Frustrations

The one thing I find that I really miss by doing this course MA creative writing is getting to talk about Norwegian authors that I like and admire, I miss having them as part of the education, having them as examples to inspire me. In our “classes” lots of literature is used as examples and inspiration by the lecturers, and very often this literature is referred to as if it was obvious that everybody in the room would know of it – and quite often I find that I don’t. I guess my fellow students have learnt about this literature in school, or just simply have learned about it from growing up in a country where it is part of their national heritage.

There is certainly a lot of Norwegian authors as well that I don’t know and have never read simply because I tend to read literature I already know that I’ll enjoy; fantasy and sci-fi, and there’s limited market for these kind of writers in Norwegian. Even so, there are plenty of Norwegian authors that I think are excellent and some of them are even translated into English: Lars Saabye Christensen – The Half Brother, Erik Fosnes Hansen – Psalm at journey’s end, Erlend Loe – Naïve Super, Jostein Gaarder – Sofie’s world.

Then there are some of my favourite poets, I don’t read that much poetry, but from time to time I’ll find poets who amuse me and I tend to stick to those: Odd Börretzen, Jan Erik Vold and a local writer from Solör; Björnar Sömoen – and they’re such excellent poets and I’d really like to be in a group like the one I’m in now and be able to discuss and talk about their work, but as far as I’ve found they haven’t been translated into English so I can’t.

Some of you might argue that I could translate them myself, well, maybe, if I spent really a lot of time working on it I might be able to, but I haven’t got the time. Translating a poem from one language to another I think must be even harder than translating a short story or a novel, because to keep the rhythm, the intention, the feel, the emotion, the images, everything that a poem brings to you – to do it justice in the translation process you’ll have to adopt it like your own poem and work at it, editing and editing till you find just the right words to convey the “thing” that the writer had in this poem when writing it in his language.

Today I’ve been listening to Odd Börretzen song-reading his own poems and he is such an excellent poet, and so amusing, and so deep in meaning – I would have loved to share this experience with my fellow students, but I can’t and that’s frustrating.

And of course it is frustrating when I work on my novel or on short stories and I can’t find the right words. I can find words that have got the same meaning as that I’m thinking about, but I still know it’s just not the right word – and that’s the problem of not being a native speaker of English, my vocabulary is too small, yet….. I know this will get better and I have bought a thesaurus to help me, but still I sometimes get so frustrated I just want to scream, in Norwegian!!!

Still, I love doing this course though, and as I have my frustrations mainly because I’m not a native English speaker, I’m sure my fellow students have other things about doing this course that frustrates them. I guess if it had been just very simple and easy all the time, if it hadn’t been such a challenge to do this – then it also would not have been as fun and inspiring as I find that it really is.