 |
| LynleyShimat Lys: Poet, Translator |
~
If I could piece back
this broken glass,
screws, bolts, and nails,
I could build a house,
fertilize a garden, and you
would be
a year younger than me,
not frozen in photo stills.
From "Epicenter: Marla in Jerusalem"
~
LynleyShimat Lys is a self-described social media wrangler, polyglot,
and poet straddling the boundaries of New York, Wisconsin, West Jerusalem, and
East Jerusalem (just to name a few). I skyped in to Jerusalem to talk about her
current literary projects, writing during a time of local conflict, and her
advice for emerging artists.
What are you working on right now?
One
project that I’m working on is a reading that I did with my poetry group and
Bar-Ilan alumni. I had just taken this class with the editors of Verse Wisconsin focused on community building and making poetic communities. So I
collected poems from everyone that read and I’m putting together a chapbook.
Making a book like that, it brought me together with the other readers. There
were many common themes in our reading. A lot of the poems were about being in
Jerusalem, talking to relatives in other countries, and thinking, in a
philosophical way, about the history and interactions between different
communities in Jerusalem. I really enjoyed this project because it meant that I
could get to know more of the people who read and could both listen to their
poems and read them on the page.
You
mentioned that many of the poets in your reading touched upon place, and
perhaps their relationship to place as foreigners, as an important theme. How
does living in Israel affect your writing? What is it liking writing
English-language poetry in a foreign context?
My poems are mainly in English but there will also be
words in Hebrew or Arabic and occasionally other languages. When I go outside
and have to speak with people, I always deal with them in Hebrew or Arabic. Living
that way, your English starts to get warped. I have the benefit of my poetry
group—people who speak English and write about this country. Sometimes in
workshop people suggest words that I know but I just haven’t use in five years.
Salat of the Sus: Carob Juice Hymn--A visit to Gaza
This summer has been a particularly difficult and
painful time for Israel and Gaza. What is it like being a poet during a time of
war?
For me, it’s helpful to be a poet because then I can
write about it. If I didn’t know how to write about the situation, it would be
more difficult. I wrote a poem to my poetry group—whatever came into my head. I
took it them and they gave me feedback. Even though we have really different
political perspectives in the group, it is very comforting to have them around.
People in my poetry group, we’ve all lived in Jerusalem. So we’re, I don’t know
if you can be used to having rockets falling on you, but we’ve done it before.
We all have this attitude that if the sirens rings you go in the shelter,
otherwise you just go on with your life. It was nice to have the group around
with that sort of attitude because it calmed me down a lot. Also I’ve found some
other Palestinian poets, contemporary poets who are writing about the war. It
might be interesting to translate poets from Gaza. It’s something that people
aren’t exposed to in the rest of the world.
Who are some of the influences on your writing?
My first real influence was Sylvia Plath. She can put
together the personal and the political and make a viable poem with images and
ideas that just stick with you. I spent a lot of time in college studying her
use of rhythm and formal poetry structures. Her work made me feel that what I
wanted to do with poetry was possible.
Then even before high school, I read a lot of African
American poets: Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay and now, contemporary poets:
Jericho Brown and Danez Smith. For me there is something so commanding and
immediate about certain writers and about African American literature on a
broader scale. It addresses so much of what America is and can be and also what
America fails to be and where it fails to live up to the mythology of America.
More recently it’s the people I’ve been translating like
Mahmoud Darwish and Jabra Ibraham Jabra. With Mahmoud Darwish, his first collections
have not been translated as a whole into English and that’s actually the poetry
of his that I really like. It’s more dramatic and talks about his personal
feeling of exile after having left the country.
What are some of your goals in your own writing?
I’m always trying to find the balance between politics
and aesthetics. Also between writing ideas and imagery—writing about
landscapes, people, or places. When I first started writing I wrote a lot of
poems that had no landscapes, no images. They were just very philosophical. At
some point I realized it would be more powerful to have a philosophy
communicating with images or emerging through images. My early writing was also very political and less concerned
with aesthetics. Now, I really like poems that are beautiful as poems and also
contain political statements. The two back each other up and are both
necessary.
