Translator’s Note: The poems from “Erscotz” are versions,respectively, of a lyric by the Comtessa de Dia (fl. 1170s) and of an anonymous 13th-centuryOccitan song whose speaker is an unhappily married woman.  I used thetexts in Songs of the Women Troubadours(eds Bruckner, Shephard, White) to make these adaptations.  Theycarry the broad sense of the originals, with the greatest departure, I think,being in the second stanza of the Comtessa de Dia’s lyric. I am generallyinterested in poetry written in synthetic language or idiolect, but I cannotpretend that I had any systematic method in writing these.  There areprecedents for the analogy between Occitan and Scots – for example,Dorothy L. Sayers translates Sordel’s dialogue into a rather kailyard Scots inher version of the Purgatorio –but since like all analogies it is problematic, and I am not a Scots speaker, Idecided to sidestep the problems by writing in a language that never was spoke.“Gospel from the Waning Middle Ages” emerged from the reflection that I seem toknow a disproportionate number of people who are both early modern literatureand blues geeks.  These are loose translations, carrying the broadsense of Pernette de Guillet and Villon’s originals.  The idiom ofthe Villon translation is a synthetic blues idiom, meant to suggest the koinethat has emerged as the result of the commercialisation and globalisation ofthe music. “Lock” is a version of Paul Celan’s ‘Die Schleuse’, made with thehelp of Michael Hamburger’s and (especially) John Felsteiner’s translations. Itattempts to suggest, with neologism, some of the grammatical complexity ofCelan’s original. The words ‘Kaddish’ and ‘Jiskor’ are not words that I, a non-Jew,could articulate; nor could I embody the loss that is suggested in his‘Schwester’. I have left them as (I hope) respectful ellipses, but I’m far fromcertain that I’m improving on the blank page here.

from,Erscotz