Crossed Paths: Translation Communities (Anthologies)

Join us to celebrate two recent anthologies – A Different Eden: Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia (Dedalus Press, 2021) and Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations (Shearsman, 2022) – whose inclusive transnational and multilingual approaches to translation blur the reductive nature of political boundary.

Thoughtfully edited to refasten locales, lingual stocks and cultural trajectories, each of these publications forge community in an era of increasing social division.

Moyra Donaldson is from County Down. She has published ten collections of poetry including her Selected Poems. She has been involved in various collaborations with visual artists, most recently with Wexford artist Paddy Lennon, resulting in the limited-edition publication of artwork and poems, Blood Horses, examining the profound connection between horses and humans. In 2019, she received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her latest collection, Bone House, was published by Doire Press, 2021. 

Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator whose fifth and most recent collection, Deformations (Carcanet, 2020) was shortlisted for the T.S.Elliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize. Her translations from Russian include In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.

Katherine M. Hedeen is a prize-winning translator of poetry and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region into English. Her latest book-length publications include prepoems in postspanish by Jorgenrique Adoum, Book of the Cold by Antonio Gamoneda, Every Beat Is Secret by Fina García Marruz, Almost Obscene by Raúl Gómez Jattin, and rebel matter by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez. She is the co-editor, with Welsh poet Zoë Skoulding, of the groundbreaking transatlantic translation anthology, Poetry’s Geographies. Her co-translation of Venezuelan poet, Juan Calzadilla, was recently awarded the Wisconsin Poetry Series’ inaugural translation competition. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation Grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is Managing Editor of the transnational / translational indie press, Action Books. She resides in Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba.

Keith Payne is an award-winning poet, translator and editor, with eight collections of poetry in translation and original poetry. He recently co-edited A Different Eden: Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia (Dedalus, 2021). Keith is curator of the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Bursary and is Cork City Library Eco Poet in Residence 2022-23. Photo: Keith Payne by Javier Teniente

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez is one of Cuba’s most outstanding and celebrated contemporary writers, with over seventy collections of his poetry published throughout the world. He has been the recipient of major awards in the Spanish-speaking region, including, in 2015, the coveted Loewe Prize and most recently the Manuel Alcántara Prize. His selected poems have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese and he has read his poetry in more than fifty countries. In the last decade, his work has developed an enthusiastic readership in the US and the UK, where he has published seven book-length translations, the latest being rebel matter: poems 2000-2021(Shearsman). He divides his time between Gambier, Ohio, where he is currently Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba. 

Zoë Skoulding is a poet whose latest collection is A Marginal Sea (Carcanet, 2022). She is the editor, with Katherine M. Hedeen, of Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations (Shearsman, 2022). She is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Bangor University and lives on Ynys Môn. 

Lorna Shaughessy has published four poetry collections with Salmon Poetry and a chapbook, Song of the Forgotten Shulamite (Lapwing). She translates Galician, Spanish and Latin American poetry, and co-edited A Different Eden: Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia (Dedalus Press, 2021). In 2021 she received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland produce a short poetry film based on her work.