“I was leafing through María Teresa’s collected works, the sea only just out of sight, and when I came across this poem I decided to start translating it right away.“
Playa de San Llorienzu
When everyone is gone
and you,
laid waste by tourists,
find yourself alone
filthy
scandalised
I will come back to you.
When the sun shrouded high
amid black clouds
no longer warms you
and the cold wind
lets no other noses claim your scent
and no other gazes gaze you
I will come back.
When the cocksure
stubborn drizzle
damps and soaks
your yellow bones,
I will lick the wounds
left by others’ feet
on your skin of sand.
My body will sway
once more
beneath your
battered
bare
bereft
and barren
balustrade
and I will make my hands
an eternal bonfire
beneath your bones,
and pressed to you in a loving embrace
we will be a knot
of eyes and coral
of salt and wind.
When the water cries,
crows and crashes against the rocks
I will be here
like a lullaby beside the cradle.
And once all have forgotten you,
you will be with me, travelling eternally
among my dreams, wherever I may be.
Playa de San Llorienzu
Cuando toos colen
y tú
fecha una llaceria pola xente foriata
t’alcuentres sola
sucia
escarnecida
yo tornaré a ti.
Cuandu’l sol altu
ente les ñubes prietes
nun te caleza
y el vientu fríu
nun dexe qu’otres ñarices te güelan
nin otros güeyos te güeyen
yo tornaré.
Cuando la muga
enfotada y testerona
mueye y empape
la to cadarma amariella,
llamberé les tos ferides
qu’otros pies dexaren
so la to pelleya de sable.
Banciaráse’l mio cuerpu
otra vegada
so les tos barandielles
desposeíes
desnúes
debastaes
y ermes
y fadré de les mios manes
so la to cadarma
una etenra foguera,
y xuncida a ti nun abrazu d’amor
seremos un ñudu fechu
de güeyos y coral
de sal y vientu.
Cuando yá l’agua llore,
glaye y s’españe escontra les roques
yo taré equí
comu un canciu de neños xunto a la cuna.
Y cuandu ya naide s’alcuerde de ti,
tu serás viaxera etenra de los mios suaños
per onde quiera que yo m’alcuentre.
I loved your translation of this poem and found the sounds and rhythms wonderful when read aloud. The sense of a shoreline is there in the form, with clever lineation and choice of line endings. How hard was it to replicate the form whilst staying true to the meaning?
Thank you so much – yes, I love the way the line endings in this poem create the effect of a shoreline, coming and going with the waves (you could call them shore-lines…). There was never any doubt that my version would replicate the form. In some places, the more flexible approach to syntax that poetry allows can make it easier to track the patterns of the original more closely than you might in prose. Elsewhere, you have to make a trade-off. For example, no other version of the line ‘yo tornaré a ti’ could match ‘I will come back to you’ for weight or rhythm (imagine if I’d gone with the more succinct ‘I’ll be back’…). That meant that some of the visual impact of the jutting line above was lost in my version. My wave had to lap more gently. Elsewhere, I opted for a more inventive (irreverent?) approach to preserve the form. The most straightforward way to render ‘nun dexe qu’otres ñarices te güelan’ would have been ‘lets no other noses smell you’, but then I’d have lost that long, overhanging line; ‘claim your scent’ is much more marked than the original, but it gives the extra length, and to me it felt very in keeping with the sense of possessiveness that runs through the poem.
This is obviously a real love letter to Playa de San Llorienzu in Asturias, and the sense of the natural world being overtaken by tourism perhaps reflects the sense of loss of a language which is engulfed and lost to a dominant tongue. This is something that’s very familiar in Welsh history too of course, as well as other areas of the British Isles such as Cornwall. I’d love to know a little more about the context of the Asturian language, the preservation of language through poetry, and how you were introduced to Maria Teresa’s work.
