The Magog river– Estrie
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Who is she?
I first accepted to translate the poem Oh, River… because of my longstanding friendship with François-Régis. We were colleagues for many years at Vanier College where we both taught in the French Department. When we retired from teaching, we both pursued our artistic interests, François-Régis in photography and myself in writing.
I have published three novels and am now working on a fourth one. I also do translations from French into English and English into French, and from Italian into both languages.
Her involvement in Oh River...
I was familiar with François-Régis’ project having seen his pictures of water and heard the text that accompanied them. I was only too happy to contribute to it.
But this was more than just helping a friend. Translating Adriana Ramponi’s beautiful ode to the river was both a challenge and a joy. When I am dealing with a literary text, especially a poetic one, the important thing, of course, is not only to translate the words, but to convey the style, the mood and the colours of the original. Oh, River… is full of striking images, and images evoke strong emotions and reveal a denser reality behind the words. Hence the challenge : creating equivalent images using words from a different medium, words that conjure up the same vision but also carry the same sounds. And therein lies the joy of writing.
I am grateful to Adriana and François-Régis for letting me be part of their project, and to Dorothée Berryman and Victor Andrés Trelles Turgeon for breathing life into my words.
Bianca Zagolin, February 2012
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His involvement in Oh River...
This is what Michel Smith has to say about his involvement in the project : “Creating the music for Oh, River,Talk to Me, Sing to Me, Restore Me to Life was an adventure and a special challenge. Each musical event is a bottle cast in the wonderful ocean of a text bubbling with images. The combination of the music with unique photographs results in an impressionistic whole that celebrates the past as well as today’s stakes.”
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In addition to co-authoring Oh River... by conceiving and composing its original music, Michel Smith was sound engineer for the voices; he also did the mixing of voices and music for the sound track.
He truly is a ‘one-man-orchestra’.
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I met Adriana Ramponi when I was editing The Latin-American Way of the Cross, a text with paintings by Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, on an original music by Amanda Guerrero. We needed a French version of the project. Adriana and I immediately found ourselves on the same wavelength.
Not long after that, in 2010, Adriana invited me to design a video for a project that was born out of a presentation she had made at an international conference on the subject of water. Her text was accompanied by a series of photographs by Montreal artist François-Régis Fournier, which had in fact been the source of her inspiration. The original music was by musician-composer Michel Smith, also from Montreal.
When I saw the photos and heard the poetic text, I was amazed. Adriana did not know about my own passion for water; she could not imagine that water is my element, or conceive of the sense of fulfillment that I experience when I am in contact with it. I love swimming; I am an amphibian!
The powerful images, whose meaning is enhanced by the text; the music which gives a soul and rhythm to the whole, all these things fed the creative process in me.
I was captivated by the beauty of the photographs and gave free rein to my imagination. I felt the water flowing gently or, at times, gushing forth from the depths of nature : water as the very essence of existence. I immersed myself in it once more to let my inspiration soar. It was wonderful!
I thank the authors for their trust in me and for letting me be part of their team.
Juan Manuel Varni (Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 2012)
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