Colloquy: Translators in Conversation
Please join us for the third installment of Colloquy: Translators in Conversation, with readings and discussion from Nicole Simek, Pierre Joris, and Mark Polizzotti on translating the Francophone world.
The event will be moderated by Colloquy curator C. Francis Fisher.
Colloquy is a new event series presented by World Poetry Books in collaboration with Montez Press Radio and partnering event spaces which invites translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation.
Participants
Mark Polizzotti’s books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, monographs on Luis Buñuel and Bob Dylan, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and recipient of an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he has translated more than fifty books, including works by Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Raymond Roussel, and Marguerite Duras. Recently, his translation of Scholastique Mukasonga's Kibogo was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Nicole Simek is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College. She is the author of Hunger and Irony in the French Caribbean: Literature, Theory, and Public Life (2016) and Eating Well, Reading Well: Maryse Condé and the Ethics of Interpretation (2008), and the translator of Maryse Condé's The Belle Créole (2020).
Pierre Joris has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for 55 years, publishing over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations in-between Mersch & Elsewhere, with Florent Toniello (Contra Mundum), Celebratory Talk-Essay on Receiving the Batty Weber Award (CNL, Literary Talks series), Fox-trails, -tales & -trots (poems & proses, Black Fountain); the translations Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan (FSG) & Microliths: Posthumous Prose of Paul Celan (CMP). In 2020 he published A City Full of Voices: Essays on the Work of Robert Kelly (co-edited with P. Cockelbergh & J. Newberger, CMP), & earlier: Arabia (not so) Deserta (Essays, Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), Conversations in the Pyrenees with Adonis (CMP 2018), & The Book of U (poems, with Nicole Peyrafitte, Simoncini 2017). When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte.
Moderator C. Francis Fisher is a poet and translator based in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among others. Her poem, "Self-Portrait at 25" was selected as the winner for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize for Columbia University. Her first book of translations, In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour is forthcoming with World Poetry Books in 2024. She teaches undergraduate composition at Columbia University.
We are very excited to have you back at our events and would like to remind you that we are still in the midst of the pandemic. Please be considerate of your fellow guests and stay home if you’re feeling unwell. Also, consider wearing a mask when attending indoor BPL Presents events. You’ll be doing your part to help keep yourself and everyone healthy and safe.
BPL Presents programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Please join us for the third installment of Colloquy: Translators in Conversation, with readings and discussion from Nicole Simek, Pierre Joris, and Mark Polizzotti on translating the Francophone world.
The event will be moderated by Colloquy curator C. Francis Fisher.
Colloquy is a new event series presented by World Poetry Books in collaboration with Montez Press Radio and partnering event spaces which invites translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation.
Participants
Mark Polizzotti’s books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, monographs on Luis Buñuel and Bob Dylan, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and recipient of an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he has translated more than fifty books, including works by Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Raymond Roussel, and Marguerite Duras. Recently, his translation of Scholastique Mukasonga's Kibogo was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Nicole Simek is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College. She is the author of Hunger and Irony in the French Caribbean: Literature, Theory, and Public Life (2016) and Eating Well, Reading Well: Maryse Condé and the Ethics of Interpretation (2008), and the translator of Maryse Condé's The Belle Créole (2020).
Pierre Joris has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for 55 years, publishing over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations in-between Mersch & Elsewhere, with Florent Toniello (Contra Mundum), Celebratory Talk-Essay on Receiving the Batty Weber Award (CNL, Literary Talks series), Fox-trails, -tales & -trots (poems & proses, Black Fountain); the translations Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan (FSG) & Microliths: Posthumous Prose of Paul Celan (CMP). In 2020 he published A City Full of Voices: Essays on the Work of Robert Kelly (co-edited with P. Cockelbergh & J. Newberger, CMP), & earlier: Arabia (not so) Deserta (Essays, Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), Conversations in the Pyrenees with Adonis (CMP 2018), & The Book of U (poems, with Nicole Peyrafitte, Simoncini 2017). When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte.
Moderator C. Francis Fisher is a poet and translator based in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among others. Her poem, "Self-Portrait at 25" was selected as the winner for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize for Columbia University. Her first book of translations, In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour is forthcoming with World Poetry Books in 2024. She teaches undergraduate composition at Columbia University.