I first read ‘Playa de San Llorienzu’ at the ‘Residencia Lliteraria Xixón’, a literary residency set up by Asturian writer, teacher and activist Inaciu Galán, which is based just a few streets back from San Llorienzu beach itself. I was leafing through María Teresa’s collected works, the sea only just out of sight, and when I came across this poem I decided to start translating it right away. For fairly complex historical and political reasons, Asturian does not have the same legal status in Spain as Catalan, Galician and Basque, which in practical terms means those fighting to preserve the language face a battle on many fronts (for example, Asturian is offered only as an elective subject in schools, never the vehicular language). There is widespread support in Asturias for the language to obtain the same status as the country’s better-known minorities languages, but in the meantime projects like the residency in Xixón are vital in supporting the small but vibrant Asturian-language literary scene. María Teresa González, too, was a staunch defender of the language. Born in Xixón (you might know it as Gijón in Spanish), she was a founding member of the Conceyu Bable, an organisation that played a major role in advocating for the Asturian language at the tail end of the Franco dictatorship and the years immediately following Spain’s transition to democracy. This period, know in Asturian as the ‘Surdimientu’, saw a revival of literature and other cultural production in Asturian, and María Teresa was one of its leading figures. Sadly, she died very young, after a long illness, and at a time when she was at the peak of her creativity. Though we’ll never know how much more she could have written, she leaves behind an incredible literary legacy, of which this poem is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are interested in reading more of her work in the original language, her entire collected works are available on her website: https://mariateresagonzalez.com/
I love that you mention the parallels with Welsh history, as this was very present to me at the time I was translating this poem (one of the reasons I’m so happy for it to have found a home with Poetry Wales). Besides the titular beach, the coast of North Wales is the first landscape that comes to mind when I read it – remove the balustrade and it could almost be about Llandudno. The language, too, is its own connection. In his excellent book Liverpool: A Memoir of Words, Tony Crowley remembers ‘the strange crowds who gathered just across Park Road every Sunday in their ‘bezzies’ (best clothes), speaking a language none of us understood.’ He’s referring to the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Toxteth, Liverpool, about a ten-minute walk from the house where I grew up. The church has been derelict for over 30 years, but in the first half of the 20th century churches like this were the heart of Liverpool’s then large Welsh-speaking community. I remember that on another trip to Xixón, I happened to be reading the wonderful essay collection Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales. There’s a fascinating essay in there by Morgan Owen on his experiences growing up as a Welsh speaker in Merthyr called ‘Ghost or Reflection’. I found many essays in the book, and that one in particular, very useful for thinking about the Asturian language, past and present. Maybe one day someone will translate it into Asturian…
I read a quote from Carol Rumens who described poetry translation as a process that ‘extends us in the way real travelling does, giving us new sounds, sights and smells. Every unique poetry village sharpens us to life’. I loved this idea, and wondered if you could perhaps respond to this – is that description one that also resonates with you?
Yes, I love that quote, especially the idea of the ‘poetry village’. The reference to travel seems especially poignant at the moment, since, as you alluded to earlier, travel, like translation, is not only a force for good. Both can sharpen us to life, but their sharpness can also be like the sharpness of the weever fish. They can do harm. Asturias, like Wales, like many parts of the world, is currently grappling with the impact of mass tourism, and how to reconcile this with the environment, the natural world, and, not least, ever-rising rents. Translation at its best is exactly as Rumens describes it, but it can also be entangled with, for instance, the violence of colonialism – for more on this subject I would recommend the collection Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation published by Tilted Axis.
To return to María Teresa’s work, your quote instantly brought to mind another poem of hers, titled ‘Yo qu’enxamás vi Nueva York’ (‘I Who Have Never Seen New York’), dedicated to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, in which she imagines the city through his poetry. She has never seen New York, but, she writes, ‘I know there was a time / when the small shadow of a poet / spread through its streets’. Just as María Teresa feels Lorca’s presence throughout the imagined city, so I hope readers will feel hers on San Llorienzu beach, treading softly beneath the black clouds, hear her voice above the crowing, crashing waves. This is where the poetry village has an edge over the terrestrial one; the poet can live there forever.
There are some beautiful moments of alliteration in this poem, and I felt that must be a particularly challenging aspect of translation – to capture the intended ‘soundscape’ whilst holding onto the meaning behind that sequence of words. How do you go about staying true to both meaning and poetic devices such as assonance or alliteration in this way?
Challenging, yes, but fun! I have a weakness for alliteration, but in this poem I felt I could give in to my worst alliterative instincts and still be true to the soundscape you describe. There is almost always a good solution for preserving a particular effect (if not the specific device) without surrendering the sense; the question is whether it comes to you before you have to send off the translation. I was lucky with this poem in that I wasn’t working to a deadline, so I had the time to play around – I’m sure I tested out a few other letters before landing on those battered, bare, bereft and barren b’s. I also brought this poem to my monthly translation workshop, the Null Subjects Collective. These are the kinds of problems that always benefit from a few extra brains, so often someone else will instantly spot the perfect word or phrasing that was just beyond your reach. Or, as is often the case, the perfect solution to a problem you didn’t know existed. This might be a bit of a cheesy note to end on, but to go back to the quote you mention above, the idea of translation as travel, I like to think that while we workshopped this poem over Zoom, myself, María Teresa, and my friends and colleagues Anton, Jeffrey, Nick and Jack, were all on that beach together.
Robin Munby
Robin Munby (he/him) is a literary translator from Liverpool, based in Madrid. His translations from Spanish, Russian and Asturian have appeared in publications including Poetry Ireland Review, Wasafiri Magazine, Asymptote, World Poetry Review, Subtropics and The Glasgow Review of Books.
María Teresa González
María Teresa González (she/her) was a writer and poet, and a founding member of the organisation Coceyu Bable, which advocated for the Asturian language during Spain’s transition to democracy. Her first poetry collection was Collaciu de la Nueche, published in 1987, and she continued to write until her death in 1995.
María Teresa González, Obra Completa, Ediciones Trabe, 2008
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