Inside “Poetry Inside Out”
by Sara Primo, English Teacher and Writing Center Coordinator at Germantown Friends School
Here are things I happen to love, in no particular order: writing in marker on huge pieces of paper, discovering new poetry, respectfully disputing with peers about word choice, seeing in new ways, convincing teenagers that comma placement matters to them, breaking down walls between cultures, accepting there’s no one easy answer, and realizing there’s an expert in the room I hadn’t planned for.
Incredibly this past November, I got to have that cake and eat it too with lesson plans from an organization called Poetry Inside Out. I was trained in the Poetry Inside Out model this summer during the Philadelphia Writing Project Institute at Penn (free and open to Philadelphia teachers of any grade and subject). Between finishing Frankenstein and starting Macbeth, I was able to spend three days on this with tenth graders.
Here’s the arc of a day of “P.I.O.” work: I first had my students brainstorm their associations with the act of translating. Students generated a lot of good material, as is their custom. They were familiar with the phrase “lost in translation,” and they were sensitive to the idea that translating is risky.
Next, students received a “poetry page,” which included a poem in another language, a photo of the poet (if available), and a bio of the poet. As we listened to each poem read aloud, we decided which words of the poem grabbed us musically or rhythmically even if we don’t speak that language. Day 1 was “Viajantes” by Conceição Lima in Portuguese, Day 2 was “Untitled” by Alda Marini in Italian, and Day 3 was “Angel Island Poem #42” in Chinese.
I know what you’re thinking: can Sara speak Portuguese, Italian, or Chinese? (I can say, “Do you understand Portuguese?” with a very convincing accent, but if the answer is “Yes,” I tragically can’t get any further than that.) This stage was the most fortuitous for me, from a pure coincidence and community-building point of view. With no prior planning, I happened to have a fluent speaker in my class excited to read the poem aloud on each day, who was also willing to be recorded for use in my other class. I had no idea Miguel knew Portuguese or that Chiara spoke perfect Italian. And just as I was turning to my computer to play an audio recording of “Angel Island Poem #42” in Chinese, Charlie stopped me. “I’d be happy to do it!”
As a next step, students broke into pairs to work with the glossary in their packet, which covers all the words in the poem. But the glossary provides no obvious answers; there isn’t just one choice per word, but instead a series of synonyms. This stage is called “Phrase by Phrase.”
And here begins the real work of translating. In one student’s words, the most memorable moment of the three days was “Arguing about if it should be a pigeon or a dove.” Another student will remember “Arguing over the small words (I, the) that actually have huge significance.” I appreciate that students repeatedly used the word “arguing” in their self-reflections because I too felt how the heat had turned up in our room. These decisions mattered. They had begun to feel it for themselves: “Sometimes the punctuation or accents in an original work are just as important as the words themselves.”
In general, the magic moment of the lesson comes when pairs meet up with other pairs, in a stage called “Make it Flow.” This is where students take their literal first attempts and bring some artfulness to it, which often involves extensive explanation and negotiation. When I was the student participating in this over the summer, I found myself outrageously invested in the tiniest choices. “No, we need to keep that dash!” “I don’t think that’s the right preposition!” I consider myself an extreme example of this, as an English teacher and editor-type. But having observed three cycles now as the leader in the room, I find that no matter who you are, there comes a moment when you want to make a case for what you and your partner chose or what you think would be best. And I love watching this urgency and investment develop in unsuspecting participants when they are asked to come to a consensus and write up their group translation on large newsprint.
How did students resolve disagreements?
“We would compare our own ideas/translations and then just either combine them into a new merged line or express our own opinions on why one might not work.”
“We actually often all wanted different things and had to let others have their way.”
“I think it was really interesting how people’s personalities came out. We all worked pretty well when deciding different words and meaning for each line. There were some times when there would be tension between the two groups on the wording but overall it was good.”
“We all had strong opinions of what the poem was about, but we were open to new ideas at the same time.”
“My group had trouble making compromises today because the other half of our group would sometimes go ahead of us.”
“We listened to different reasons for preferences and determined based on reason. It was a respect and listening based environment.”
And I know I’ve already used my quota of superlatives, but there is magic too in the last revelation: when all the groups come back together and post their newsprints on the wall. Every new participant is almost certainly going to have a flash moment of, “What if these are all the same?”… Even I had that flash moment as the teacher. But then we dug in. There were layers of different choices.
In the debrief, students name a decision they were proud of their group for having made and a decision they admired another group for making. Decisions ranged from word choice (for example: “fierce versus ferocious”) to how a poetic device had been used.
