While what’s lost in translation is admittedly enormous, to conclude that poetry is therefore untranslatable is to fundamentally misrepresent both what poetry is and what translation is, and Jakobson’s pronouncement that “poetry by definition is untranslatable” in fact hinges on definitions of poetry and of translation that are both unreasonably narrow.
Around 240m years ago, a 12-foot-long reptile called a chirotherium walked along a beach in what was then part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and what is now the shoreline of Kildonan village, on the rugged, southern coast of the Isle of Arran. Natural dykes of black igneous rock – cooled magma – jut out into the ocean here. The houses on shore are backdropped by grassy cliffs.
We know that this giant proto-crocodile once roamed here because it left behind footprints – which can still be seen today. “This is older than the dinosaurs,” says Malcolm Wilkinson of Arran Geopark, as we crouch down next to the trace fossil. I place my hand in the massive print and attempt to imagine the world millions of years ago, when Scotland sat just north of the equator and the climate was tropical.
It is weird, rambunctious and repeatedly demands the reader surrender to its particular wildness. Its generosity of spirit, its unrestrained warmth and humour – the brilliantly kinetic description of a surprise ceilidh is a case in point – steadily worked away at my scepticism. Like Ouse’s flamboyant designs, inspired by the spectacular landscape around him, it is “garishly alive”.