Thursday 30 April 2020

Kallocain Audiobook

News from Penguin that there's to be an audiobook recording of my translation of Karin Boye's KALLOCAIN, scheduled for release in July.


Saturday 25 April 2020

Coronavirus Constructions

At Literary Hub, Siri Hustvedt writes about Reading in a Pandemic:
I had headache, body aches, chills, cough, chest constriction but no fever. I was in bed for a week and then the symptoms lingered. I recovered. There were no tests so I don’t know if it was Covid-19 or something else, but Boccaccio’s book, which I have long loved, haunted me as I lay in bed, and I returned to it.

Classics


Norvik Press has some excerpts from new translations of Hagar Olsson's Chitambo (tr. Sarah Death) and Karin Boye's Crisis (tr. Amanda Doxtater)

The publisher notes:
In many countries, the lockdown continues. We are thinking of you all.

Thursday 23 April 2020

Sheep View 2


Also on the theme of Faroese writing, there's an extensive dual-language anthology of contemporary Faroese poetry in a special issue of the online literary magazine PLUME. The poets include Daniella Louisa Andreasen, Sissal Kampmann, Vónbjørt Vang, Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, Guðrið Helmsdal and Tóroddur Poulsen, and the translations are by Randi Ward.

Wednesday 22 April 2020

Sheep View

William Heinesen (1900-1991) is probably still the best-known Faroese writer internationally - perhaps because he wrote in Danish, and perhaps also because of the English translations by W. Glyn Jones. Yet there is a considerable body of Faroese literature written in the Faroese language, most of which still awaits international recognition. On the British Library's European Studies blog, Pardaad Chamsaz writes about a collection of books of modern Faroese writing the Library has recently acquired, noting the problems encountered by Faroese authors in making their work known and read abroad:
It is safe to say that Faroese writers have a difficult task to become known beyond their shores. As the Faroese nominee for the 2020 Nordic Council Literature Prize, Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, writes, ‘only a half-dozen or so can make a living off their writing. And in order to do that, a writer has to be translated into a bigger language, but publishing houses in other countries do not want to spend money on some book from the Faroe Islands.

Saturday 18 April 2020

The Bat Effect

by Pia Tafdrup


We have learned that a wing-beat
from a butterfly on one
side of the globe
can cause a storm
on the other,

we now also know that a virus
has transmitted itself
from a bat to a human
at a market in Wuhan,
the sick person’s coughing has spread
a swirl of Covid-19 to the rest of the world
without discriminating
between gender, ethnicity or religion.

A storm of corona, a storm of infection,
tiny particles like invading parasites
in living cells
induce coughing, fever, difficulty
with breathing,
lead to slow suffocation.

Suspected cases are quarantined, the rest of us
forced into a time-warped community
where we have in common
each being confined to our homes,
unless at high risk
we’re performing essential tasks.

Thursday 16 April 2020

Day 16

My translation of Pia Tafdrup's poem 'På alle sprog' (from the Bloodaxe volume Salamander Sun and Other Poems) was chosen for Day 16 of National Poetry Month here in the UK.