Steve Kowit, who wrote the lovely practice book, In the Palm of Your Hand, says:
"a translitic is a poem 'translated' from a foreign language by paying attention not to the meaning of the word but to their sounds. The poet uses as a guide whatever homonymic associations come to mind."
I would add that, in the case of a language not based on a western alphabet (such as Japanese), the poet might look at the shape of the words, what they appear to be "doing" in relation to each other.
Look at this poem by Carsten René Nielsen http://www.fishousepoems.org/?p=5334. See what the language suggests to you and write your own poem from these associations. Reading the poem aloud to yourself (don't worry about pronouncing it correctly!) helps.
It's easy to find poems in French and Spanish, of course, but the less familiar you are with a language, the more free your mind will be in translating. Try a poem written in Chinese or the Hebraic alphabet or Farsi. Google the name of any language followed by "poetry" and you'll find dozens of images.
Link of the week: https://www.visualthesaurus.com. It's so much fun just to type in a word and watch a little galaxy form around it.
"a translitic is a poem 'translated' from a foreign language by paying attention not to the meaning of the word but to their sounds. The poet uses as a guide whatever homonymic associations come to mind."
I would add that, in the case of a language not based on a western alphabet (such as Japanese), the poet might look at the shape of the words, what they appear to be "doing" in relation to each other.
Look at this poem by Carsten René Nielsen http://www.fishousepoems.org/?p=5334. See what the language suggests to you and write your own poem from these associations. Reading the poem aloud to yourself (don't worry about pronouncing it correctly!) helps.
It's easy to find poems in French and Spanish, of course, but the less familiar you are with a language, the more free your mind will be in translating. Try a poem written in Chinese or the Hebraic alphabet or Farsi. Google the name of any language followed by "poetry" and you'll find dozens of images.
Link of the week: https://www.visualthesaurus.com. It's so much fun just to type in a word and watch a little galaxy form around it.
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