HABIB TENGOUR

Hesitation: Five Poems

Translated from the French by Will Harris and Delaina Haslam


Hésitation

La parole
Parle avec le temps
Son temps de parole

Émergence d’un visage Une étendue
Ce qui manque ?

Parole parlant au corps
Exprimant sa présence dans une langue remmaillée
Le trait traverse la voûte

Le coloris
Par la suite rehausse le regard

Invite à converser / Contemplation

Mis en garde les mots ne viennent pas
Des intonations Des silences

Tu n’es pas là pour forcer une frontière.


Hesitation

Speech
Speaks over time
It has a speaking time

Emergence of a face A scope
What is missing?

Speech speaking to the body
Expressing presence in a repaired tongue
The line spans the vault

The colouring
Thereafter enhances the look

Invites talk / Contemplation

Warned the words do not come
Intonation Silence

You’re not here to force open a border


Parole

La parole parle le temps d’émerger
Souci flagrant histoire sans paroles
Défaillance dans le sursaut

La main parle au corps un flot
Dans ce corps elle persiste s’ancre
D’un jet traverse l’apparence

Les couleurs ajoutées à la hâte
Agrémentent la caresse
Invitent à goûter

Les mots se retranchent derrière la barricade
Etat d’urgence / parole suspendue
Naturellement

Tu n’es pas là pour heurter la porte


Speech

Speech speaks the time to emerge
Bad anxiety history without words
Failure from the start

The hand speaks to the body a flow
In the body, it persists anchors
In one leap spanning the appearance

Colours added in haste
Embellish the caress
Invite to taste

Words retreat behind the barricade
State of emergency / speech suspended
Of course

You’re not here to beat against the door


Souvenance

Bourrasque à souhait / Arrachement
Toiture résiste au déluge

Ici arbre veille
Ses feuilles persistantes

Je n’aurai pas sombré dans le caniveau
Œil indifférent aux réverbérations du soir

Stratagème s’extirper du dédale
Éviter s’incendier ailes et vaisseaux

Celui-là – sous terre – sans recours

Recollection

Gust at will / Uprooting
Roof withstands the flood

Here tree keeps watch
Its leaves ever green

No I did not sink in the gutter
Eye indifferent to evening’s reflections

Ruse to escape the labyrinth
Avoid burning wings and ships

This one – underground – without recourse


Lamento

Surgie de nulle part
et partout cette voix ô

Peut-être râle dans les grottes du Dahra
au moment où tu traverse le quai de la gare

Artifice du refoulé surimposition d’image
tu ne crois plus aux revenants

Cadenassé dans ta chair tu avances
à mille pattes

Mise en scène au cordeau
les gosiers se posent sur le fil du rasoir

Intense l’éclat des visages déchirés par le texte

Atermoiement du discours

Lament

Out of nowhere
and everywhere this voice O

Perhaps a groan in the Dahra caves
as you cross the station platform

Trick of the repressed, image superimposed
you no longer believe in ghosts

Chained in your flesh you crawl
hundred-legged beast

Careful staging
throats poised on the razor’s edge

Intense shine of faces breached by the text

Speech postponed


Proscription

Exil n’est plus coloquinte sous la dent
Anomalie sur formica
Dans l’arrière-salle d’un boui-boui emmitouflé

Personne ne s’attache comme autrefois

Ni pitié ni regret mauvais sang
Chacun mène sa barque, dit l’adage
Comme il peut

Comme le veut son étoile / Y a-t-il étoile pour tous

Trouver des mots d’accueil   / pas escorte d’apparat
Des mots débarrassés d’effroi     / ni d’ordre ni demi
Des mots que la voix porte par tous les temps

Les quais encombrés des fantômes d’Octobre

Banishment

Exile is no longer biting on bitter gourd
Anomaly on formica
In some shack’s back room muffled

No one’s attached like before

Neither pity nor regret bad blood
We each steer our boat, goes the saying
As best we can

According to our stars         / Are there stars for everyone

Finding words of welcome   / not a majestic escort
Words stripped of terror   / neither watched nor implied
Words the voice carries come rain or shine

The docks are crowded with ghosts of October


Taken from Consolatio (published in the World Poet Series by The Poetry Translation Centre, 2022)


Habib Tengour is one of the leading visionary writers of post-colonial Algeria. Rooted in Maghribi cultural identity and memory, his poems consider the experience of exile in a voice that is by turns unsentimental and surreal. He is one of a group of Algerian writers who choose to write in French, but the long heritage of Arabic and Imazighen poetries reverberates through his work alongside the voices of the storytellers of his childhood and the urgent ‘desire-scream’ of raï music. Tengour is a prolific writer of both poetry and prose, and his work has been translated into a number of languages and is celebrated worldwide. This collection features poems from his most recent collection - as yet unpublished in French - with its mix of playful poem-puzzles and longer prose poems reflecting on forms of loss, and includes an afterword by Shash Trevett.

After studying English, French, and journalism, Delaina Haslam worked in writing and editing roles in Madrid and then London. Missing languages, she retrained and passed the Diploma in Translation. She specialises in sociology and translates for French academic journals. She took part in the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School in 2016, which led to invaluable collaborations including a series of Poetry Translation Centre workshops on francophone African poets and participation in Newcastle University's Poettrio Experiment. She translated a story by Guatemala's Alan Mills (from Spanish) for the Hay Festival Bogatá 39 anthology, but this collection is her first full literary work. She’s interested in collaborative and performative translation, and has written for the Glasgow Review of Books, the Poetry Translation Centre, and Yorkshire Translators and Interpreters. She is also working on a creative nonfiction novel. She lives in Sheffield with her partner and son.

Will Harris is a London-based writer and editor. His debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) was a Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book of poems, Brother Poem, will be published by Granta in 2023.