Wednesday 4 November 2009

Whales and Horses

I was pleased to learn that Tarkovsky's Horses and Other Poems, my translation of two collections of Pia Tafdrup's poetry (The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses) due to be published by Bloodaxe early next year, was selected as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The PBS book club recommendations mark out the books, not the authors or translators, and in the field of poetry translation there's usually only one recommendation per quarter. The PBS list for Spring 2010 is:

Choice: Derek Walcott, White Egrets (Faber)
Recommendations:
Edward Hirsch, The Living Fire (Carcanet)
Lachlan MacKinnon, Small Hours (Faber)
Patrick McGuinness, Jilted City (Carcanet)
Robin Robertson, The Wrecking Light (Picador)
Recommended Translation: Pia Tafdrup (trans. David McDuff), Tarkovsky’s Horses (Bloodaxe)
Special Commendation: Louis Simpson, Voices in the Distance: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe)

Hat tip: Neil Astley

3 comments:

Lev said...

That's a wonderful news, David! My congratulations! :-)

David McDuff said...

Thanks, Lev. As I said in the post, the recommendation is for the book rather than the translator per se, but it helps to raise the book's profile. :-)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Mr. McDuff. But it was not a surprise after all, taking in consideration the quality of your translations and your expertise. As what you comment about a "recommendation of the book rather than. . " I think is an important task for the translator to make the quality of a text to become visible throught the different shades of light the languages are, so your job is highly important, and apreciated for us who are blind to those different spectrums. =) My best regards