George Johnston's English language translation of Christian Matras's poems is likely to be the only dual-language book of Faroese poetry or any Faroese literature available. 'Úr Sjón og Úr Minni, or Seeing and Remembering', is a small book of short verses, and one of the last collections of poetry written by Christian Matras.
Seeing and Remembering contains 20 short verses, between two and eight lines each, with the original Faroese poems facing Johnston's translation. The book may appear sparse and is quite a peculiar oddity, but for language learners and appreciators of Faroese-language literature, this is a great and an important discovery.
In the '70's, Johnston visited the Faroe Islands, befriending and working closely with Christian Matras to translate and publish a small collection of his poems in Poetry Foundation's magazine 'Poetry', and later in the Faroese poetry anthology 'Rocky Shores'. Seeing and Remembering was published in '86, but there is no mention of whether they worked together to translate Seeing and Remembering. Johnston did get a chance to visit the Faroe Islands and his friend Christian Matras in the summer of '88, four months before Christian Matras died.
In 'Inward of Poetry', a book of letters between Johnston and his close friend William Blissett, it's suggested that Matras became Johnston's favourite modern poet, and is likely the poet who had the greatest influence on Johnston's late poetry. With this in mind, it becomes a little clearer why this peculiar little book exists.
George Johnston also translated Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen's 'Barbara' into English, a tradition handed down to him from Jacobsen's close friend Christian Matras. Matras translated Barbara from its original Danish into Faroese.
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