Now, after some volunteer management, some Spoon River Anthology organising and many, many phone calls, we are halfway through the festival, and suddenly it strikes me . . . What am I to do with my life when that moment of bittersweet goodbye arrives on June 19th? Luckily for me that moment is still far away and I am enjoying every minute of the festival.

The poets seem to be having a nice time as well here in Holland. Trips to Kinderdijk and Delft have already been made and the Hidden Garden project was a wonderful way for the performing and non-performing poets to get to know the city. Much admiration goes out to Mr. Ledo Ivo, who walked the whole day and seemed to have a wonderful time. Mr. Ivo is becoming a festival favorite among the personnel because of his high spirits and enthusiasm at age 86.

I am very proud of this festival’s volunteer team who show up in the same very good mood every day and provide a lovely lunch, hand out information and guide the audience into the auditoria. Also I would like to point out our drivers who pick up the poets from the airport and make sure that they arrive safely in Rotterdam. It’s easy to take all of them for granted but all these volunteers make sure that our organisation continues to run smoothly. They are the backbone of our festival.

My phone rings. A volunteer tells me a festival guest has arrived safely. Did I already mention the importance of volunteers?

My most useful information about bilingualism was drawn not from “second language acquisition” literature but from a famous Soviet spy mini-series about the adventures of the double-agent Isaev working undercover as SS officer Shtirlits in the upper echelons of the Nazi high command during the last months of WWII. Here is the scene that I have in mind. Shtirlits comes to see his Russian agent Katia, my namesake, who is also located in Berlin. It’s a very poignant moment, because she is very pregnant. “You probably understand that you’ll be delivering at home,” Shtirlits says. “Why?” she asks, her German being as good as her Russian, she cannot think of any reasons why she couldn’t go to the hospital. “My German is all right. I speak without any accent.”

“Your German is indeed all right! But when in pain you’ll be screaming in Russian, dear child!” he says with a sigh.

That’s it. And that is exactly what all of us, bilingual people, need to know. The second language as well adopted won’t be the one we’ll be screaming in when in pain.

Here’s the proof. On the third day of the Rotterdam Poetry Festival, I decided to go to see Amsterdam in the morning. I’m not a big traveler, to say the least. On the day I was a bit nervous. Having a map and two sandwiches in my bag pack I left the hotel lobby braving my way to the Central Station. It took me a while till I found it though Lucy Pijnenburg, a festival coordinator, had spent minimum an hour giving me very detailed directions. Cunningly hidden between fences, cranes, working excavators, Central Station looked extremely agitated which added to my mood. As I walked toward it, people in bright orange t-shirts, orange hats, orange wigs, orange everything poured from all entances. On their chests were orange garlands and they were blowing orange horns. “Who are these folks and why are they dressed like that?” I asked myself, as I was beating my way through the crowds. Then a strange thing happened which increased my panic. I asked a couple of passers-by to show me where a ticket booth was and found out that nobody knew what I was talking about. Orange people looked at me and shrugged shoulders. Just yesterday everything was fine. Precious time was lost, my train left, I was still there wondering what might have possibly happened during one night that made Dutch people forget English. Somebody put a garland on my neck and placed a triangular hat on my head. In my new triangular hat I went out for a smoke and boom . . . it all became clear to me. All the time I was there I was speaking Russian, no wonder nobody knew what I wanted. “So what’s going on with all these orange costumes,” I asked a woman. She groped for words: “Denmark . . . Holland . . . A soccer game!”

Here is what I think about it now. It’s not only excruciating pain but isolation too that can burn an otherwise reliable second thesaurus that we keep in our brain, leaving in its spot an orange smoke. After I underwent a ten minute loss of bilingualism I thought: “It’s great that Rotterdam Poetry Festival brings together poets from all over the world and make them talk to each other. Not always but sometimes poetry is a soccer game of its kind, and as any game it needs other players.” Anyway, I didn’t go to Amsterdam. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good day for a trip.

