Posts filed under 'poupeh missaghi'

What’s New with the Asymptote team?

May 5, 2016  |  in News  |  by Theophilus Kwek

This month has seen a bumper crop of updates from the Asymptote team!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado published a new chapbook, Route: Marienbad, with Further Other Book Works, and has three poems in the new issue of The Capilano.

Three of Drama Editor Caridad Svich’s playtexts have been published alongside critical essays as JARMAN (all this maddening beauty) and other plays, by Intellect Books. Her new play, De Troya, directed by David Lozano, will also be performed on May 15 and 16 on the Amphibian Stage in Fort Worth, Texas.

Contributing Editor Howard Goldblatt published his first collection of original short stories, A Night in a Chinese Hospital.

Nonfiction Editor Joshua Craze has a new essay out in Chimurenga’s Pan-African magazine, Chronic, about the United Nations (UN) mission in South Sudan, wilful ignorance, and the vagaries of UN flight timetables. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation? April 2016

April 28, 2016  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Nozomi Saito, Poupeh Missaghi, Theophilus Kwek, and Will Rees

This month's hottest new releases in translation—reviewed by Asymptote's own

Night Sky Checkerboard by Oh Sae-young (Phoneme Media), translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé. Review: Theophilus Kwek, Executive Assistant

checkerboard

More than three decades after arriving in Korea, and two decades into a rewarding career in translation, Brother Anthony has crafted yet another elegant and necessary rendition of contemporary Korean verse: his first collaboration with Oh Sae-young, and only the second full-length volume of the latter’s poetry in English translation. This book provides timely insight to a prolific artist whose work, in the words of fellow poet Ko Un, is suffused with a “thirst for the universe beyond the generations.” READ MORE…

In Review: It’s No Good by Kirill Medvedev

April 21, 2016  |  in Reviews  |  by Poupeh Missaghi

"Medvedev uses everything as 'an opportunity to think a little' about what is in the world and is the world around him."

 

It’s no Good is a collection of Russian writer Kirill Medvedev’s poems, essays, actions (mostly reports of his protests), and obituaries, taken from his published books, blog, websites, and Facebook account.

Perhaps reading what appears in the copyright page of the book (“copyright denied by Kirill Medvedev”) and the first lines of the first poem in the collection “I’m tired of translating / I probably won’t translate / anymore” will be enough hint that we are in for a ride that will demand us to look, question, rethink, and look again and again. A writer who makes the choice to leave the literary scene behind is not one you can read and walk away from unscathed. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Asymptote Team

December 2, 2015  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

We've been keeping busy!

Hungary editor-at-large Ágnes Orzóy wrote a review on János Térey’s book Átkelés Budapesten for World Literature Today. She also wrote two blog entries for Literaturhaus Europa on migrants in Hungarian literature, emigrants and immigrants. Ágnes was recently a guest at the Balassi Institute in Bucharest where she talked about the reception of Eastern European literature in English.

Assistant editor Alexis Almeida‘s chapbook, Half-Shine, was accepted for publication at Dancing Girl Press. It will be out in the fall/winter of 2016. Also, her translation of Florencia Castellano’s Propiedades vigiladas / Monitored Properties will be out with Ugly Duckling Presse around the same time.

Brazil editor-at-large Bruna Lobato‘s essay of Juan Goytisolo’s Count Julian appeared in The Millions and her translations into Portuguese of two poems by Pulitzer winner Tracy K. Smith is forthcoming in the next issue of Jornal Rascunho, the literary supplement of Brazilian daily newspaper Gazeta do Povo.

Assistant editor Chris Schaefer had his essay “Who Killed Matoub Lounes?” published in the November 2015 issue of World Literature Today. The essay is about the controversial Kabyle singer who was assassinated in 1998.

Assistant editor Julia Leverone‘s translation of the poem “Body of Crime,” originally by the Argentine Paco Urondo, was recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize by The Brooklyn Rail, which published seven of her translations in May this year.

This week, editor-in-chief Lee Yew Leong introduced Frances Riddle’s translation of Mario Levrero’s “The Abandoned House” for Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading.

Iran editor-at-large, Poupeh Missaghi, published a piece entitled, “Insects Are Food for Thought,” in Issue 59 of Volta.

34 Animal Farms: Literary Translation and Copyright in Iran

July 13, 2015  |  in Essays  |  by Poupeh Missaghi

Our Editor-at-Large Poupeh Missaghi on the peculiarity of copyright and translation in Iran

It’s safe to say that the Iranian book market has a strong interest in translation: it’s easy to find several translations of the same book in a single bookstore. Several reasons fuel this phenomenon, but the most important is rather banal: Iran’s glaring disregard for copyright laws—both internationally and domestically—mean that these kinds of retranslations run rampant.

Most literary publishers enter the translation and publication processes without securing the rights to the original foreign book. Or they can simply translate/publish a title already in print or well into the process of translation/publication by another publishing house.

Iran is not a signatory to the Copyright Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), though it joined WIPO in 2001. Neither does Iran take part in international conventions on the protection of literary and artistic works. Not legally bound in the way that organizations in other countries—such as many European countries and the United States—are, Iran’s public and/or private literary/artistic organizations do not often behave ethically toward their foreign counterparts. READ MORE…