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FY 2005 Grant Awards: Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects in Poetry
Some details of the projects listed below are subject to change, contingent upon prior
Endowment approval.
Balcom, John J.
Monterey, CA
$10,000
To support the translation from Chinese of selected poems by Lo Fu. Born
in China's Hunan Province, Lo Fu served in the military during the Sino-Japanese
War (1939-45), began writing poetry in the 1940s, and moved to Taiwan
in 1949. His 12 volumes of poetry include Death of a Stone Cell
(1965), a long poem conceived while the poet was stationed on the island
of Quemoy during its bombardment; Wound of Time (1981), which
addresses China's literary tradition and history; and House of Moonlight,
which examines the poet's nostalgia for a China to which he cannot return.
Lo Fu's books have received major literary awards in Taiwan, including
the China Times Literary Award and the National Literary Award.
John Balcom is an associate professor at the Monterey Institute. His
translations include Death of a Stone Cell by Lo Fu, The
Four Seasons by Xiang Yang, My Village by Wu Sheng, and
Black and White by Lin Hengtai.
Cox, Wayne
Greenville, SC
$10,000
To support the translation from Catalan of selected poems by Piquel MartÌ
i Pol (1929-2003). Cox will collaborate with his wife, Lourdes ManyÈ i
MartÌ. Born in a small town in Barcelona, MartÌ i Pol wrote in a modest
study overlooking the factory where he worked for half his life. One of
the most widely read poets in contemporary Catalan literature, he published
eight volumes of poetry, 24 volumes of translations, nine books of prose,
several children's books, and song lyrics that appear in more than 40
CDs by well-known Spanish and Catalan musicians. In 1992, he was awarded
the Gold Medal for Excellence in Fine Arts from the Spanish Ministry of
Culture, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000.
An associate professor at Anderson College, Wayne Cox translated Vacation
Notebook with his wife in 1995. It remains the only volume of MartÌ
i Pol's poetry available in English.
Crippen, Aaron
Houston, TX
$10,000
To support the translation from Chinese of selected poems by Gu Cheng
(1956-1993). Gu Cheng is one of the most important voices to emerge from
China's Cultural Revolution. As a boy, he witnessed scenes of Beijing
street violence including the ransacking of his home and confiscation
of his family's books. He and his family were sent to the countryside
to raise pigs; there he began to write poetry. He arrived on the literary
scene during the Democracy Wall movement of 1979, publishing with Communist
China's first underground magazine, Today. Idolized by Chinese youth,
Gu Cheng was always viewed with suspicion by the Chinese government. He
took up permanent residence in New Zealand in 1987, and committed suicide
there in 1993. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Houston,
Aaron Crippen has published numerous translations in such journals as
Northwest Quarterly, Oklahoma Review, Nimrod, Mid-American Review,
and Manoa.
de Jager, Marjolijn
Stamford, CT
$10,000
To support the translation from Dutch of The School by the Sea
by Huub Beursken (1950-). Beursken is a painter, translator, critic, and
writer. He has published more than 30 books, including volumes of poetry,
novels, essays, and plays, and is currently a poetry critic for a daily
newspaper and the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. The School
by the Sea is one of his more recent works. It shows the influence
of American poet William Carlos Williams on Beursken's work, while also
offering colorful, sensual images that betray Beursken's interest in the
visual arts.
Born in Borneo, Indonesia, when the nation was still a colony of The
Netherlands (the Dutch East Indies), Marjolijn de Jager grew up with Dutch
as her first language. She spent her adolescent years in Amsterdam and
immigrated to the U.S. in 1958. She currently teaches Dutch at New York
University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Fox, Leonard
Charleston, SC
$20,000
To support the translation from Malagasy of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo's
Almost Dreams (1934), Translated from the Night (1935),
and from French of his Old Songs from the Imerina Lands, a collection
of translations and adaptations of traditional Malagasy oral poetry (published
posthumously, 1939). Considered the most important 20th-century poet of
Madagascar, Rabearivelo wrote in both Malagasy and French. He was deeply
influenced by the hainteny tradition, a complex form of oral poetry considered
the quintessential expression of traditional Malagasy creativity. Almost
Dreams and Translated from the Night represent a merging
of hainteny with French literary genres. Despite his devotion to the traditional
arts of his homeland, Rabearivelo felt cut off from a literary life of
France and suffered a period of severe depression after his daughter's
death. He committed suicide in 1937 before his 40th birthday.
