Exploring methods of translation, Turnbull asked:
What light can image-making shed on the process of translation from source text to target language? To what extent can an image convey ‘something of the original’, be it material or non-material? By juxtaposing, linking, and representing data can archival holdings be presented in a new and innovative way?
Turnbull first visited the Hughes Archive at Emory University and examined the poet’s working drafts for both their intellectual and material qualities. Making contact with the pages Hughes wrote on, including torn paper fragments of notations, handwritten manuscripts, corrected typescripts, photographs, letters, postcards and final proofs, Turnbull comprehensively examined the archive data for examples of working methods, processes of revision, instances of variant solutions and examples of manifestos and personal statements. Returning to Britain and working with Tara Bergin, the two conducted numerous interviews with poets, translators and Hughes scholars, engaged in the issues of modern poetry in translation with particular reference to the literalness and faithfulness of translated forms.
Referencing these findings, Turnbull then conceived collages and prints that paralleled the ‘aesthetic position’ taken by Hughes. For example, Turnbull made use of over-printing and multi-plate etching to parallel the revisions and re-workings evident in Hughes’ drafts, and placed emphasis on direct description and stark, stripped-down, isolated form through the use of direct and primitive printing techniques such as drypoint and hard-ground etching.
The resulting digital prints, etchings, photographs and collages were collated and exhibited alongside Hughes’ original manuscripts in three solo shows, held at:
Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Atlanta (November 2009- January 2010) Pembroke College, Cambridge as part of the Ted Hughes Society Conference (September 2012) Pázmány University, Budapest as part of the international conference, Modern Poetry in Translation (April 2013).
Following the exhibition at Cambridge, Turnbull was approached by Benjamin Dwyer Professor of Music, Middlesex University and asked to contribute an essay to the book he was editing on artists’ responses to Ted Hughes’ Crow. The book will be published by Carysfort Press, Dublin, in 2014 and includes contributions from a selection of international artists working in different media, including Simon Lee, Johannes Heisig, Gleny Kohnke, Douglas White, Algis Kizys, Kimberly Campanello and Mervyn Miller.
Turnbull’s research for ‘In Translation’ offers an innovative working method in a field of research usually associated with literary studies. It can be seen as a development of his earlier archival research on Russian poetry in translation (e.g. Writers in Exile, at the Vladimir Nabokov Museum, March 2008). Completing the circle, Alan Turnbull has been invited to give a talk and mount a display