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10 Questions for Marissa Davis


This morning, something in my doubt dissolves.
The footprint or the transparency of floors.
The wells open up. Sometimes, the wells close again.
The added materials haven’t allowed the decision anything.
Footsteps must swell, take up bone. The wells must rise.
from Marissa Davis' translation of Stéphanie Ferrat's "Skyside" Volume 65, Issue 3 (Fall 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Technically, one of the first pieces I translated was my own! Before I began translating others’ work, I would sometimes translate my own poems into French and back into English as a combined revision (of the poem) and vocabulary-building (of my French) exercise. I first began translating in the more usual sense of the word, though, the work of Bulgarian poet (writing in French) Aksinia Mihaylova. I fell upon her first book, Ciel à Perdre, in a library in Paris and was enchanted by it. I’ve been working my way through translating the entire collection since then. I believe the first poem I translated from that book was “Passing Through a Closed Door”—a short poem, but one whose process introduced me to the first time to the multitude of questions and decisions that the act of translation implies, and, in doing so, gave me that first necessary rupture with the word-to-word and leap into translation as a creative practice in its own right.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Many, many—and across ages, places, and genres. In poetry, Aracelis Girmay, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Nikky Finney were some of my first inspirations, and I would later become acquainted with Danez Smith, Donika Kelly, Marie Howe, and Louise Glück. More recently, as I have begun seeking ways to loosen myself from my attachment to narrative and play more with the power of highly lyrical, and even surreal, language, Aimé Césaire, René Char, Etel Adnan, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Dionne Brand have been crucial guides for me.

In prose, Toni Morrison was my very first guiding light. In France, I discovered the work of Hélène Cixous, whose work tends to defy categorizations of genre in ways that are exciting and illuminating. Reading Cixous’s literary criticism introduced me to the works of Clarice Lispector, whose Agua Viva is a work I return to as almost a kind of Bible.

What other professions have you worked in?
Also too many to count! I’ve written questions for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam; taught elementary schoolers English in France; worked in NYC as an intern at a literary agency and then as an editorial assistant at a publishing house; taught undergrad creative writing; and I currently work in a combined editing and content creation role with a company that helps students get into medical school. I’ve nearly always staying in the world of language and literature, but I’ve tackled it from what feels like nearly every possible end.

What did you want to be when you were young?
As a child, I also wanted to be a writer, but a novelist—I was obsessed with Tamora Pierce’s fantasy series and wanted to write my own in the same vein (whose chapters are now lost on some ill-fated floppy disk). For a time in high school, I was interested in being a psychiatrist, as I felt that there was a link in it to the literary studies that I loved so much: interacting with someone’s life narrative, analyzing it with care, but then also using that analysis to help someone work through their challenges. I didn’t want to have to take chemistry in college, though, so I ended up just studying Literature!

What drew you to write a translation of this piece in particular?
I stumbled upon Stéphanie Ferrat’s book Skyside at a poetry fair in Paris many years ago, when I was working here as a teacher. I fell in love with it almost instantly. The form was the first thing that captured me—it’s like reading someone’s undated diary entries, and it continually shifts between and collages observation, introspection, and the interplay between the two that makes artmaking possible (Ferrat is a visual artist as well as a poet). On top of that, the sort of surrealism-tinged, associative language that she crafts—while complicated sometimes to translate, since it relies so much on interpretation—mesmerized me. I wanted readers in my native tongue to be able to immerse themselves in the uniqueness and experimentation of Ferrat’s writing just as I had.

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
In my own poetry, my home in Kentucky looms large. In some ways, it feels both real and imagined; an actual space refracted through memory’s water. I grew up in the county outside of Paducah, Kentucky, and the natural environment surrounding the house in which I grew up—which sits right on the edge of the woods, technically, but becomes a sort of liminal space the moment any coyote, beaver, or river otter slinks through it—fills the scenes of my poetry and often feeds its metaphors.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
I don’t know if I would call it a ritual, per se, but I do typically devote myself first to reading. Granted, when I’m writing a new poem, it’s often very spontaneous; but when I’m revising, I’ll intentionally set aside a few days where I simply read books of poetry—some beloved favorites and some new—before I sit down and begin reconfiguring my own work.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I’m in love with music. I’ve been part of community choirs for some time, but I also began taking piano lessons last year and more recently started harp. I’m not as well-versed in music theory as I’d like to be, and I read music at the speed of a tortoise, but it’s something I’m very excited to continue learning and improving on—and it would definitely be the other art form I’d work in if I knew it more deeply. I’d also really love to dive into dance, which I’ve pursued on and off (with great passion and very little talent) over the years as well.

What are you working on currently?
The end of this summer was a whirlwind of moving countries, beginning graduate school, apartment hunting, apartment furnishing (in France, “unfurnished” means it truly comes with nothing but the walls), an extended illness, and what feels like one thousand other things, so the first weeks of fall have been primarily just settling in. Now that my day-to-day is (finally!) more stabilized, I’ve made a point of making a bit of time every day for some reading, even if it’s only for half an hour before bed. Otherwise, I’m currently studying in a Master in Translation at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and have been loving diving into the subject beyond the classwork—whether that means reading my professors’ publications on translation theory or just perusing books and articles in French and Spanish as a vocabulary booster.

What are you reading right now?
I’m going back and forth between a novel, Du côté de chez Swann by Marcel Proust (the first volume of In Search of Lost Time), and a biography of the Black Communist activist Claudia Jones, Left of Karl Marx by Carole Boyce Davies. I also came across some talk a few days ago about Fredric Jameson’s new The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present and have been reading through the Kindle sample. I’ll very likely be adding that one to my list once I’ve finished one of the others. I’m also taking advantage of being a student again by auditing a Spanish Literature course focused on contemporary Spanish-language short stories. Short stories are a form I don’t read very often, so it’s been a lot of fun having the chance to dive into a new one each week.

 


MARISSA DAVIS is a poet and translator from Paducah, Kentucky. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Narrative, and Best New Poets, among other journals. Her translations are published or forthcoming in New England Review, Mid American Review, The Common, Rhino, American Chordata, Northwestern Review, and The Offing. Davis holds an MFA from New York University, and she was a 2023 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Fellow.


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