What's the Sound of a City on the Brink?

Posted on August 12, 2024

Have you ever heard the phrase “goudougoudou”? Used by some survivors of the Haitian earthquake of 2010, the phrase is onomatopoeia for “the sound of the earth shaking,” according to the Duke University project “Sonic Signatures of Trauma in Haiti.”

That phrase is one example of the extensive use of onomatopoeia in Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s “Port-au-Prince on an IV Drip,” written in the aftermath of the earthquake. Translated from Haitian Creole by Nadève Ménard, the poem is also available online in the original.

We may think of onomatopoeia as something that belongs in light or nonsense verse, like Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” But the technique also offers a way for trauma survivors to communicate something of an experience that is otherwise ineffable (Sonic Signatures).

Students might explore the onomatopoeia in the poem, both in the original and in the translation. They do not necessarily need to know Haitian Creole to be able to compare the emotional and poetic effects of the sound “titak pa titak” with its English translation, “drip drop.”

They might also discuss the translator’s choice to include more and more words in the original Haitian Creole as the poem moves forward. What response might that choice produce in a reader who knows the language? How about in a reader who doesn’t?

As a culminating project, students might write (and perhaps perform) their own poems incorporating onomatopoeia.

Contextualizing “Port-au-Prince on an IV Drip”

For background on the author and translator, we recommend:

• Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s interview with Rose City Reader, where he reveals how he became a writer
• Translator Nadève Ménard’s essay about the earthquake, written in the form of a letter to her young daughter, on JSTOR

For background on the Haitian earthquake of 2010 and its aftermath, we recommend:

• Reading contemporaneous coverage of the earthquake in the Guardian
• Listening to Duke University’s audio exhibit “Sonic Signatures of Trauma in Haiti,” which recreates some of the sounds survivors heard during the earthquake
• Reading tweets sent by survivors immediately after the quake, also in the Guardian

For an introduction to rara music, also mentioned in the poem, we recommend this video filmed at Lincoln Center:

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

By Nadia Kalman, with research by Maggie Vlietstra.