloths, napkins
and bed-linen; try to read their language. Why wasn’t I fond of it when I saw
your embroidery?
Twoje kordonki – zapętlone, szybkie. Łączą mnie z tobą. Przywiązują, związują. Palcami czuję
ostry czubek twojej igły. Jak kiedyś ty, z trudem nawlekam nitkę.
Your stranded cottons – looping and swishing. They link me to you. They tie
me, tie me down. My fingers feel the point of your sharp needle. Like you used
to, I now struggle threading the eye.
Aż się wzdrygałam. Twoje kolory były dla mnie krzykliwie. Linie i kształty zbyt zaokrąglone i
kobiece, zbyt ozdobne. Wzory przestarzałe i ckliwe. To wszystko mnie nużyło. Wzdrygałam się.
A ty o tym wiedziałaś.
I cringed. Found your colours garish. Lines and shapes too curvy and feminine,
too flowery. Patterns passé and mawkish. I found it all tedious. I cringed and
you knew it.
Czy swój feministyczny manifest napisałaś igłą? Czy byś mi o tym powiedziała, gdybym cię
zapytała na czas?
Did you write your feminist manifesto with your needle? Would you have told
me had I asked you when I still could?
So tell us about the decisions you made with regard to language? It’s interesting to see these parallel texts.
This poem was initially written in English in response to a Zoom event about Romanian blouses during a Romanian literature festival in Covid-times. While writing the poem based on my notes from the workshop, it very quickly took a turn and steered me away from the Romanian blouse embroidery and its symbolic meanings, and towards my grandmother who was a dedicated embroiderer. I started forming this conversation with my grandmother about her embroidered napkins, tablecloths and bed-linen, and my dislike for them, embarrassment even. And then I thought, wait a minute, if I were to have this conversation with my grandmother, surely it would be in Polish? So I wrote the Polish version of the poem (I tend not to self-translate, but rather start from scratch in the other language with she same concepts/images in mind). But I also wanted to reflect the reality of existing (and writing) between my two languages, this constant push and pull that it creates, the conversations and the clashes, the battlefield. Which is why instead of having two separate language versions of the poem, I ended up with one, which brings the languages together. The poem comes from my second book, „Deliverance/Rozpętanie” (which is now looking for a home) and the entire collection is written bilingually, exploring different writing strategies, sometimes mirroring or intertwining the languages, sometimes looking for similar sounds and the tension between their meanings. This, I think, reflects how the brain of a bilingual/multilingual person works.
I like the use of a prose poem format to let the storytelling unfold. Are there particular prose poets that you admire or who inspire you?
A prose poem is a new form for me. I find it very challenging but at the same time exciting, with its in built tension. I’ve been recently reading and rereading Maria Jastrzębska’s The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue, a collection of beautiful prose poems which are also stringed along a rather clear narrative line, like a novel unfolding in poems, prose poems. I also go back again and again to poetic proses (or are they prose poems?) by Irit Amiel who described the Holocaust experience like nobody else (for example in her collection Scorched); and to Bronka Nowicka’s To Feed the Stone (or, Nakarmić kamień, in its Polish original), which continues to delight me. Other prose poets on my recent reading list are Max Jacob (in his surrealistic The Dice Cup wonderfully translated by Ian Seed), Rachel Levitsky (and her Pamenar Press collection Against Travel), Harryette Mullen, Forrest Gander, Jennifer Moxley, Barbara Klicka and Natalia Malek.
It’s fascinating to think about how, in the past, women had limited means for expressing creativity but did so sometimes in domestic tasks like cooking or here sewing. The narrator cringes at the grandmother’s needlework, but by the end has come to reconsider her grandmother’s art. Were these things that you were thinking about when you wrote the poem?
Definitely. My grandmother had twelve children and her whole life was about being a mother and a wife. But she also had a creative streak and it always found its way to come to the surface. However busy with housework she was, it crept into the jobs she was doing. And when she was old, she quite obviously delighted in all and any creative pursuits of her children and grandchildren. I will always remember her looking at my earrings, which I made myself by creating a ‘spider’s web’ spun on plastic bracelets. She said they were too large for me – I am rather short – but at the same time she loved them. There was a spark in her eye when she was talking about them or about my long, flowing skirt, which I also made myself. I clearly took this practical creative approach from her – she did embroidery, I made jewellery and clothes. Hm…
I really didn’t like my grandmother’s embroidery as a young person, but I was regularly getting napkins, tablecloths and other such as presents. I recently found a stash of them and today I look at them with a bit of a different eye. I see more in them than I did in the past, they’ve become precious. Because she made them. And because she made them to say something. What bothers me is that I was never very good at pretending to like something when I didn’t. So she must have known. I would like to be able to tell her now that my perspective has shifted.
