This Week in English | Oct 9 – 15, 2017
Fall Break Edition
Caroline Bicks Gives Pre-Performance Lecture on Hamlet this Thursday
Caroline Bicks, the inaugural holder of the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, will share insights into Hamlet in advance of the Aquila Theater performance of the play on Thursday. Members of the department and of the community are invited to attend the CLAS pre-Homecoming Reception at 4:30pm in the Hudson Museum, the pre-performance lecture by Bicks at 6pm in the Bodwell Lounge, and the performance itself at 7pm.
William Yellow Robe Jr. Featured at Literary Festival in Oklahoma
The twenty-fifth anniversary installment of the Returning the Gift literary festival (October 8-11, 2017) includes a Tuesday morning session featuring the Assiniboine playwright and UMaine faculty member William Yellow Robe, Jr. The festival, which is being held on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norma, celebrates and strives to support the accomplishments of indigenous artists.
Film on Thoreau this Wednesday Evening
Maine-based documentary filmmaker Huey Coleman will be on campus this Wednesday to screen his most recent film, Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul (run time: 114 minutes). The screening, which the English Department is co-sponsoring with Native American Programs and the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, takes place at 7pm in the IMRC APPE Space (104 Stewart Commons) and is free and open to the public.
Jennifer Moxley Featured in New Volume on Translation
Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer recently saw to completion Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries, an innovative translation project for Graywolf Press that features an essay on Stephane Mallarmé’s enigmatic “Sonnet en –xy” by Professor of Creative Writing Jennifer Moxley. Here’s how Graywolf describes the volume:
Into English presents poems, translations, and commentaries in an extraordinary format for readers to experience the intricacy and artistry of poetry in translation. Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer invited twenty-five contributors, all of whom are translators and most of whom are also poets, to select one poem in another language and three English translations of it and provide an essay about the challenges of translating it. This wide-format anthology offers the original poem side by side with the translations, so readers can compare several different ways a poem can be rendered into English. Organized chronologically, the anthology opens with a poem in ancient Greek by Sappho beside translations by Anne Carson, Willis Barnstone, and Mary Barnard, followed by an essay by Karen Emmerich.
The original poems are by poets from across time and from around the world, including Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, García Lorca, Szymborska, Amichai, and Adonis. The languages represented are many, from Latin to Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. More than seventy translators are included, among them Robert Bly, Ruth Fainlight, David Hinton, Rosemary Lloyd, Khaled Mattawa, and W. S. Merwin. Into English becomes a chorus in celebration of world poetry and translation—what George Kalogeris, quoting Virgil, describes as “song replying to song replying to song.”
Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries will be available to purchase in the first week of November.
Student Volunteers Sought for Homecoming Open House
Prospective students, their families, and friends, will be on hand Saturday, October 14, for an Open House timed to coincide with Homecoming Weekend. I’ll be on the mall from 9am – 10am to speak with interested students and would love to have the help of interested undergraduate majors. We’ll lead a brief tour of glamorous Neville Hall at 10am and duties will be completed by 11am. If you are interested, or know a student who might be, please be in touch at <english.chair@maine.edu>.
Academic Calendar Reminder: Spring 2018 Registration
Enrollment for the Spring 2018 semester, along with the on-line Winter Session, is scheduled to open on Monday, October 23, 2017.
Have a great week, everyone!
Steve Evans, English Department Chair