Malika Kadyrova
on translating Valérie Rezeau
I have chosen particularly short excerpts here; these five-line extracts are tiny roller-coasters, especially considering Rouzeau’s tendency to forgo punctuation in order to create overlapping phrases within phrases. An interesting moment for me was in grappling with Rouzeau’s bells that could “sonner au cou de la vie vache.” I had initially seen the bells as ringing “until the cows come home,” although that didn’t fully encompass the misery of la vie vache, which then became “a dog’s life.”
Va où is a sprawling collection, and I am slowly translating and retranslating my way through it. I find that the poems hit me at a different angle every time and I find myself grasping them at different ends, which accounts for my sense of the maintenant in “encore maintenant toujours” as being closer – for me – to “holding” than “now.”
about the author
Valérie Rouzeau (1967–) is a French poet and translator. In 2012 she won the Prix Apollinaire for her collection Vrouz. Rouzeau’s poetry is adventurous and passionate; she works with neologisms, puns, and incorporates baby-talk in a fascinating blend of the adult poet’s and the little girl’s voices. Her language comes alive in a powerful stretch that engulfs the reader in the emotion conveyed.
about the translator
Malika Kadyrova graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 with a major in comparative literature and minors in French and classical studies. She’s currently at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, wandering along the postgrad brick road in the direction of a career in simultaneous interpretation.
