Thomas Kinsella is one of a number of young Irishmen who began to write in the years following World War II, and he has played a major role in invigorating the world of Irish verse.
Dimitry Golynko is an accomplished St. Petersburg-based poet and translator and a contributing editor of Moscow Art magazine. He has written articles for numerous Russian- and English-language literature publications and, in 2008, Ugly Duckling Presse released an English translation of his book As it Turned Out.
The author of eleven books of poetry, along with several translations and an anthology of contemporary Brazilian poetry he co-edited, Régis Bonvicino has come to be recognized as one of the most talented and innovative of Brazilian writers. Bonvicino's poetry combines an intense, sprung lyricism with an engagement with artifice of poetic construction.
Wystan Curnow visited Penn and the Writers House as a Distinguished International Scholar, a program developed through the Office of the Provost which aims to promote global engagement with leading international scholars and artists. Curnow's visit included a talk on contemporary curatorial practice, recording sessions with Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, class visits, and a capstone poetry reading on April 14th.
Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She now lives in Paris, where she is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers throughout the world, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. She is also the author of several children's books, Embroideries, and the internationally best-selling and award-winning comic book autobiography in two parts, Persepolis and Persepolis 2. Persepolis has been made into an animated feature film, co-written and co-directed by Satrapi, and distributed by Sony Picture Classics in 2007.
Zhimin Li will read from his work and discuss contemporary trends in Chinese poetry.
Poet and scholar Zhimin Li is currently serving as Associate Professor in The School of Foreign Studies of Guangzhou University, as well as Director of The Chinese and Western Culture Study Institute and Director of The English Training Center of Guangzhou University. He also serves as the Secretary-General of English Poetry Study Association of China, and the Vice Secretary-General of Foreign Literature Study Association of Guangdong Province. Li's books include Appreciations on William Shakespeare's Works (1998, 2001, 2005, 2007), Selective Readings of Twentieth Century English and American Poetry (2003), New Chinese Poetry under the Influence of Western Poetics: The Origins, Development and Sense of Nativeness (2005), and Poetics Reconstruction: The Form and The Image (forthcoming in 2008).
A native of South Africa, Breyten Breytenbach is a distinguished painter, activist and writer of more than 30 books of poetry and fiction, as well as essays and dramatic works in both Afrikaans and English.
Co-sponsored by Temple-Penn poetics, NourbeSe Philip will discuss poetry and poetics in the Writers House Arts Cafe, following her November 20th reading at Temple University.
Hanan al-Shaykh will be joined in her reading by Penn professor and translator Roger Allen. The program is co-sponsored by the Middle East Center and Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.
Bina Sharif, an immigrant to the U.S. from Pakistan, is an award-winning playwright, actress, poet, performance artist, and visual artist. Since the 1980s, her plays have premiered off-Broadway at venues like Theater for the New City, Performance Space 122, and the WOW Cafe. Some of her plays have been anthologized, including Afghan Woman, Fire, and My Ancestor's House. She has performed her one-woman shows at theatres and universities across the U.S. as well as in Belgium, England, and Pakistan.
The program is co-sponsored by the Critical Writing Program and the Middle East Center.
Download a recording of this event here.
Watch a streaming QuickTime video of this event here.
Bina Sharif, an immigrant to the U.S. from Pakistan, is an award-winning playwright, actress, poet, performance artist, and visual artist. The program is co-sponsored by the Critical Writing Program and the Middle East Center.
New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008) presents the exciting works of poets from across Europe. In compiling this landmark anthology, editors Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer enlisted twenty-four regional editors to select and translate 290 poets, whose writing was first published after 1968. These poets represent every country in Europe, and many of them are published here for the first time in English or in the United States. The resulting anthology collects some of the very best work of a new generation of poets who have come of age since Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugenio Montale, and Czeslaw Milosz.
On September 23, 2008, we welcomed translators and editors for a discussion of the anthology -- the joys and challenges of translation, the process of selection, the field of European poetry and poetics. After a delicious reception, we capped off the evening with selected readings by translator-editors Marella Feltrin-Morris, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Adam J. Sorkin, J.C. Todd and moderator Wayne Miller.
Cecilia Vicuña, acclaimed Chilean poet, filmmaker and performance artist visited the Writers House for a reading and performance of her work. Opening her reading by tossing flower petal "confetti" (collected moments earlier in the KWH garden), Vicuña lead the rapt audience into a communal space where poetry unfolded in real time through playful improvisations, stories and chants.
A recording of the event is available on PennSound.
Vicuña, acclaimed Chilean poet, filmmaker and performance artist weaves time, space and sound to evoke ancient sensory memories. Through playful improvisations, stories and chants she leads her audience into a communal space where poetry unfolds. In her work indigenous word-play interfaces the contemporary realities of ecological disaster. Cecilia Vicuña is the author of sixteen poetry books published in Europe, Latin America and the US. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been an exile since the Pinochet coup in the early 1970s, and since 1980 has resided in New York, spending several months a year in Latin America. Currently she is co-editing the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, forthcoming 2008.
