[Mark McDonnell]

Hey Julie,

I have a few issues with your take on this. I hope to get them all out then move on.

Do people really think that Janice Deul has no right to express an opinion about the translation of this particular poem?

I don't want to labour this point, but in her original article, where she had time and space to clearly state her position, Deul doesn’t specify that she is talking only about this one particular poem. She writes about who should get the job of translating "The Hill We Climb And Other Poems". Now, I think the commission was just for an edition of the single poem (the full collection is not coming out till autumn, I believe) but Deul clearly and specifically writes and other poems. Perhaps she just hadn't researched much. She doesn't say anything in her article about her issue being just with the inauguration poem because of its special significance, nor does she mention Black Lives Matter. She only makes these points later when she is interviewed by the BBC. I also disagree with your suggestion that "Rijneveld's lack of experience in this field is (Deul’s) main objection. Race and gender identity are secondary to that". Deul mentions all three things (spoken-word experience, race and gender) but the bulk of her focus seems centred on Gorman's youth, beauty, fashion sense and status as a role model for black women and girls. She doesn't say anything about the particular nuances of spoken word or the challenges of translating it for someone outside the field and, to be honest, doesn't come across as someone who is particularly knowledgeable about form, translation or poetry in general. It reads to me that her main objection, what she focuses on most, is that is Rijneveld doesn't share Gorman's experiences and identity. This is the bulk of her original article (Google translated from the Dutch, so a little clunky to read). After introducing herself as a fashion activist, she goes on:

"Anyway, language and fashion. Passions I share with Amanda Gorman, the African American spoken word artist, activist and poet, who suddenly became a sensation on January 20. Not only because of her flaming recitation and her hopeful and powerfully vulnerable poem The Hill We Climb, with the chicken-skin phrase 'There's always light. If only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it', but also because of her fabulous inauguration look, complete with bright yellow Prada coat, red XXL designer hair band and braided up-do'. Her appearance inspired many. So much so that she was offered a contract with IMG Models, one of the world's leading modelling agencies. Something that was perceived by black women and girls worldwide as a legitimacy of their natural beauty. And now there is a translation of the work of the charismatic Gorman, who has now also earned a place in the Time 100 Next: the list of the leading American news magazine with influential (young) people who are the hope for the future. Among them: environmentalist Greta Thunberg, the multi-talented R&B sisters Chloe x Halle (Bailey), covid vaccine researcher Aurelia Nguyen, model and activist Paloma Elsesser and 95 other influencers, researchers, businessmen, entertainers and politicians, of whom we are probably still very going to hear a lot. 

Translation Rights
The translation rights of Gorman's work were fought over, a battle won by the widely respected Meulenhoff. The publisher will present a special Dutch edition of The Hill We Climb and Other Poems on 20 March, introduced by Oprah Winfrey and translated by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. An incomprehensible choice, in my view and that of many others who expressed their pain, frustration, anger and disappointment via social media. Harvard alumna Gorman, raised by a single mother and labelled a 'special needs ' child due to speech problems, describes herself as 'skinny Black girl'. And her work and life are colored by her experiences and identity as a black woman. Isn't it - to say the least - a missed opportunity to hire Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for this job? She is white, non-binary, has no experience in this field, but is Meulenhoff's 'dream translator’?

Such a vote of confidence is not often awarded to people of color. On the contrary, whether in fashion, art, business, politics or literature, the merits and qualities of black people are only sporadically valued - if seen at all. Something that applies squared to black women, who are systematically marginalized.
Nothing to the detriment of Rijneveld's qualities, but why not opt for a literator who - just like Gorman - is a spoken word artist , young, female and: unapologetically Black ?"

She then goes on to name some female, black, spoken word poets in the Netherlands who she thinks would do a better job and the article ends.


