Poetry and Translation with Anna Crowe, Pedro Serrano and Boris Dralyuk

In the words of Walter Benjamin “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” An impossible, beautiful task that we’re thrilled to explore with Anna Crowe, Pedro Serrano and Boris Dralyuk!

Anna is an esteemed poet and translator. Her own poems have appeared in numerous pamphlets and her 2010 publication Figure in a Landscape was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Anna’s translations have brought the work of a number of Catalan poets to our shores, including Joan Margarit and Josep Lluís Aguiló, as well as the acclaimed Mexican poet Pedro Serrano.

Pedro, who is also joining us, has five collections and numerous anthologies and studies to his name. With Carlos López Beltrán, Pedro edited and translated the groundbreaking anthology La generación del cordero: Antología de la poesía actual en las Islas Británicas (The Lamb Generation: An anthology of contemporary poetry from the British Isles) which brought together translations of 30 contemporary British poets. Pedro was awarded a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship in 2007,and currently teaches in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.

Last but not least, Boris Dralyuk, lecturer at the University of St Andrews, will also be sharing his thoughts on poetry and translation! Boris has translated and co-translated several volumes of poetry and prose from Russian and Polish, and is the co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (2015).

Translation is an art as much as a craft; it is perhaps never so difficult nor so delicate a task than when taking on poetry. Please join us for readings and conversation as we explore this extraordinary and intricate facet of literature!