Republic of Georgia Archives

by Maya Sarishvili

Translated by Timothy Kercher and Nene Giorgadze

These rare English translations of the Georgian poet, Maya Sarishvili, come to us through the work of Tim Kercher and his translation partner, Nene Giorgadze. Of Tim’s many translation projects (see another Kercher translation here on NC), I am particularly drawn to Sarishvili’s poems as her work creates a meticulously urgent consciousness—her writing reminds me of the startling humanity of Anna Swir’s poetry mixed with elements of the mysteriously resonate, vulnerable work of Mary Ruefle.

Tim Kercher and I became friends at Vermont College, having survived the famed Lasko pivo, DG-infused Slovenia residency of 2008. Originally from Colorado, Tim currently teaches high school English in Kyiv, Ukraine, his fifth overseas teaching appointment. Tim lived in the Republic of Georgia for the past four years, where he started editing and translating an anthology of contemporary Georgian poetry. His manuscript, “Nobody’s Odyssey,” was recently selected as a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and his poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Quiddity, The Dirty Goat, Poetry International Journal, upstreet, The Minnesota Review, and others.

Co-translator Nene Giorgadze holds an MA in Georgian Literature from Ilia University (Tbilisi, Georgia), has lived in US since 1999, and speaks three languages: Georgian, English, and Russian. She has written poetry and prose since childhood. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Ann Arbor Review, Raleigh Review, Rhino, and others

Maya Sarishvili won the SABA Prize for Poetry, Georgia’s top literature award, for her collection, Microscope, which includes these three poems. She is the author of one other poetry collection, Covering Reality (2001), as well as three radio plays. She lives in Tbilisi, Georgia where she works as a third-grade teacher and is mother to four children, ages 5 to 12. Her work has is forthcoming or has appeared in Crazyhorse, Versal, Nashville Review, Los Angeles Review, Guernica, and others.

What a pleasure it is to grapple with and savor these poems.

-Martin Balgach

[Now, the storm has arrange the insane,]

Now, the storm has arranged the insane,
set down a different order.
Those at the end are children, like rhymes.
A lunatic poem started as a protest.
My smile is thrown down
like a wounded wing
—clumsy me—
I can’t lift it, can’t grip it.
A crowd tramples my lips—
it gets worse in the throng’s midst.
I look up—drops like mini-megaphones.
I chase them down and to each one,
read my poems.
It’s odd. Not a single drop lingers with me.
And I remember the sticky stage
in a packed-out house
where, once upon a time
as a child, I foolishly rose
when my mother was dying
and clumsily climbed up on the table
to make God better hear my prayers…

I met Tim Kercher during the Vermont College of Fine Arts residency in Slovenia in 2008. You can see my photos from that trip here. He was living in Tbilisi, Georgia, at the time (now he and his wife and their brand new twin girls live in Kyiv in Ukraine) and that got me interested in talking to him because I had spent time in Tbilisi in the late 1980s when I toured the old Soviet Union at the invitation of the Soviet Writers Union. Tbilisi was an amazing place–intricate frame buildings, statues of Lermontov, fiery aging writers, all of whom claimed to have been put up against a wall a nearly shot by the Russians, vineyards, immense hospitality, gracious toasts–and my interpreter, Inge Paliani, took me to see Stalin’s mother’s grave. Inge subsequently translated two of my stories and published them for me in a Georgian magazine. So it gives me intense pleasure to finally return the favour and publish a Georgian writer in translation in Numéro Cinq. For a little background see “Conformism and Resistance: The Birth of Modern Georgian Literature,” included here starting on page 7. Georgian is a language spoken by about 4 million people, but these people are proud of their literary heritage. Even Stalin was a poet. They even have their own national epic, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin.

Timothy Kercher is a graduate of VCFA. He now, as I said, makes his home in Kyiv, after spending the previous four years in Georgia, where he was editing and translating an anthology of contemporary Georgian poetry. Originally from Colorado, he teaches high school English and is working in his fifth country overseas—Mongolia, Mexico, and Bosnia being the others. His manuscript Nobody’s Odyssey was recently selected as a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of literary publications, including Atlanta Review, The Dirty Goat, Poetry International Journal, The Evansville Review, upstreet, Guernica, The Minnesota Review and others.

Ani Kopaliani holds a MA in the theory of translation. She is working towards a PhD in the same subject at Tbilisi State University. She was named Best Young Georgian Translator in 2005 and again in 2010. She has published a translation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women, and is currently translating William Faulkner’s Flags in the Dust into Georgian.

Besik Kharanauli‘s The Lame Doll, which was published in Georgia (USSR at the time) in 1971. It was groundbreaking–the first poem to employ free verse (and to have an average “everyman” as persona) in Georgian. It influenced the entire generation of Georgian poets. This is his first complete work translated into English. The Georgian government just nominated Besik for the Nobel Prize, although there’s little chance he’ll win it–this being his only work published in English (a novel of his was recently translated into French and won some awards—my next project is to translate this novel into English). The complete translation of The Lame Doll is going to be published in Turkey by a Georgian press sometime next year. —Timothy Kercher

From THE LAME DOLL

by Besik Kharanauli

translated by Timothy Kercher and Ani Kopaliani

IV. It’s morning. March. February.

Rush hour. Drizzle. Noise.

The kind of weather
where everything you see
or think is stitched with vanity.

It’s neither suburb
nor center, but a midday sun.
If a man isn’t a worker
in a district like this,
he’s a state servant.

An office sign
like a black cloud
hides the sky
and the days go on
bluelessly, tediously.

A tram with a small bell on its neck speeds away.
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