Join us for the third installment of Colloquy: Translators in Conversation, with readings and discussion from Nicole Simek, Pierre Joris, and Mark Polizzotti on translating the Francophone world.

The event will be moderated by Colloquy curator Catherine Fisher.

**PLEASE NOTE** to attend this event you MUST RSVP via Brooklyn Public Library’s event link here

Colloquy is a new event series presented by World Poetry Books in collaboration with Montez Press Radio and partnering event spaces that invite translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation.

Reader Bios:

Nicole Simek is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College. She is the author of Hunger and Irony in the French Caribbean: Literature, Theory, and Public Life (2016) and Eating Well, Reading Well: Maryse Condé and the Ethics of Interpretation (2008), and the translator of Maryse Condé’s The Belle Créole (2020).

​Pierre Joris has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for 55 years, publishing over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations in-between Mersch & Elsewhere, with Florent Toniello (Contra Mundum), Celebratory Talk-Essay on Receiving the Batty Weber Award (CNL, Literary Talks series), Fox-trails, -tales & -trots (poems & proses, Black Fountain); the translations Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan (FSG) & Microliths: Posthumous Prose of Paul Celan (CMP). In 2020 he published A City Full of Voices: Essays on the Work of Robert Kelly (co-edited with P. Cockelbergh & J. Newberger, CMP), & earlier: Arabia (not so) Deserta (Essays, Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), Conversations in the Pyrenees with Adonis (CMP 2018), & The Book of U (poems, with Nicole Peyrafitte, Simoncini 2017). When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte.

Mark Polizzotti’s books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, monographs on Luis Buñuel and Bob Dylan, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and recipient of an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he has translated more than fifty books, including works by Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Raymond Roussel, and Marguerite Duras. Recently, his translation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s Kibogo was longlisted for the National Book Award.

About the series:

Colloquy provides a forum for translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation. Each Colloquy event presents a group of two to four translators of recently published works of poetry, prose, and essay, for short readings and extended conversations, followed by Q&A’s with the audience. When possible, authors of translated books will also be invited to read from their work in the original language and to participate in the discussions. The post-reading discussions will focus on the process of translation and the specific translating issues arising from the events’ featured books. The discussions will be moderated by guest curator and emerging translator Catherine Fisher, with assistance from World Poetry Books publisher Peter Constantine and editor Matvei Yankelevich. The five events will be hosted by beloved independent bookstores in Brooklyn, NY, and simultaneously broadcast on internet radio for broader access by our collaborators at Montez Press Radio. (Montez will also archive the recordings for future listeners.) Selections from the transcripts of the live discussions will be published in World Poetry Review, an online magazine for poetry in translation that partners with our press.

Time: 7:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration