Tagged: “translation”

Poem of the Week: “Street-Talk/Comhrá ar shráid” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

On the flagged street
That day we happened to meet
You spoke to me so kindly
Asking courteously how I was,
That the air softened around me,
The dull impoverished city air,
With a little breeze you brought
From the west, from that place
By the sea where I first knew you…

“Better for the Mess”: Samuel K. Fisher on the Making of Bone and Marrow

After years of planning and production, Wake Forest University Press has published one of its most ambitious titles yet: Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern. Fully bilingual, this anthology presents 15 centuries of Irish-language poetry across its 900+ pages, including many new translations, contextual notes, and introductory…

Bone and Marrow Book Tour

  Wake Forest University Press will celebrate the publication of its latest anthology, Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern, with a series of launch events organized with the anthology editors Samuel K. Fisher and Brian Ó Conchubhair. Planned events include a tour of Ireland from Belfast to Galway, with…

Poem of the Week: “As for the Quince” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

  “As for the Quince” is an Irish-language poem written by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (the original title “An Crann”) then translated by Paul Muldoon into English. In the weeks when spring first dares to remind us that Nature’s sometimes subtle rhythms impact our entire wellbeing, this poem is a timely reflection of growth and loss….

Poem of the Week: “Dans l’étendue/In the distance” by Philippe Jaccottet

In the distance
nothing but shimmering peaks

Nothing but ardent glances
interweaving

Blackbirds and doves

Poem of the Week: “Tionlacan/Accompaniment” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

I can’t say
if it was the quiet
or lonesomeness
that woke me that morning

Poem of the Week: “Mo Cheirdse/My Craft” by Máirtín Ó Direáin

It’s all patience—my craft.
I’m like a fisherman
Waiting for a trout.

Poem of the Week: “Tightening loosening” by Jacques Dupin

Tightening loosening
on the restored tracks

without entirely freeing herself as woman 
from the vague bestiary that besets her…

“A Deep Ocean One Can Plunge Into”: An Interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s newest book The Mother House was published in the US this April, and it has been gaining praise across the board, including being chosen for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Despite finishing out the semester at home, WFU Press intern Emelyn Hatch conducted an interview with the poet via email to dig deeper into this shining collection.

Poem of the Week: “Feabhra/February” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

The weather softened in the last few days.
I took the air for raiment.
Sweet, Jesus, honey sweet the season!
Rocks melt. Nor ice nor reason hold.

Poem of the Week: “The Smell of Blood” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

I wake up, and my hands are sticky
With the smell of blood. 
And though there’s not a smudge nor blot
In eyeshot, nor any soul 

The WFU Press Holiday Sale & Gift-Giving Guide

Wake Forest University Press is thankful for all of you every day, but especially today. To express our gratitude, we’re once again running a Holiday Sale through the end of the year. All you have to do is enter the code (WFUP40) at the checkout and the discount will automatically apply itself. This sale includes…

Poem of the Week: “It’s easy to talk, and writing words on the page” by Philippe Jaccottet

It’s easy to talk, and writing words on the page
doesn’t involve much risk as a general rule:
You might as well be knitting late at night
in a warm room, in a soft, treacherous light…

Publication Day for FROM THERE TO HERE

Starting with his 1976 publication of THE NEW ESTATE and finishing with the call-and-response translation work in FROM ELSEWHERE (2014), Carson guides us through his imaginative landscape in a new selection that includes poems from thirteen volumes written over nearly forty years. 

Poem of the Week: “Durée d’Octobre / In October” by Claire Malroux

October its brilliance
In its arms
        the condemned leaves
        the obsession
with dying beautifully

Poem of the Week: “Winter Beachhead” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

This is the starkest hour of the shore
when it’s purged and cleansed as a Sabbath door.
There’s a brim of lather when the tide’s in
as the waves go on with their day’s washing.

Poem of the Week: “Áiféilín” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

A poem in Irish by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, with a translation by Gabriel Rosenstock, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (2017)

“What Voice? Whose Voice?” An Interview with David Wheatley on The President of Planet Earth

The President of Planet Earth is Wheatley’s fifth collection, and his talent for a wide range of poetic styles and voices is on full display. Here we have prose poems, concrete poems, sestinas and sonnets, alongside more experimental forms. Wheatley draws inspiration from Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, Samuel Beckett, and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. The result is a fascinating and subversively comedic trek across land and time. In this interview, Wheatley tells us more about his daring new collection and the voices therein.

Poem of the Week: “A l’écoute: Receiver / All Clear” by Ciaran Carson

In the final week of National Translation Month, we’re featuring a unique kind of translation act. In From Elsewhere, Ciaran Carson translates poems by the French poet Jean Follain. However, the volume is different in that Carson pairs these translations with original poems inspired by them: “Translations of the translations,” as he explains in the preface….

Poem of the Week: “Rugă / Prayer” by Ileana Mălăncioiu

In today’s selection for National Translation Month, we are featuring a Romanian poem by Ileana Mălăncioiu, translated by Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin in her collection titled Legend of the Walled-Up Wife. As Ní Chuilleanáin writes in the preface to the book, “Mălăncioiu’s writing is valued in Romania as a moral force. A courageous critic of the former…

Poem of the Week: “Poète / Poet” by Vénus Khoury-Ghata

We’ve been posting translations to celebrate National Translation Month, and today we’ve chosen a French poem by Vénus Khoury-Ghata from her collection, Au sud du silence. Khoury-Ghata is a translator herself, most notably from French to Arabic  for the magazine Europe, but this poem was translated into English by Michael Bishop for an anthology of French poetry…

Poem of the Week: “A Postcard Home” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Wake Forest Press has published books in translation for a few decades, and we’re proud to celebrate National Translation Month during September by featuring some of these poems over the next few weeks. Of course we offer quite a bit of Irish-language poetry in translation, but many of our poets have also translated from French and other…

Poem of the Week: “Melusine” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

This week’s poem comes from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s most recent volume, The Fifty Minute Mermaid, a selection of which was included in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. Ní Dhomhnaill’s narrative poem, “Melusine,” is based on folklore most famously captured by the 14th century French writer Jean d’Arras. In the tale, Count Raymondin meets the…

Poem of the Week: “How to Live” by Derek Mahon

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.

Poem of the Week: “Morte la nuit / When night has died” by Claire Malroux

Today we’ve selected a poem by French poet and translator Claire Malroux, alongside the translation by Marilyn Hacker. As Hacker points out in the preface to this volume, these poems are “on the boundary” in many ways. “Perhaps one crucial boundary, sacrosanct and taboo, on which they stand,” she continues, “is that between languages, and their…

Poem of the Week: “For Sheila” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

I remember a room on the seaward side—
The squall caught it from the south-west—
And rain a tattoo on the window
Unslackening since the fall of night,

Poem of the Week: “Persephone Suffering from SAD” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s The Water Horse is a particular gem because of the collaboration of three great female Irish poets; Ní Dhomhnaill’s poems are in Irish, with English translations by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian. These poems present other convergences, particularly the mingling of mythology with modern life as in today’s poem.

Poem of the Week: “Finit” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Finit Le seans a chuala uathu scéala an chleamhnais Is b’ait liom srian le héadroime na gaoithe— Do bhís chomh hanamúil léi, chomh domheabhartha, Chomh fiáin léi, is chomh haonraic, mar ba chuimhin liom. Féach feasta go bhfuil dála cháich i ndán duit, Cruatan is coitinne, séasúr go céile, Ag éalú i ndearúd le hiompú…

The Miraculous Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Wake Forest Press will publish The Miraculous Parish, a bilingual volume of Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry this May. An activist and visionary, Mhac an tSaoi has paved the way for such female literary giants as Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The Miraculous Parish solidifies her reputation as the…

Poem of the Week: “An fuath”/”Hatred” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Hatred demands patience and deadened senses,
Hatred waits for its chance;
Hatred keeps a steady finger on the trigger
And won’t pull it till it sees the whites of the eyes
Like egg-whites-whites in its sights!

Poem of the Week: “Demotic Nocturne” by Ciaran Carson

The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, a painting by John Martin (1789-1854) In the spirit of Halloween we offer Ciaran Carson’s “Demotic Nocturne”, a tantalizing and chilling nighttime adventure that takes the reader on a technicolor journey that “disperses all the boundaries of hearth and home.” “Demotic Nocturne” appears in Carson’s collection In the Light Of, translated from Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Demotic Nocturne (Nocturne vulgaire) A breath…