Coming May 7, 2014! Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa’s widely anticipated screen debut L’armée du salut (Salvation Army) has been making waves at film festivals. Watch an excerpt of the prize-winning movie here and find out more on Taïa’s official Facebook page. For French speakers: a French-language interview with Taïa. Revisit his open letter “Homosexuality Explained to My Mother,” translated into English and Chinese exclusively for Asymptote here.
Alexander Dickow brings Henri Droguet’s poetry to the United States for the first time with Clatters. Published by Rain Taxi imprint Ohm Editions, Droguet’s French text appears beside Dickow’s translation. In the translator’s afterword, Dickow opines: “Never, perhaps, has so pure a litany of despair, vanity, destruction and decay given rise to such vibrant language.” Lovely!
Moving away from the Francophone world… Boey Kim Cheng co-edited a crucial anthology of Asian Australian poetry–get up to speed with the project here. His own poem “Plumb blossom or Quong Tart” appears with voices “from Pakistan to Singapore to Thailand to Goa and beyond, telling diverse, richly textured and evolving stories.”
Forrest Gander is speaking tonight, March 26, at SOAS, University of London, about modern and contemporary Japanese poetry in translation and how it has influenced literature originally written in English. He will tackle the question so many readers have only wondered at: What gets translated and why? Join him and Asymptote contributing editor Sayuri Okamoto.
A new exhibit at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London, highlights the work of Japanese poet and artist Gozo Yoshimasu. As Though Tattooing on My Mind, curated by Asymptote contributing editor Sayuri Okamoto, is the first exhibition of his work in the UK and encompasses fifty years of his career. Head for the foundation on March 31 for Gozo’s artist talk, and pencil in March 27 for a performance and reading at Cafe OTO.
Thanks to Jennifer Croft for translating from the Ukranian Natalka Sniadanko’s New York Times op-ed piece, “The Myth of a Divided Ukraine.” The timely article details Russia and Ukraine’s complicated history, as well as discusses the ways this history now manifests itself in the media, in the minds of Russians and Ukranians alike, and in the recent events in Crimea.
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop published an interview with Liao Yiwu. In “Four Years a Prisoner,” Liao—who spent years in a Chinese prison for composing and performing “Massacre,” about the Tiananmen Square protests—talks about “writing from prison, false patriotism, and the responsibility of intellectuals,” and delves into his prison memoir, For a Song and a Hundred Songs.
For those in New York and Philadelphia, mark your calendars. MARGENTO (Chris Tănăsescu) and Martin Woodside are performing Athanor & Other Poems by Romanian poet Gellu Naum. The two have co-translated Romanian poetry by a number of important poets, and Athanor collects Naum’s poems in English for the first time. Check them out on March 29 at Upstairs at Erika’s, New York, and April 5-7 at the Moonstone Arts Center, Philadelphia.
Moroccan poet Mohammed Bennis received France’s Max Jacob Étranger Prize, now in its 64th year, for his book Lieux Païens (A Pagan Place, المكان الوثني), in its French translation by Bernard Noël. The prize—named after Max Jacob, a French poet, novelist, and painter—is awarded to a work of poetry by a French or foreign writer.
Rodolfo Walsh’s Operation Massacre is out from Seven Stories Press, translated by Daniella Gitlin. Read the book’s latest review in Words Without Borders, in which Sara Rafsky writes, “sixty-six years after the book’s publication, the strongest impression made by the work is the depth of its investigative reporting” and commends Gitlin for her “skillful and fluid translation […] welcome and long overdue.”
Finally, dive into a chapbook that collects Steve Bradbury’s best translations of Taiwanese poet and filmmaker Ye Mimi’s poetry. His Days Go By the Way Her Years was a finalist in the Anomalous Press Expeimental Translation Chapbook Contest—and we can see why. Mimi’s “poetry blends a fascination with dreams with a playful approach to language and sensitivity to sound” for a new kind of reading experience.
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The Best Translated Book Awards 2014 Longlist is out, and we can all forget about going to work for the next few weeks because there’s plenty of reading to do. Asymptote contributors whose work has been selected are featured in bold:
• Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Romania; Archipelago Books)
• Tirza by Arnon Grunberg, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett (Netherlands; Open Letter Books)
• Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Austria; Sylph Editions)
• Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (Hungary; New Directions)
• The Infatuations by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain; Random House)
• City of Angels, or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud by Christa Wolf, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Germany; FSG)
• Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (China; University of Oklahoma Press)