Poetry Reading and Discussion: Found in Translation With Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan

Thursday, April 23, 1-2 pm 
Conference Center, Seminar Room 5 

Presented by the departments of English and Communication Studies and Modern Languages and Cultures, poet Moira Egan and translator Damiano Abeni will read works of poetry and have a conversation about literary translation. The reading will highlight Abeni’s anthology Caos, Pendole, Cocomeri, his translations of works by American poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Theodore Roethke, Mark Strand, and John Ashbery. Egan will read from her newest collection Botanica Arcana/Strange Botany, a bilingual volume of poems with Italian versions by Abeni. The event will also feature work from Mark Strand’s newly published Quasi Invisibile. For more information, contact Amy Lemmon, 75342.

Damiano Abeni, MD, MPH, is an epidemiologist who has been translating American poetry into Italian since 1973. In Italy, he has published volumes of poetry by Bidart, Bishop, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Simic, Strand, C.K. Williams, and many others. With Mark Strand, he edited West of Your Cities, a bilingual anthology of contemporary American poets. His translations appear in numerous Italian journals and he is among the editors of the journal Nuovi Argomenti. To commemorate Abeni’s 40-year career as a translator, Edizioni l’Obliquo published Caos, Pendole, Cocomeri: 40 anni di collaborazioni. He has been a Literature Fellow at the Liguria Study Center of the Bogliasco Foundation, a Director’s Guest at the Civitella Ranieri Center, and a Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and is currently a Writer in Residence at the James Merrill House.

Moira Egan’s books are Botanica Arcana/Strange Botany (Italic Pequod, 2014); Hot Flash Sonnets (Passager, 2013); Spin (Entasis, 2010); Bar Napkin Sonnets (winner of The Ledge Chapbook Competition, 2009); La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie (Edizioni l’Obliquo, 2009); and Cleave (WWPH, 2004). With Clarinda Harriss, she co-edited Hot Flash Sonnets (Entasis Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, including Best American Poetry; The Book of Forms; Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics; and The Book of Scented Things. She has been a Mid Atlantic Arts Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; writer in residence at St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Malta; a writing fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center; and a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. She is currently a writer in residence at the James Merrill House.

In 2011, Abeni and Egan were awarded the “Premio di Poesia–La Torre dell’Orologio” for Mark Strand’s L’uomo che cammina un passo avanti al buio (poesie 1964-2006). Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, a substantial selection of poems by John Ashbery (Sossella Editore, Rome, 2008) won a Special Prize from the Premio Napoli. Together they have published translations of works by Ashbery, Barth, Bender, Ferlinghetti, Hecht, Heti, and Josephine Tey. Their translations of American poems have appeared in numerous journals in Italy.

Their translations of Italian poetry into English have been published in Asymptote, Circumference, Journal of Italian Translation, and the Journal of the School of Fine Arts of the American Academy in Rome. Their translations are included in the FSG Book of 20th Century Italian Poetry and in Patrizia Cavalli’s My Poems Will Not Change the World (also with FSG).

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