POETRY BOOKLET
A translation into Poetry
The poet Suna Afshan was commissioned by Modus Arts to produce a body of text in response to five cassettes selected from the Tape Letters archive held at the Bishopsgate Institute library. Afshan adopted a poetry as a word-for-word translation approach, and the work is directly informed by the messages and languages on the cassettes, with the aim of reifying speech into ink.
Extract
TLP1-HJ-1-2 : Side A | 2 min 16 sec to 3 min 52 sec
“I saw a dream too tough,
And all day recalling it
My heart suffered, fret.
I don’t know why,
But I saw you sick
(Sister Halima too,
Brother [dearer than life] Yaseen, too;
This is what I am saying),
And how hard my heart worried!
[And how hard my heart fret!]
And I said, I don’t know why I’ve seen this
(My sister and my nephew in this state)
And where, O, where my heart and mind went! So, I told Maryam.
Said, Maryam, I don’t know why
I have seen this dream.
She said, Mum, you always just keep thinking. It’ll be fine. Look, their phone calls come
And go!
And Sister, you know that number
I took from you? In truth, it wasn’t right.
I don’t know, perhaps a fault in the penning?
It rung once and then I dialled and then nothing. I showed and told the operator too,
But they just voiced things
I couldn’t comprehend.”
Suna Afshan
“In the sometimes-nesting form of the poems, I’ve sought to retain the nuance I can perceive: the pauses, the hundred indecisions, the way thought appears to run in tandem with voice, then interjects and polices, all that unsounded longing. Ultimately, the translation attempts to perform what I, at least, consider poetry’s first function: to tell stories.”
THE TAPE LETTERS OUTPUTS:
● Apps
● Archive
● Digital Exhibition
● Learning Resources
● Photo Series
● Physical Exhibitions
● Podcast
● Poetry Booklet
● Project Booklet
● Radio Series
● Sound Installation
● Talks & Events
● Videos
A translation into Poetry
The poet Suna Afshan was commissioned by Modus Arts to produce a body of text in response to five cassettes selected from the Tape Letters archive held at the Bishopsgate Institute library. Afshan adopted a poetry as a word-for-word translation approach, and the work is directly informed by the messages and languages on the cassettes, with the aim of reifying speech into ink.
Extract
TLP1-HJ-1-2 : Side A | 2 min 16 sec to 3 min 52 sec
“I saw a dream too tough,
And all day recalling it
My heart suffered, fret.
I don’t know why,
But I saw you sick
(Sister Halima too,
Brother [dearer than life] Yaseen, too;
This is what I am saying),
And how hard my heart worried!
[And how hard my heart fret!]
And I said, I don’t know why I’ve seen this
(My sister and my nephew in this state)
And where, O, where my heart and mind went! So, I told Maryam.
Said, Maryam, I don’t know why
I have seen this dream.
She said, Mum, you always just keep thinking. It’ll be fine. Look, their phone calls come
And go!
And Sister, you know that number
I took from you? In truth, it wasn’t right.
I don’t know, perhaps a fault in the penning?
It rung once and then I dialled and then nothing. I showed and told the operator too,
But they just voiced things
I couldn’t comprehend.”
Suna Afshan
“In the sometimes-nesting form of the poems, I’ve sought to retain the nuance I can perceive: the pauses, the hundred indecisions, the way thought appears to run in tandem with voice, then interjects and polices, all that unsounded longing. Ultimately, the translation attempts to perform what I, at least, consider poetry’s first function: to tell stories.”