The East--A short message to poets inspired by Jerusalem
With nearing 1,800 facebook followers and
multiple daily posts on poetry, arts, and culture, you are a poetic social
networking hub. How and why did you establish your poetry presence on facebook?
I have friends in so many different countries and I
really try to have a presence on facebook in order to keep in touch with them.
In college I was involved in poetry groups and getting my work published. But
then for a while I was writing and still serious about poetry but I wasn’t
publishing. When I started getting back into it, one of my teachers reminded to
me that you have to actually follow people writing in English if you're going
to write in English. The main English language poets don't live in Israel, so I
used facebook to have a community of poets. I follow other poets to see what
they're doing and in turn, they see what I'm doing. I really like the idea that
poetry can be community. You can share poetry with a lot of people, with poets
and non-poets as well. In the past, it felt like I was submitting to journals
and they say yes or no and that's it. Now I focus more on the poetry community.
I'm still submitting but I'm submitting as part of a community—connecting with
with new journals, becoming friends with the editors, and meeting more people.
As an emerging writer, I’m always trying to
figure out how to match my poetry with the right literary magazine. How do you
decide which journals to submit to? How have you found success in getting your
work published?
If you have a place where you really want to be in that
journal, then it’s good to send them something so they know you're out there.
Even if you don't get with them the first time, they may want other stuff, or
you may send something later and they'll remember your name. Then, find
whatever niche you can fit yourself into and then build on that.
For me it was Verse Wisconsin. Verse Wisconsin is a
journal based in Madison, Wisconsin that promotes local poets and people who
have connections to Wisconsin. My uncle is a poet in Wisconsin, so that was my
"in" there. I published a couple of things with them and I took a
class with the editors. Small presses can be really helpful in promoting their
poets. Verse Wisconsin has nominated my poems for awards and other internet
poetry sites. They also wrote recommendations for my MFA applications, which
was nice.
~
Look
after the city for me
in
my absence, walk the length
of
Derech Beit Lehem, which never reaches
Bethlehem,
and Derech Hevron, which does...
I
was here.
And
here and here. Record: I translated
the
city, transposed myself
from
Arabic to Hebrew, Pahlavi to Aramaic.
Excerpts from "The Yerushalmi Returns"
~
There has been a lot of recent debate about the
value and necessity of MFA's in Creative Writing. Why did you personally decide
to pursue an MFA in poetry?
I've always thought about doing the MFA. My senior year
of college I applied to MFA programs but I didn't apply to many of them and I
didn't get in. After that I discovered film studies, so I went that way for a
while. Recently, I was looking into somewhere I could do a Phd in Arabic poetry
since that was my focus at Hebrew University. I found there isn't really a lot
here in Israel to support a Phd in Arabic poetry, especially modern Arabic
poetry. In the States, you get stuck between Comparative Literature and Middle
East History. Comparative Literature doesn't do Arabic and Middle East History
doesn't do poetry. Then I found out that I could do this program both in
translation and writing poetry with Queens College. I looked up the people and
it seemed like a good match for me. Queens College also appeals to me because
it is a public university. They're inexpensive and they have a real community
basis in New York. They have connections with the Poetry Society of America and
Cave Canem, a program for African American poets. It seemed like a really great
opportunity so I was really pleased when they let me in.
Of course I have to ask—what’s your day job?
I have a book review gig. That isn’t what supports me,
but it’s nice to actually get paid for writing book reviews. I work at an
international company writing abstracts and headings for academic articles in
different languages. It’s become a thing where I sit around all day and I read
in Italian or I read in French or Spanish or occasionally Hebrew, sometimes
German if it’s short. It’s one of the few jobs I’ve had that uses my language
skills. It also gives me an opportunity to read things that I usually wouldn’t
read. I keep telling people that I should have an honorary degree in
Catholicism because I get so many Italian articles about Catholic theology.
Finally, do you have any advice for new writers?
I would tell people to have fun with writing and find other
people to write with. Keep reading. It’s so important to find new voices and to
hear and read what else is going on in poetry. And community is really
important—any community you can find. Try slam and try poetry readings. Try
different kinds of things and whenever you can have a new experience with
something different, try it. Then, at least, you’ll have something to write
about.
