MIRRORS: The Aborigine Poetry of Eldred Van-Ooy
MIRRORS: The Aborigine Poetry of Eldred Van-Ooy by Justin M. Spring
English | Dec. 20, 2016 | ISBN: 1535358831 | 18 Pages | PDF | 0.16 MB
English | Dec. 20, 2016 | ISBN: 1535358831 | 18 Pages | PDF | 0.16 MB
A memoir of the discovery and translation of the pidgin poems of aborigine Eldred Van-Ooy. These translations from Melanisian pidgin (Tok Pisin) are selections from twelve poems written by the Australian aborigine Eldred Van-Ooy. The poems were published by Van-Ooy as a multi-page advertisement in a socialist Brisbane paper, The Worker, on January 27, 1960—although the poems themselves are all dated as being written in January 1939. Of the twelve poems, I have translated only four: Dreamtime, Naming Things, Homecoming and I'm Tired. Although the others are often quite cleverly constructed, given the incredible limitations of Tok Pisin, they border dangerously on doggerel. I cannot explain this apparent discrepancy in quality. For the curious, I have translated one of them, Nambartu Meri, at the end of this Foreword.