Code-Switching in Poetry: “Crickets in Three Languages”

Three languages in one poem? Can you do that?

It was one thing, perhaps, to encourage you to write in a foreign language … but that was just one. If you write in three at a time, who will understand you?

I admit I asked myself the same question before writing today’s poem. In the end, however, my answer was as usual when it comes to these things …

I don’t care. I’m doing it.

Maybe it’s because I studied applied linguistics, and my adviser (shoutout to A. Suresh Canagarajah!) was a champion of multilingual writing and “translingual” modes of communication. Who knows? All I can say is that I like code-switching, and I ain’t gonna apologize for it.

Code-switching is, according to our BFF Wikipedia:

…when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation.

Why would anyone do something like that?

Sometimes I can’t express exactly what I wish to say in my mother tongue. It sounds counterintuitive — but sometimes the use of my mother tongue, English, is too laden with ready-made phrases. Like wheel ruts in a road, they’ve been passed through too many times and make the going difficult if you don’t want to go quite the same way … if you feel you must go a hair to the left or right, for instance.

Writing in a foreign language can be oddly liberating, because that baggage of overuse hasn’t had quite enough time to grow.

Sometimes, too, we associate a particular feeling better with another language, merely because of some memory or impression we had while using it. Words, phrases and memories intertwine not just in your first language, but in your second, third, and beyond.

Perhaps that’s why this poem came so easily. It poured out with very little resistance, unlike my English-language poetry these days. In English, I overthink. In other languages, intuition and flexibility reign. I choose words that I feel, either for sound or association — most often the former.

But what about the reader? Is this just a private creative exercise — something you shouldn’t share with others?

If it is … again, I don’t care.

My purpose here is to share the fruits of creative play (in translation, don’t worry!) and to give you permission to do the same. It doesn’t matter if you ever show the work. It doesn’t matter if you speak two, three, or ten languages. Or even one plus Piglatin.

Play with words.

Which language is your choice.

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Crickets in Three Languages

J’ai toujours aimé le son, la grillon-chanson
de ton silence après le наводнение
что я наливаю перед тобой,
наводнение великого увлечения–
я могу mich darunter verdecken,
mich lächelnd bis zum Aufgang des Mondes
verstecken und leise, très leise,
auslöschen.

[I’ve always loved this sound, the cricket-song
of your silence after the flood
I pour out before you,
the great flood of my passion–
beneath it I can take cover
and hide me, smiling, until the moonrise
and quietly, so quietly
blot myself out.]

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Your turn. Play with words, play with languages! In the comments, let me know how you make out.

How do you feel, when you write in another language?