By: ANNA FRIEDRICHSEN, Lake Voice
Jayson Iwen is a 41-year-old currently working to translate Arabic poetry into English. The catch is that he doesn’t even know Arabic.
“I work in collaboration with an Arabic scholar who produces literal translation. I take that and look for opportunities to help it flourish in the English language," Iwen said.
With three books under his belt, one memoir and two fiction pieces, Iwen is working toward publishing a fourth book in 2017 of Arabic poem translations, something unlike his other three books.
“[The book] was accepted by one of the best publishers who could have accepted it,” Iwen said.
Iwen got his PhD in creative writing. His passion for writing was apparent from an early age.
Living in the middle east for four years after his academic career, Iwen became fascinated with how America interacts with the rest of the world and always took opportunities to travel.
“I found ways to be funded or to be hosted,” Iwen said.
Iwen took jobs roofing, painting, and working in factories while living abroad. Even upon coming back to the United States, Iwen tried jobs outside of his career path.
On taking odd jobs in foreign places, Iwen credits his time abroad to helping him have “diverse experiences and have broad understandings of human condition and how people live”.
Working at UW-Superior as a college professor teaching a variety of writing classes keeps Iwen busy, but he still tries to write every day. After years of practice he is able to “induce the creative state, or the zone”.
Iwen’s last book, “Gnarly Wounds,” came out in 2013. The inspiration was “the first novella, which was ‘A Momentary Joke Book’ that was published individually”.
The story felt incomplete so Iwen produced the structure to make it feel like it had a conclusion. Iwen was inspired by a triptych, or a visual art form common in religious painting.
Aside from the Arabic poetry book, Iwen is also working on turning major texts in “western canon” and compressing them into poetry.
The poems will be quite long, as the books he is looking at are quite lengthy themselves.
“One of the books I did was ‘Moby Dick,’” Iwen said.
And if working on two writing projects, being a college professor, being a husband and a father to two kids is not enough to keep him busy, Iwen is also working to develop an online journal, called New Theory.
The journal will be home to theories that do not fit into a specific discipline or professional venue. This essentially means that those who do not have the credentials to publish an article or idea about a theory have the opportunity to do so. For example, a writer interested in science has the outlet to speak freely on the subject matter without having to prove he/she is worthy enough of commenting on the topic.
“A lot of writers philosophize, but don’t feel qualified. A lot of people in a lot of fields feel like they can’t share their ideas,” Iwen said.
For this online journal, Iwen will be the editor and will not contribute. He plans to have the website launched in January 2016.
For more information on Jayson Iwen and his work, check out his website: http://jaysoniwen.com/
This article is the fourth in a series about writers in Duluth. The last article can be found here. If you are a writer or have someone in mind to be featured in an upcoming article, contact Anna Friedrichsen at fried581@d.umn.edu.