Sebald Lecture, 20 Feb 2017: Michael Longley on translating Latin & Greek poetry

The British Centre for Literary Translation
In association with the British Library

The Sebald Lecture 2017

Releasing the Lyric: Translating Latin and Greek Poetry
Michael Longley CBE

Monday 20 February 2017
7pm, The British Library Conference Centre
London NW1 2DB

Tickets £12 (£10 over 60s, £8 con)
On sale from the British Library Box Office
www.bl.uk/events

Since studying Classics at Trinity College Dublin, Irish poet Michael Longley has frequently drawn on classical models in his poetry and established allusive parallels between ancient and modern concerns. Over the course of his career he has also translated a wide variety of fellow poets, from classical authors to Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, prompting Justin Quinn to write that ‘for Longley, translation becomes a way of thinking about the world’. In this lecture he will be reading, and commenting on, his translations from Latin and Greek. He will begin with his youthful versions from Sextus Propertius and progress to later poems derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, taking in Sappho and Tibullus on the way.

One of Britain’s finest poets, Michael Longley has received many awards for his lyrical poems about love, death, memory, history and nature, published over more than fifty years. His collection Gorse Fires (1991) won the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and The Weather in Japan (2000) won the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His most recent book The Stairwell won the 2015 Griffin International Prize. His next collection Angel Hill will be published in June 2017. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001, and was appointed a CBE in 2003. He was Professor of Poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010.

The Sebald Lecture is given annually on an aspect of literature in translation and is named after W.G. Sebald who set up BCLT in 1989. ‘Max’ was a German writer who opted to live in the UK and continue writing in German. His novels and essays include The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz and On the Natural History of Destruction, and they established him as a leading writer of the 20th century.

Call for Papers: Rome in Translation

I thought this looked like a great idea - and personally topical, since I recently attempted to sit through Tinto Brass's Caligula (an attempt only foiled by the DVD which self-destructed in horror). If I were a little nearer Rhode Island I would totally go to this.

CFP: Decline and Fall: Rome in Translation, Translation in Rome
ACLA 2012 Conference, Rhode Island, March 29th to April 1st, 2012
Deadline: November 15, 2011

Papers should be submitted through the ACLA's website (http://acla.org/acla2012/)

Rome was an empire built on translation. She developed a literary tradition through a deliberate Latinization of Greek forms and incorporated art, culture and technology from across her vast empire. Consequently, Rome has often served as a symbol for translation and its dangers, a flashpoint for investigating the perceived perils of incorporating foreign cultures and texts. This seminar seeks to explore the topic of Rome in translation from both ancient and modern perspectives, asking how translation, broadly defined, has contributed to Rome's historical - and retrospective - rise and fall. We welcome papers that explore ancient Roman translation as well as papers that examine how translations have been mobilized to rethink and refashion Roman antiquity since the Roman empire's historical collapse: How did translation contribute to the evolution of Latin literature? How did ancient authors use translation to consolidate - and contest -evolving social and political identities? How was translation used during periods of political crisis or social collapse? On the modern side,
relevant questions might include: How has Rome's collapse been interpreted as a sign of the dangers of translation? How have modern translations been used as a tool for contesting Latin literary canons and creating modern ones? How have modern translators of Latin texts constructed particular images of Rome - or dismantled pre-existing representations? How has Rome been reinterpreted for modern audiences
through literature and other media?

We welcome paper proposals from scholars working in any period or field. Our hope is that the panel will prompt a dynamic interchange among scholars who focus on Roman antiquity and those who study ways in
which Rome has been repurposed or reimagined in later periods.

Organizers: Elizabeth Young (Wellesley College) and Siobhán McElduff (University of British Columbia)