Four Poems

DJ Huppatz — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:50:02 +0000

These poems are from the series “Book of Poem”, written between 2002 and
2004. The source material was Japanese- or Chinese-English, and for some
time I was fascinated with mis-translations or literal translations found on
Japanese or Chinese packaging, t-shirts or instruction manuals. This
“mangled” English, though far from “correct” grammatically, seemed to me to
be inherently poetic in its expression of an intended meaning as well as
unintended meanings. Initially, I patched together found phrases but once I
got a feel for the syntax and the kind of words to use, I found I could also
compose my own phrases. As well as the humour produced by such
mis-translated language, I was attracted to the close relationship between
this awkward English and the (traditionally unpoetic) realm of consumerism.
Re-reading these poems, I still find the oscillation between sweet sincerity
and vaccuous spin disturbing. I bet a good Starbucks espresso would fix
that.

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Four Poems