Beachcomber Magazine 02

Michel Ducasse POETRY EVERYWHERE LA PoéSIE tout ENtIèRE This is a voice which carries well beyond the island of his birth to share with us the here and the elsewhere. To feed this dialogue, the poet has translated some of the world’s great poems into Creole. C’est une voix qui porte au-delà de l’île natale pour mieux partager l’ici et l’ailleurs. Pour nourrir ce dialogue, le poète nous offre la traduction en créole des grands poèmes universels. the words took me by the hand,” saysMichelDucasse inmemoryofLouisAragon. “i was only six when my mother, a great crossword fan, would constantly ask me to look words up in our big Larousse dictionary. Feverishly, i would turn the pages, eagerly looking at the three letters at the topof eachpage, searching for the treasure. that huge book held the whole world.” Itwasalsohismotherwhopassedon herpassionforFrenchsongs.Hedisco- veredBrassens,LéoFerré,Cabrel.“ i was 15 when i discovered Jacques Brel’s album LesMarquises . such emotion as i heard the horizontal rain (la pluie traversière), so typical of the islands. ever since then, i have written poetry. ” LANGUAGES OF THE HEART InMauritius,althoughtheofficiallan- guageisEnglish,“thelanguagesofthe heart”areFrenchandCreole.“ they are not merely mother tongues: they mothered me ,”hesmiles. Theotherlivingsourceistheisland itselfandhischildhoodinGoodlands, inthenorthofthecountry,wherehis parentsopenedachemists’in1965.At thattimeitwasonlyavillage,surroun- dedbyfieldsofcane.Alargepartofthe population,mainlyHindu,workedfor theSaint-Antoinesugarfactory.“ i went to the state school and that is where i learnt to respect others and their diffe- rences – cultural, social, and religious. the Goodlands school taught me the mauritius that i love, multi-level and diverse, tolerant and human. ” AsayoungmanattheRoyalCollegein PortLouis,hefellinlovewiththeEnglish romanticpoets,Keats,Shelley,Blake, andwithShakespeare’splays.From18 to26,hewenttoFrancetostudylite- ratureinNancy,anddiscoveredthe committedworksofRenéChar,Louis Aragon,EugèneGuillevicandmore.SPEAKING WORLDS Formorethanfortyyearsnow,words, languages,andrhythmsweaveinand outinanexquisiteyetdiscreetwork. MichelDucassetakeshistime.There’s nohurry.Agreatwalker,hecontempla- testheinnerlandscapeashewanders along.Hewas39whenhepublishedhis firstcollection,alphabet .Othersfollowed withthesamepatientfervour.In2017, hecomposedenn bouke bwa tanbour : a“bouquet”ofpoemsbyhis“travelling companions”–fromCharlesBaudelaireto EmilyDickinson,JohnKeatsandTagore– whichhetranslatedandtransposedinto Creole,theisland’smothertongue. Thus,forthefirsttime,Rimbaud’sLe dormeur du val returnsas“ afale dan verdir ”;Prévert’s Les enfants qui s’aiment as“ Zanfan lamour ”;victorHugo’s“ bou- quet de houx vert ”becomesabou- BY FANNY RIVA PHOTOGRAPH KARL AHNEE ‘‘ quet oftambourissa–fromthename oftheMauritianendemicplant.“ translation is not just imitation. i keep closely to the form and meaning, but i also add my own personal touch. it means recreating, reinventing, andsome- times transposing the meaning. this collection came frommy desire to share with my people the words of the great poets who made me what i am today, and thus to break down the borders of the imagination. ” KREOL, VITAL AND ALIVE “ to write in creole, MichelDucasse continues,is to invite people to discover a different, more fraternal imaginative world. the language of slaves evolved from French and several african and madagascan languages, in answer to the urgent need to communicate to survive. Long despised, it conceals something fundamentally vital. it continues toevolve with each successive migration, adding words from ancestral languages like hindi, tamil and urdu. alive, forever. ”Towidenthefieldofvision,thepoethas invitedhisoldfriends,thegraphicdesi- gnerPatriceOffmanandthepainter EnnriKums.Thusthe“ bouke ”ofwords hasgrownricherwiththeadditionof Creoleimagesandfriezes,thickpastel drawings,darkanddeep.Inspiredand inspiring,enn bouke bwa tanbour isan eminentlyfraternalact.