The subjunctive

Learning Spanish involved getting to grips with the subjunctive. For instance, cuando vas and cuando vayas are two very different animals. Both might well be translated into English as when you go, but the indicative would imply habitual action, whereas the subjunctive would suggest potential consequence, the former followed in English by the present tense, the latter by the future, as in when you go, I'm happy or when you go, I'll be happy.

This understanding of the building blocks of another language then fed back into my view of English. Once I recognised that the it's a syntactic way of expressing what might happen or what might have happened, I also realised that the subjunctive mood is an integral part of any poem in any language, whether it's invoked explicitly or not. And thus my view of poetry also shifted. The counterpoint of bilingualism is always enlightening.

How Spain improved my English

The title for this post is a direct allusion to Tim Parks' recent article for The New York Review of Books, titled How Italy improved my English. In his article, Parks asks the following question:

"..what about those writers who move to another country and do not change language, who continue to write in their mother tongue many years after it has ceased to be the language of daily conversation?"

For me, this was what drove me into poetry's arms. I dabbled in verse at college and university, but wrote more drama than any other genre, as my first love was the spoken word. Of course, once I left the U.K. and moved to a non-English-speaking environment, my feel for dialogue soon became weaker. Moreover, there was no one to whom I could voice my thoughts in my native tongue. Poems became my outlet.

As the above-mentioned feature develops, Parks discusses the advantages and drawbacks of such a life of linguistic, social and cultural immersion in another country, mentioning the examples of others and recounting his own experiences. Having lived through a decade of only speaking proper English once a week in an expensive telephone call home, I understand how he feels, while I also learnt an awful lot about English by comparing its mechanics to those of Spanish.

Furthermore, I''ve also found my life turned upside down, and for the better, by the technological changes that he describes in the extract below

"All in all, I feel immensely lucky to have gone to Italy when I did and experienced for a decade or so the relative linguistic isolation that made me focus so intensely on language, writing, and translation. But equally lucky to be able to send this piece to New York by email, and to be part of that now global community that shares its thoughts, on literature and other matters, online, regardless of where we live."

E-mail, Skype and the internet transformed my poetic life and ended my isolation just at the right time for me to reconnect, save my native language from any deterioration and feel part of an English-speaking community once more. I too am incredibly fortunate to have lived through a unique period that has enabled me to experience both old-fashioned and new-style expatriation and immersion. It's fashioned me as a poet.

Miranda Warning, bilingual pop from Elche

I've posted on a couple of occasions in the past about the relative merits of pop in English and Spanish. Well, Miranda Warning, a group from Elche in Spain, provide an ideal point of comparison.

They recorded a number of their tracks both in English and Spanish with the added benefit of having an English graduate who'd lived in the U.S. (Lucía Martínez) as their lead singer. This means that they didn't just throw together dodgy translations. Instead, two versions were created of songs. Perhaps the best example (and my personal favourite) is Despierta/Wake Up. Here it is firstly in English and then in Spanish. The remarks below the videos are unusually worthwhile, as listeners express their linguistic preferences. There's a fair old difference of opinion!

Sheenagh Pugh on writers and displacement

Sheenagh Pugh has posted a thought-provoking article about writers and displacement on her blog. I very much recommend you read the full version here, but I was especially drawn to the following remark:

"...the writers who fascinate me do not have a sense of place so much as a sense of displacement..."

And on certain former students:

"...they observed the place where they now lived differently; they noticed and highlighted things that for a native-born poet might not have stood out, and over and over, their sense of the place where they were was informed by their equally keen sense of that other place where they had once been, but now were not..."

This ties in with my own feelings. The experience of living in a foreign country, immersed in the local language, culture and society, forms the core of my work. Not only does my background as a Brit inform my view of Spain, but my perspective of Britain is also conditioned by Iberia's counterpoint. I've learned how foreigners see my own place of birth, what surprises them, what they value and disdain both of the U.K. and their own homeland. I consciously and unconsciously sift through these angles, contrasting and comparing them, and I'm convinced they enrich my writing.

What's more, if we're talking about an enriching process, the learning of a second language to bilingual standard very much enlightens the use of a native language. My understanding of English has deepened thanks to having been surrounded by Spanish for the last sixteen years. My greater knowledge of the effect of words has played a key role in the development of my poetry.

Many thanks to Sheenagh for posting her article - it certainly got me thinking!

Bilingual Borges

I'm grateful to Kathy Bell for posting a link on Facebook to a fascinating resource that can be found here. It's the audio recording of Jorge Luis Borges' Norton lectures in 1967-68.

I very much recommend a listen, but with a decent pinch of salt: Borges is always provocative, especially in articles, lectures and interviews. He loves playing games, juxtaposing contradictory statements or leading us down blind alleys. They are his ways of challenging us, reflecting his view of the everyday as a labyrinth that he then extends into art. Critics and students of his work often snatch at some quote that seems to sum him up, quite forgetting how easy it is to find him apparently stating the opposite elsewhere. In other words, he's more of a stirrer than a teacher.

In this specific case, these audio files are also particularly interesting as a record of Borges' command of English. His bilingualism is a powerful element in his work - both Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon influences converge in Borges.

When he writes in Spanish, I'm very aware of English-language lexical structures and devices running through his syntax. When listening to his Norton lectures, I can feel Spanish-led thought feeding into how he expresses himself. This duality lends an extra texture and freshness to Borges' use of language, playing a significant role in making him so unique. Instead of diluting his command of language, Borges' bilingualism adds immeasurably to his writing.

A second language

I'm grateful to Katy Evans-Bush over at the Poets On Fire forum for pointing me towards Don Share's recent post about bilingual poets in which he quotes Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill on this issue. She invokes inner war, displacement, anxiety, psychic pain, etc, etc...

My own experience is very different. I's important to start by clarifying terms: I'm not bilingual and never will be, in spite of spending fifteen years in a small Spanish town where I've been the only native English speaker for much of that time. I can't be, even though my Spanish is perfect, simply because I wasn't brought up as such. However, my immersion in a second language has led to a heightened awareness of nuances in English. Spanish has cast new light on the way English works, its nuts and bolts, its socio-cultual connotations, its means of expression. All this has made a huge contribution to my poetry.

My son, meanwhile, is completely bilingual. Again, clarification is useful at this stage. He's not just the son of an English bloke - he's as at home in English as he is in Spanish. The two languages complement each other and have never caused conflicts for him. He's simply more aware of his identity than most kids of his age. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's plight seems to have more to do with her specific situation than with bilingualism in general.

Immersion in two languages, through bilingualism or second language acquisition, has the power to strengthen rather than dilute. The more counterpoints we have in life and poetry, the richer our perspectives become.