Leonard Fox works as an independent translator for publishers and other
private clients throughout the U.S. His translations include Hainteny:
The Traditional Poetry of Madagascar, the first study in English
of Malagasy traditional poetry.
Johnson, Kent L.
Freeport, IL
$10,000
To support the translation from Spanish of The Night, a book-length
poem by Bolivian writer Jaime Saenz (1921-1986). Johnson will collaborate
with Forrest Gander. One of Bolivia's leading writers of the 20th century,
Saenz lived his whole life in La Paz, Bolivia, seldom venturing beyond
the city. For much of his adult life, he embodied the late romantic idea
of the poete maudit - apocalyptic and occult in his politics, a frequenter
of slum taverns, insistently nocturnal in his artistic affairs, and the
ongoing subject of rumor and gossip. Published in 1984, The Night
was Saenz's last poem. Composed in four parts, the poem is a circular
journey touching on the themes of alcoholism, identity, and Bolivian history.
Kent Johnson currently teaches at Highland Community College. His translations
include Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz, published
in 2002.
Keys, Kerry S.
Boiling Springs, PA
$20,000
To support the translation from Lithuanian of a book-length selection
of poetry by Laurynas Katkus. In addition to newer pieces, many of the
poems included will be from two previously untranslated books, Voices,
Notes (1998) and Diving Lessons (2003). Born in 1972, Katkus
has had the unique experience of writing under both Soviet control of
Lithuania, and then as a citizen of a newly liberated nation. Much of
his work, therefore, has been informed by two different social and historical
worlds, and is striking because of its maturity and intellectual range.
In addition to his poetry, he has worked as a radio journalist and literary
editor, and has translated the works of e.e. cummings, Susan Sontag, and
others.
Kerry Shawn Keys is a widely published translator and author who divides
his time between Pennsylvania and Lithuania. He has published numerous
books and anthologies of both poetry and prose, and his work has appeared
in many American and international journals and magazines.
Lembke, Janet
Stauton, VA
$20,000
To support the retranslation from Latin of Virgil's four-book Georgics.
Virgil's Georgics, the second of his three poetic works, comprises 2,172
lines of Latin hexameters on farming. Book I tells of crops and the celestial
signs that mark the times for planting and harvesting; Book II covers
trees and grapevines; Book III explores the breeding, rearing, and training
of livestock; and Book IV concerns bees. Its primary themes, however,
are the labor that farming requires and the lessons to be learned from
a pastoral life. Most 20th-century translations of the Georgics are out
of print, hard to come by, or written in British English. This project
will add a new translation in American English with the goal of reaching
general readers interested in poetry and ancient history, as well as gardening
and farming.
Janet Lembke is a writer, translator, and naturalist. Her translations
include Euripides's Electra and Hecuba; Aeschylus's Persians and Suppliants;
and Bronze and Iron: Old Latin Poetry from Its Beginnings to 100 B.C.
Porter, William A.
Port Townsend, WA
$10,000
To support the translation from classical Chinese of the poetry of Wei
Ying-wu. Born in 737, Wei Ying-wu served in many different government
roles and was known for his honesty and concern for the people under his
care. After his retirement from service, he chose to live in a Buddhist
temple instead of an estate commensurate with his status. It was not until
the Sung dynasty (960-1278) that he was recognized as one of the great
poets of the T'ang period, especially in terms of his ability to describe
landscapes and natural settings, and to conjure the moods of seclusion
and serenity. His poetry is also distinctive because of its concern with
the lives of ordinary people. Wei Ying-wu has been considered for the
last 1,000 years as one of the T'ang Dynasty's great poetic masters, yet
remains unknown in the West. This project renders into English about one-third
(150-200) of his surviving poems.
William Porter, who writes under the pseudonym Red Pine, first began
translating Chinese poetry in 1973, while living in a Buddhist monastery
in Taiwan. The author of numerous translations, his most recent anthology
of China's best-known T'ang and Sung poetry, Poems of the Masters,
was published in 2003. Over the years, he has received many honors for
his work and has produced more than one thousand radio programs about
Chinese culture.
Selby, Martha Ann
Cambridge, MA
$20,000
To support the retranslation from classical Tamil of Ainkurunuru,
a Fourth-century anthology of love poems. Commissioned by a Cera-dynasty
king, the Ainkurunu is one of eight anthologies of ancient Tamil
verse. Discovered in the late 19th century bundled in a basket inside
a South Indian Saiva monastery, it was first published in Madras in 1902.
