… generated by recent email exhanges with fellow small print runners…
OFF_ does not beg for mercy or pity, just for being foreign, translated or from far off.
But being an outsider is a reality. Being a migrant is hard work. Being off and apart and against and all that is a reality we choose to confront, without trying to call on it like some disability coupon.
Being an outsider is sometimes posture, sometimes a very painful fact. I think Michael Moran’s book is a wonderful description of the pros and cons of said position.
We’re not against it, never said that, being an outsider by choice is often a wise thing (RIP J.D.S.), but I’d hate to think we’re promoting or wallowing in it.
Poland is far less diverse and cosmopolitan than Britain (our recent trek across it caught that reality on film) but the writers we met on our recent end-to-end journey across Poland were all of the same mind;
- Poland’s a mess, but it’s a mess which feels kin somehow.
- travel interests them, but also puts them off. Everyone’s a traveller today, and it seems those who are out for stories instead of stamps look for them on their own doorstep.
- they are all a-typically E.European. Politics, religion, history, heroism, conventional narrative, fame, etc, really do not seem to interest them. They want to be semi-obscure, they do not want to tackle big themes, they are navel gazing and every so often seeing wonders there and god bless that point of view.
- the idea of poet as sage/national saviour (a very Slavic thing) is so irrelevant to them as to be non-existent. Poland really does seem to be free for the first time in a very long while, if not first ever, and they are exercising their freedom to not be post-modern, not post-existential, not pop or anything – they really are shooting straight from their own hearts.
- they are painfully aware of the cliquey nature of the lit scene in Poland, especially the poets. They like the idea that we choose writers on merit, not because we know them or friends of friends of friends. Translations are a way of opening their work up to a “free market competition” kind of test. Doesn’t matter who you studied under or how many obscure literary prizes you’ve won – the readers of the world will not care where you’re from or how young/old. Do your words work for them is the only test.
- the very act of offering them this new window on the world seems to inject them with new energy – there is a world out there beyond NIKE and EMPIK, thanks to NEW and OFF_, and that in itself is influencing what/how they write. The fact that someone is offering to translate and send their words out wide makes them take their craft that little bit more seriously – quantum phenomena on a literary level.
OFF_ is not off because we want to be niche, and I think everything we’ve ever set out to do is proof of that – no, writing has always been an outsider’s game, more so than most other arts (still no academies or X-Factor type TV shows for us) and there’s no point kidding ourselves otherwise. We hope one day to discover a Conrad or a Stasiuk, but with multimedia processes and devices taking over, that’s going to be harder than ever.
Still, two things are for certain;
1) we must keep tough reins on quality – that is one legacy which will outlive all, including battery powered devices
2) we intend to engage and satisfy both ends of the spectrum – the Establishment and the Extremes, the big and small, the new and old, the deciding factor always being = is your story worth writing twice, in more tongues than your own?
If we stay niche-forever, at least the effort will have been worth it. If glory comes and tries to get under our skirts, we’ll fuck both feet firmly on t.firma.
OFF_ and out.
marek@off-press.org
