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James Kirkup writes: I have often noticed that Japanese poets, when
translating haiku into English, compose what is virtually a new poem,
while preserving the theme and the spirit of the original. I have adopted this method in making a translation of Rimbaud’s sonnet ‘Voyelles’, regular in form. Rimbaud’s five vowels are given in the first line, with their colours: “A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue . . .” But I saw that these were not the only colours in the poem, which contains repetitions of “black”, “white”, but also new colours: purple, viridian and violet – ten colours altogether, though only eight if we omit the repetitions.

The rhyming of my translation is irregular, and I used my favourite form of the sonnet, two verses of seven lines each. I introduce fifteen different colours, none of which reflects Rimbaud’s rainbow. I added a sixth vowel, “Y”, which can be used as both a consonant and a vowel.

It will be noticed that the colours carry us through all the seasons,
from August through autumn, winter, spring and back into summer
with June and July: a calendar of colours.

My version of ‘D’ from Valéry’s Alphabet is another example. Alphabet is a series of twenty-two prose poems, illustrating ornamental capital letters – the illustrations are Valéry’s own. I have not translated ‘D’ as a prose poem, but as a sequence of Japanese tanka in the strict traditional form: a verse of five lines of 5,7,5,7 and 7 syllables. It is an inspired and inspiring form, which works with the translator in a strange way that often suggests le mot juste.