The Ainkurunu contains the work of five poets, each of whom composed
100 poems devoted to one of five "landscapes" of reciprocal love (jealous
quarreling, tortured separation and lament, clandestine love, abject separation,
and domestic bliss). Only one complete translation of the text has been
published in English, and it is marred by inaccuracies and outdated usages.
Martha Ann Selby is an associate professor of Asian Studies at the University
of Texas at Austin. Her previous translations include Grow Long, Blessed
Night: Love Poems from Classical India, and A Circle of Six Seasons:
Old Tamil, Prakrit, and Sanskrit Verse.
Shields, Andrew
Switzerland, FO
$20,000
To support the translation from French of selected poems by Jacques Reda.
Born in Luneville, France, in 1929, RÈda currently lives in Paris. This
project includes poems from nine volumes published since 1968. RÈda's
poetry differs from a large majority of his contemporaries as his work
features scenes from everyday life rather than abstract realms, and his
work focuses almost entirely on traditional forms, using alexandrine lines
and rhymed structures often organized as stanzas. In addition to his poetry,
RÈda has also published 11 volumes of prose and has been a contributor
to Jazz Magazine since 1963. No English volume of his work is
currently in print.
After receiving his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1995, Andrew Shields has been an English language teacher
in Switzerland. An accomplished translator of both French and German,
he has had his work published in journals such as Poetry, Marlboro
Review, and Grand Street.
Sorkin, Adam
Havertown, PA
$10,000
To support the translation from Romanian of Magda C’rneci's book of poems,
Chaosmos. Born in 1955, C’rneci is a widely respected poet, essayist,
and art critic. She has published five volumes of poetry, several volumes
of art criticism, and has translated Seamus Heany, Marianne Moore and
Christopher Merrill into Russian. Chaosmos (combining chaos and
cosmos) was originally published in 1992. Containing sensual, mystical
poems, it was seen as a breakthrough work in its introduction of elements
of daily life into poetic language. As both a poet and critic, C’rneci
is seen as an integral literary figure in the post-communist Balkans.
Adam Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of English at Pennsylvania State
University, Delaware County, where he has taught since 1978. He has translated
more than 135 contemporary Romanian poets and published 19 books.
Stewart, Steven
Reno, NV
$10,000
To support the translation from Spanish of Angel Crespo's Poemas en
Prosa 1965-1994. Crespo was 69 years old when he died in 1995, having
written more than 30 books of poetry and 20 volumes of translation (including
Dante and Petrarch). He studied law in Madrid, was labeled a traitor by
Spain's Franco regime, and was driven into political exile in 1967 (he
would later return to Spain in the 1980s). In the 1940s, Crespo co-founded
the Postism movement in Spain, which emphasized imaginative play on language,
and has had far-reaching influence on contemporary Spanish poetry. Poemas
en Prosa 1965-1994 collects all of Crespo's prose poems into a single
volume.
Steven Stewart teaches in the English Department at the University of
Nevada, Reno, where he is a Writing Specialist. He holds his Ph.D. in
Creative Writing from Florida State University, and his translations have
appeared in numerous journals and magazines including Harper's, Crazyhorse,
and jubilat. His book of translations of the work of Rafael Perez Estrada,
Devoured by the Moon, was recently published by Hanging Loose
Press.
Tkacz, Virlana
New York, NY
$20,000
To support the translation from Ukrainian of Serhiy Zhadan's two most
recent books of poetry. Tkacz will collaborate with Wanda Phipps. Born
in 1974, Zhadan is one of the most popular poets of the post-independence
generation in Ukraine. His work deals with the disillusionment, difficulties,
and ironies that the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought to the country,
and is widely read in literary circles and by the younger generation.
Tkacz and Phipps will translate Ballads of War and Reconstruction
(2001) and History of Culture at the Turn of This Century (2003).
Virlana Tkacz is a translator, writer, and theater director, and currently
serves as the artistic director of Yara Arts Group, a resident company
at La MaMa Experimental Theatre. With her long-time collaborator, Phipps,
she has translated Ukrainian poetry of more than 20 poets, and they received
the National Theatre Translation Fund Award for their translation of Lesia
Ukrainka's verse drama The Forest Song.
Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects in Poetry Grants: 14
Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects in Poetry Dollars: $180,000
National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
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