I found his poetry exciting. His subject matter sometimes took me to places I had rarely been: Egyptology, for example, in ‘Complaint of a Shrewmouse (Mummified)’. Most of the poems selected were quite intimate, concerning familial relationships and love. However, the viewpoint of his characters often proves startling (the shrewmouse v. the falcon) or puzzling (‘Caravan of Salt’) if you are not aware of the poet’s thinking behind it. However, even he could not always provide adequate assistance when I queried his work. It is an example of further research that I wish to discuss here, on this forum provided by the Poetry International team.

It concerns a term used in the short prose extract from his novel Gran Café Boulevard. ‘Sprotbuiker’ is a nickname used to describe someone from Roelofarendsveen, Lieske told me, but he didn’t know where the term originated. So I asked some fellow translators what to do with it. One said to leave it out altogether, another to translate it literally, and another still to substitute it with a nickname of my own making. All agreed that ‘sprot’ meant ‘sprat’, a fish used as bait to catch mackerel. As the town is close to water, that would corroborate that theory. ‘Spratbelly’ would then be an adequate translation. Someone with his belly full of sprat. But, as a translator, I am not easily convinced, so I tapped other sources. I telephoned the local council and they knew of a local historian who could probably tell me more. And it transpired ‘sprot’ had nothing to do with fish, but with French beans, cultivated for centuries in that particular area. Farmers were usually left with an unsold surplus after auction, which instead of destroying, they ate themselves. So, while the ‘sprot’ might not be fish, the farmer and his family still had a bellyful. My sincere gratitude to the local historian, Mr Gerard van der Meer.

Although the word was now explained, this still left me with a translation problem: spratbelly, beanbelly, French beanbelly, whatever the choice would be, it would remain an alien term, as it couldn’t be sourced to a specific locale as was the case in Dutch. So, were the other translators right? Should I have abstained from my amateur sleuthing exercise and chosen a simple, even literal translation instead?

Conferring with the translations editor, we agreed on ‘potbellied’, as that referred to the bellyful without getting into the problems caused by connotations not being easily transferable into an English context.

I’ll be present at the festival all week, sitting in on Lieske’s translation project, so please don’t hesitate to tell me what you think of this solution!

Saskia and I are coordinating the translation workshops during the festival. Under Rosa’s formidable guidance, we are inviting every poet and editor who steps foot on the theatre’s grounds during the festival to participate in translating poems by Carlos López Degregori and/or Tomas Lieske. I’ve been looking forward to this event very much: I love poetry, I love searching for right word, and I am sure I will love the participants (in a professional way – we have been told not to love the poets too much).

However lovely it is to be in an intern at Poetry International – it really is, we’ve been given so much freedom and responsibility – sometimes we get to do true “intern tasks”. Such a task was given to Saskia and me the other day. Could we please pick up an enormous pile of dictionaries at the library? Of course we could, though it’s a miracle I am able to use my fingers to write this after lugging them back.

This trip could have been a pain. It could have just been annoying and tiring. It wasn’t, though. As we were dragging the books along with us, Saskia noticed a big Poetry International stand at the library, with bright festival posters, the red and yellow seeming to burn with fire. The magazines – piles of them – never looked better. And then we noticed the banners. I forgot about my heavy load when I saw the Layla & Madjnun articles. So, there I stood – eye to eye with articles about “my” programme. As I read over the words I myself had written for the magazine (a couple of lines, really), and the words more qualified writers had written for me (about two pages’ worth) – I suddenly realised that other people were actually reading this. Not just Poetry International people, people involved in the programme or the people I have been harassing about it, but also strangeers who are just visiting the library and notice the stand. People who might come to the festival. People who will actually come to the festival. I stood there a little while taking this in. And I looked over and noticed Saskia doing the same.

Saskia was gazing at the Wallace Stevens section of the stand, and we realised we had done a pretty good job. There was only one thing to do. We had to take a picture. So we did. Because we made it. The festival – featuring our programmes – will happen! We can be proud of ourselves. For some reason I can’t remember if we high-fived at that point, but if we didn’t, Sas: high five! In fact, high five to everyone involved in making this festival happen! And if you are reading this, dear blog reader, and you see me running around next week, feel free to throw me a high-five yourself. Oh, and please do participate in the translation workshop so that we didn’t drag those dictionaries around for nothing. It will be lots of fun!