I don't have any issue with Deul expressing these opinions. Whether I agree with them or not, they’re reasonably expressed. I don't agree that "Most people are upset NOT about what Janice Deul actually said, but about bad-faith characterizations of it". I know people here have have been responding to the take in the Barrios opinion article I posted, but really I don't think it's what Deul did or didn't say, or whether she has been misinterpreted, that has "upset" people. People are free to express any opinion they like (within reason) and they do on social media every day. People wouldn't be "upset" about it, or even have heard much about it, if she hadn't been successful. That's the point. It's the increasing power of social media outrage in forcing publishers and artists to capitulate to its whims that disturbs people.

I agree there's some straw-manning in the Barrios article. Deul doesn't actually say that she thinks only black writers should translate other black writers etc. But I think it’s unfair to suggest that the reasons for Barrios’ possible hyperbole are “in order to enlist others in battling a perceived threat to her own livelihood as a translator”. Barrios is a successful, widely published writer and poet and I give her the benefit of the doubt that what she is writing is sincerely felt rather than motivated by her bank balance. I also think it unlikely that she would genuinely fear that her income from translating would be massively affected if it suddenly became the norm that she could no longer translate black writers. If anything, putting her head over the parapet to criticise this decision is more likely to lose her work. Also, that slippery slope Barrios alludes to is already being slid down. The notion of "staying in your own lane" regarding what is acceptable subject matter in literature is increasingly commonplace among ID politics inspired social media users. It's what led The Nation to apologise for publishing a poem for the first time in its 80 year history when Anders Wee dared to write a persona poem from the pov of a homeless black man.

You sidestepped Roger's hypothetical about Gorman translating Rijneveld, calling it Bizarro World because Gorman doesn't speak Dutch. What about a more generalised hypothetical. Following a social media campaign, a black, Dutch translator is pressured to step down from translating a collection by a white Midwestern farmer poet. Some campaigners claim it's because the poet wrote mainly in form and the translator mainly in free verse but the original essay prompting the uproar mainly focuses on the poet's status as a role model for working-class Mid-westerners and his strong white identity which no other group could possibly identify or empathise with. What do you imagine yours and the general response would be? Quite rightly, one of upset and indignation I would imagine. Because investing whiteness with quasi-mystical properties is something that only neo-Nazis and white supremacists do. Of course, I understand that historically oppressed and marginalized groups will justifiably be invested in a sense of their identity more than historically privileged groups, but I don't think it is something that should reasonably begin affecting editorial decisions.

I also wonder if Rijneveld really "voluntarily stepped down after sympathising with Deul's position" as you say, or if in fact they felt they had little choice after the social media outpouring of "pain, frustration, anger and disappointment" at their having got the job. To stubbornly dig in could risk them being labelled at best unfeeling and at worst racist. Given the nature of social media mob pressure, it's naive to think this was a completely free choice. I do also wonder if feeling "anger" and "pain" at the idea of a young, non-binary, Booker Prize winning author translating Amanda Gorman, simply because they have the wrong skin colour, or are not part of the spoken word scene, is a reasonable response. I'm aware this might not be a fashionable opinion.

Now, I could be very wrong here but I've started now so in for a penny...I find the notion of "The Hill We Climb" being “sacred to many Americans, but particularly to Black Americans” a bit hard to swallow. I have a problem with sacred texts in general, and I find the idea that all black Americans, or even the majority, see it like this to be a little patronising. Certainly it was a powerful and iconic moment, but is "sacred" pushing it? I’m sure many Americans, white and black, now look back at the inauguration with affection but see the moment for what it was beyond the symbolism: a talented, ambitious young woman getting a big stage with a crowd-pleasing poem and an incumbent administration disassociating itself from the previous, horrendous one in a very media savvy, striking way with a young, black, “modern” voice. The whole idea that there is something special, something sacred, in Blackness, or in any part of a person’s identity over which they have no choice, so that their inner essence and experiences can only be apprehended by someone sharing that identity, is the racial equivalent of the idea that there is something mystical in femininity. And where femininity is dogged with the Madonna/whore dichotomy, white notions of Blackness can be dogged by the sacred/profane dichotomy. I think it’s time we realised we are all just people, equally flawed and pained and bumbling through life and equally capable of the very best and worst of humanity. Art should be about recognising this common humanity and frailty. Again, very unfashionable opinions no doubt and probably informed by my privilege as a straight, white man. And I do mean that genuinely, even though it probably sounds sarcastic.

