Two poets reading from translations and new works.
Tuesday, May 31st at 8:00PM
Jason Weiss is the author of six books, including Cloud Therapy, a book about swimming. Among his translations are the stories of Marcel Cohen and the poems of Luisa Futoransky. He lives in Brooklyn and is currently writing a book on listening. He will read from his translation of Silvina Ocampo.
Silvina Campo (1903-1993) was an Argentine poet, fiction writer, translator, and one-time playwright. Born into an elite Buenos Aires family, she at first studied art in Paris under Fernand Léger and surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico before marrying fellow Buenos Aires author Adolfo Bioy Casares. Ocampo published several volumes of short stories and poetry, as well as collaborative anthologies with Bioy Casares and close friend Jorge Luis Borges.
Andrew Davis is a poet, cabinetmaker, and visual artist. His current project is the long poem IMPLUVIUM. He divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the north coast of Spain. Andrew Davis will read from his translation of Osip Mandelstam.
Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. Unpopular with the Soviet authorities, Mandelstam found it increasingly difficult to publish his poetry, though an edition of collected poems did come out in 1928. In 1934, after reading an epigram denouncing Stalin to friends, Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile. He wrote furiously during these years, and his wife, Nadezhda, memorized his work in case his notebooks were destroyed or lost. (Nadezhda Mandelstam’s extraordinary memoirs of life with her husband, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned, later helped to bring Mandelstam a worldwide audience.)