“I liked when one group used the word dancing when referring to the bird above the waves.”
“I remember when the usage of the word ‘travelers’ was scattered between the poems in different places, and not always used in the same way, and I liked that.”
“My group made the road speaking in ‘travelers’ whereas others didn’t.”
“I think I enjoyed comparing today’s ‘Flood Dragon’ poems the most because we all made similar decisions (such as naming each one ‘Flood Dragon’) and contrasting ones (some of ours had the tiger imprisoned, others the child).”
“The different choices of words was really fascinating. For the Italian poem, some groups chose to use ‘slit’ instead of ‘cut’, which changed the atmosphere.”
When I myself participated as a student this summer, at the end of our study I furtively googled the poem title to see what the “correct” translation was. Here comes the punch line: there is no one correct answer. This was one of my biggest learning moments of the entire activity. Translation is murky, and therein lies its power and its art. My students say it as well as I was about to:
“Translation is so deeply important and yet it is impossible to translate something ‘right.’ All translations are right but only some are done with a respect for what sounds good.”
“Translation(s) are impossible to get exactly correct.”
“It is hard to translate exactly what you say, but it is possible to convey what you mean.”
“There needs to be an almost perfect balance between the literal and the artistic to recreate the poem.”
“There is a lot of sacrifice and difficult decisions made that sometimes take away the original meaning or add to it.”
“As a translator, you change the spirit of the poem with your interpretation.”
“I think I and those I’ve worked with have become much more efficient at translating and have taken greater liberties with making it (our) own as time has gone on.”
And this turned into a gift that kept giving. My student who’d read the poem for everyone in Italian sent me a long email that night, which said: “I just talked to my mom about the poem we read today, and she’s way more experienced with Italian poems… so she was able to understand a bit more about the poem than I was… My mom and I had a blast analyzing this poem.”
This series of lessons is named with remarkable accuracy. Going through the arc as a participant, I really did feel that I had crawled into the poem and was seeing each poetic choice from the inside. And I didn’t know how I had gotten there. I hadn’t expected to be able to translate Portuguese, but I looked up and had done it, not with ambivalence but with a strange fiery confidence. P.I.O. is a remarkable leveler in that way. It turns quieter students into leaders and talkative students into listeners. It turns teachers into (humbled) students and students into (emboldened) teachers, demonstrating correct pronunciation or giving just the right amount of cultural context to unlock new meaning. It shakes up the group dynamic and revitalizes the actual space of the classroom.
In closing, there are four aspects to Poetry Inside Out that I am most struck by.
1) This activity teaches about conviction, negotiation, and compromise:
“Jude and Emily had a completely different line than we did and when we took parts from each and combined them, it sounded perfect.”
“I liked how we worked in groups in order to determine the best way to make a poem flow. The teamwork was inspiring.”
“I remember when we were translating the Chinese poem and we decided to name it flood dragon instead of river dragon. I wanted ‘river dragon’ but my classmates persuaded me otherwise, and it changed my view of the poem.”
2) This activity celebrates people who have personal insights into their native cultures.
“One memorable moment was when Charlie was able to clarify why their group used ‘I’ and why others used ‘you’.“
“While all other groups interpreted the ‘travelers’ referenced as migrants, Miguel and (his) group interpreted ‘travelers’ to mean colonists. I found that really interesting because it absolutely shapes the meaning of the poem.”
3) This activity fosters attention to detail and appreciation for others:
“The first translation we did of the Portuguese poem, (another) group changed the word ‘grandmother’ to ‘ancestors’ in the last line. They were the only group that did that and it did change the weight of the last line.”
“I liked when Noah compared one poem which referred to the use of ants for torture to another one which portrayed the ants themselves as the torturers. I had never thought of that difference.”
4) And finally, this activity helps students think bigger about the world in which they live:
“I cannot stop thinking how lost in translation others cultures are sometimes.”
“I am thinking about how people from different places misunderstand one another because we are too focused on an exact interpretation of what one another is saying.”
“(I am thinking about) how the Chinese were feeling compressed (at) Angel Island because the poem and its different translations make you want to root for them to make it out.”
“I am now thinking about the troubles that people are (or were) having around the world and I haven’t even really thought about them because I’m stuck in my own bubble.”
Poetry Inside Out is directed by Mark Hauber, based out of the Center for the Art of Translation in San Fransisco. The Philadelphia Writing Project is the direct contact for more information about P.I.O. in Philadelphia.