As to the hypothetical question of whether Rijneveld would have been a good translator of Gorman’s poem, when I read their “response poem” after they stepped down I was struck by two things. The first was how ambivalent it was. The way I read it, they seem to spend the first four stanzas of the six stanza poem expressing their deeply held belief in the notion of empathy in art, of being “able to put yourself / in another’s shoes, to see the sea of sorrow behind another / person’s eyes”, of decrying (in the first stanza) “pulpit preaching…the Word that says what is / right or wrong”, of the need to “face up to all the bullies and fight pigeonholing with your fists raised” and “all of humankind’s boxing in”. This, along with the telling title, reads to me like someone very much of the mind that translation in poetry is an art that transcends racial boundaries and embraces the common humanity of the human race. That having a young marginalised white woman translate the words of a young, marginalised black woman would actually be a positive thing and the deluge of social media criticism was not something they instinctively agreed with. It’s only in the last two stanzas that the poem turns and begins to sound like more an “apology”. And the poem is at its weakest and most prosaic here, like it was written under some form of mental duress. And tellingly, they end on the unifying, defiant note that people should “straighten together our backs”. I felt quite sad reading it.

The second thing that struck me was how easily I could hear the poem in my inner ear with the recognisable rhythms and cadence of spoken word poetry, with its long, flowing, incantatory sentences and rhetorical repetition of “Never lost that”. I think they would have been a fine choice.

I echo what Roger said here:

Of course I would have had absolutely no objection whatsoever had they originally selected a young black woman to be the translator. In fact, it would have made a lot of sense and no one would have questioned it in any way. What rankles me a bit is that they didn't do that. They chose someone else. That was their choice. Gorman was fine with it. But somehow other people got into the act and told Gorman that her own choice was wrong and it was a horrible gaffe that had to be apologized for.

Ultimately, I see this as another example of publishers and artists being pressured into bad, anti-art decisions by fashionable notions of identity politics which have zero impact on the actual lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged in society, of which people of colour make up a significant number.

Here’s Rijneveld’s poem:

Everything inhabitable

Never lost that resistance, that primal jostling with sorrow and joy,
or given in to pulpit preaching, to the Word that says what is
right or wrong, never been too lazy to stand up, to face
up to all the bullies and fight pigeonholing with your fists
raised, against those riots of not-knowing inside your head,

tempering impotence with the red rag in your eyes, and
always announcing your own way with rock-solid pride,
watching someone reduced to pulp and seeing the last
drop of dignity trickling away, you are against craniometry,
against bondservice, against all of humankind’s boxing in.

Never lost that resistance, that seed of wrestling free, your
origin is dressed in mourning attire, your origin was fortunate,
it had an escape route, not that your experience is aligned,
not that you always see that the grass on the other side may be
withered and less green – the point is to be able to put yourself

in another’s shoes, to see the sea of sorrow behind another
person’s eyes, the rampant wrath of all wraths, you
want to say that maybe you don’t understand everything,
that of course you don’t always hit the right chord, but that
you do feel it, yes, you feel it, even if the difference is a gap.

Never lost that resistance and yet able to grasp when it
isn’t your place, when you must kneel for a poem because
another person can make it more inhabitable; not out of
unwillingness, not out of dismay, but because you know
there is so much inequality, people still discriminated against,

what you want is fraternity, you want one fist, and maybe your
hand isn’t yet powerful enough, or maybe you should first take the hand
of another in reconciliation, you actively need to feel the hope that
you are doing something to improve the world, though you mustn’t
forget this: stand up again after kneeling and straighten together our backs.


Anyway. Here we go again. All the best to you, Julie.