UBUWEB and Pierre Joris‘ , ‘Homad’
Poethead has always been about books, indeed the idea initially was to share lots of women poets who have gone out of print or are not easily obtainable (save online through Amazon and such places).
The blog came about as a result of an small bequest of books that Marianne Agren Mc Elroy’s daughter had given me as a gift. Marianne was a translator and an artist. Her art books went to students of the visual and her poetry books which included Mirjam Tuominen, Bagryana, Nagy and others , Moore, Ursu, found their way from a small cardboard container to me (along with some press clippings of Marianne’s translations ).
Comes Somebody by Nelly Sachs, trans, Agren Mc Elroy is on the PH site.
I had added to the site some early edits of Plath (along with the re-print Of Ariel , edited by Frieda Hughes and small collections of poems from my own library which include the really hard to get and immensely popular Simone Weil, Irish language women poets and the odd male poet too !!
Another resource (or set thereof) has been online, I read Pierre Joris translations (not frequently enough) – his ‘Nomadics’ and ‘Homad’ sites are amazing for those interested in translation (aramaic/arabic) and UBUWEB. I am adding the links here to those two sites , along with an exhortation : Read and read lots .
Everyone has their own influences, be it the spoken or written word. I deliberately search for visually intense symbolism in the written word , and find it readily in Ethnopoetics.
A lot of online translations can be weak , so those with a strong interest in the poetry should seek out good translations which are coming from a collaborative base (if at all possible). The dissemination of literature through new media resources should be as protected in terms of the author’s meaning using the established conventions and with regard to the intellectual property rights of the authors. There are reams of discussion online about the issue and some discussion on digitisation on Poethead. PEN international has pages on Translation and linguistic rights which I will put in comments.
Chris Murray 
One response to “UBUWEB and ‘Homad’ , Ethnopoetics and Translation”
I found UBUWEB whilst reading Joris BUT the two are unconnected (far as I know) save a mutual interest in translation, and in excellent use of technology to disseminate contemporary poetics.
Joris’ work on Paul Celan’s Ouevre is excellent also. Mostly these can be found through using the search engine in the top right PH column.
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