On Poetics

There are some good things in the life of a translator, and some bad. This is about the bad.

Now, Blue Duck confesses to having quite a stash of mercifully unpublished poetry under her bed (including such classics as "Duck-Duck the Duck" and "Ode to Linguistics"). Let it not be said that the Duck hates poetry. What she does hate, however, is TRANSLATING poetry. Especially really fancy-pants poetry that rhymes internally and alliterates perfectly and uses lots of words have never once graced the face of a dictionary. And Icelandic is a language reknowned for its internally-rhymed, perfectly-allierating, word-innovating poems. So much so, that authors of completely unrelated texts (say, the biographies of farming pioneers), often find it irresistable to throw in at least five or six stirring stanzas into the mix. All rhyming and alliterating, of course. Which is all well and good - until someone has to say the same thing in Cantonese or Greek or English.

It is. Simply. Wrong.

So Blue Duck urges all you poets out there - be responsible with your rhymes!


(The Duck vehimently disassociates herself with this image)

Of skyr and knitted skirts

Once, I had the Perfect Day.

I know because I remember thinking at the very end of it, "This was the Perfect Day - I don't want ever to forget this, ever!"

I don't remember a single thing that happened on the Perfect Day. All I remember is remembering that it existed.

Last Friday was a version of the Perfect Day: the Incredible Day. The day when you run into someone you haven't seen in years getting out of the bus (the stop you never get off at except today, when you are hungry and crave a grocery store), another such someone going to the movies. You run into people you weren't expecting because they head through doors at the same time as you, and the people you were expecting show up, too. Probability explodes in a shower of brilliantly confused fireworks. And you don't mind at all, because today, everything feels - well - pre-planned. Nothing that happens on this kind of day is your own idea, and it all seems to work so much better for it.

And at the very end of this very Incredible Day, you end up (unintentionally, of course) in a bookstore line-up just after midnight with a beautiful, shiny copy of Half Blood Prince clutched in your arms.

YAAAAAAAAAAY!

* * * *

But on to the skyr. Skyr (for those of you not lucky enough to know what it is) is the National Dairy Product of Iceland. And unlike all the other National Foods of Iceland, this one is actually edible. Tasty, even. Addictive, really. Sort of like yogurt, except thicker. And bacteriologically, more of a cheese.

But one does not have to go all the way to Iceland to experience the irresistable wholesomeness of skyr. Luckily for Manitobans, there are some more local skyr-makers hanging out in the province, in that hotspot of New Icelandic Culture known as Arborg. Blue Duck went there last week with her mother on a rúllupylsa-getting road-trip and happened upon the skyr in Palsson's Fine Foods, Downtown Arborg.

Unlike most of the skyr now made in Iceland, which is factory-brewed, Manitoba skyr is home-grown, old-school stuff. Comes in one flavour: plain. No sugar, passion-fruit or fancy packaging in sight. This is real skyr. And amazingly for something to come out of a town of barely more than 1000 inhabitants, it just happens to be the best skyr that Blue Duck has ever had. Especially when mixed with a little yogurt and strawberry jam.... Skyr.is will never be the same.

* * * *

And now... if you are still reading.... THE KNITTED SKIRT!

Yes, rumours are true. Blue Duck has at last branched out from knitting hats, cats and sushi to making Major Items of Clothing. She was going to finish her Icelandic Hat of Doom first, but after discovering that no matter how long she glared at it, it never seemed to get any more than 3 cm, she decided that it had probably been cursed by Lord Voldemort and is impatiently awaiting the arrival of Book 7 to finally finish it.

Duck goes Folk

It was billed, in a rare case of truth in advertising, as a luxurious spa/mud-bath within convenient driving distance of the city. The mud-bath formerly known as the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

With all the general wetness in the province of Manitoba these days, it was no surprise that Bird's Hill Park, by nature of its being a part of this province, was a soppy mess even before the party got started. Add hundreds of thousands of Folkie footsteps and the equation invariably turns to mud. But a little dirt and water is not a thing to scare away a duck, and so Blue and her sister (Monkey Duck) decided to make the trip out of the city for the day to get hippy with it.

Which is how they ended up waiting at a random bus stop in the middle of nowhere at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. In a series of events nothing short of miraculous, they did NOT miss their bus, they realized that they had NOT NOT missed their bus in time to not be making a foolish attempt to manually walk it to the next bus stop, and actually noticed the Folk Festival bus stop as they passed it by instead of gettting off at the wrong stop as they had previously intended.

Little Blue learned today that it is very easy to spot a Folk Festival bus stop. Just look for all the people in tie-dyed sarongs carrying beach chairs.

So. That was the hard part. The fun part was everything that came after. Excluding the eternal bus ride in the convection oven disguised as a bus, perhaps. The fun part? That was being, from morning until afternoon, surrounded by noise. Guitars, fiddles, violins, drums, digeridoos, hurdy-gurdies, pennywhistles, water taps, mini-cart wheels and ten thousand voices. Music - anywhere, everywhere you went.

And then, of course, the abundant opportunity to personally test the healing properties of Manitoba mud on one's feet.

The Truth Down Under

When people imagine Australians, they usually imagine sane, normal people. Admittedly, these sane, normal people do happen to be wearing strange hats with corks dangling off them and have boomerangs tucked into their belts as they walk their pet koalas down the streets - but nonetheless, deep down, normal.

How little the rest of the world suspects.

It all started on Canada Day. It was then that the Aussies brought their previously undercover burger warfare onto the streets. The street of Osborne, to be precise, for it was there that these kangaroo-huggers had just opened Winnipeg's newest dining hotspot and propaganda centre, Billabong.

On July 1st, they came out onto the sidewalk. With hamburgers.

Who would have thought that Australians, in the dark privacy of their homes, put beets on their burgers? Along with egg, pineapple, bacon, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomato?

And here is the truly scary question: why does it taste so good??