In this episode, we look at divergent forms of storytelling in translation—from the fact-centered world of literary reportage to the poetic proclamations of a third-millennium heart. Beatrice Smigasiewicz brings us coverage from Krakow’s Conrad Festival, where she caught up with one of Poland’s most prominent writers of literary nonfiction, Mariusz Szczygieł, and his award-winning translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones. They discuss the legacy of 20th century reportage in Polish literature and the power of storytelling in dealing with the country’s wartime experience and postwar Communist era. Katrine Øgaard Jensen presents new translations of poems from Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s Third-Millennium Heart, an explosive collection that pushes story to the limit—breaking every rule of storytelling and yet bringing us a character who feels real. Olsen won the prestigious literary award Montanaprisen in 2013 for the book, excerpted here in its original Danish along with English translations.
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About the writers and translators:
Born in 1966, Mariusz Szczygieł is a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, a publication he first joined in 1990 and where he worked under Hanna Krall. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing on Poland and the Czech Republic, including the European Book Prize and the Prix Amphi, among others, for Gottland. From 1995-2001, he hosted his own talk show (“Na każdy temat”, “On Any Topic”). He recently edited 100/xx + 50, a three-volume anthology of 20th century Polish reportage. Together with Wojciech Tochman and Paweł Goźliński, he runs the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw.
Translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones is the pre-eminent translator of Polish literature, including writers of contemporary reportage: Wojciech Tochman, Wojciech Jagielski, Jacek Hugo-Bader, and Ryszard Kapuscinski, in addition to Szczygieł. She received the Found in Translation Award from the Polish Cultural Institute in 2008 for her translation of Paweł Huelle’s novel The Last Supper, and won the award again for the body of seven translations she published in 2012. She is a mentor for the British Centre for Literary Translation’s Emerging Translator Mentorship Programme.
Ursula Andkjær Olsen (b. 1970) was born and raised in Copenhagen. She has a degree in musicology and philosophy from the University of Copenhagen and Technische Universität Berlin. Olsen made her literary debut in 2000 and has since published eight collections of poetry in addition to several dramatic texts and libretti for operas, such as Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s Sol går op, sol går ned and composer Peter Bruun’s Miki Alone, which was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2008. Olsen has received numerous grants and prizes for her work, including the prestigious award Montanaprisen for Det 3. årtusindes hjerte (Third-Millennium Heart).
Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a journalist, writer, and translator from the Danish. In 2015, she received a fellowship to teach fiction in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Columbia University. A two-time Thanks To Scandinavia scholar and former editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, she is now blog editor at Words Without Borders while serving as poetry judge for the Best Translated Book Award.
Produced by: Daniel Goulden, Sally Decker, Beatrice Smigasiewicz, and Katrine Øgaard Jensen.
Music: “Distinguishing Beams Destination Spangles” by Project 5am. The Creative Commons License for this track can be found at http://freemusicarchive.org/.
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Beatrice Smigasiewicz is Asymptote‘s editor-at-large for Poland. Her work has appeared in BODY, Words Without Borders, Art Papers, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s nonfiction writing and translation programs and a Fulbright scholar currently living in Poland.
Daniel Goulden is Asymptote’s new Podcast Editor and former Assistant Editor. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works on a variety of new media projects including an upcoming podcast and the webseries Between the Sidewalk and the Street, as well as old media projects including translations from Russian and good old-fashioned writing.