Good afternoon, so glad to see you all here. Thank you very much for joining us. Some of you have joined our first session with Molly Peacock. I am glad to welcome you back. Thank Yang wang and the east west learning club continuing cohosting Poetry In Translation event, thank the league of Canadian poets for funding.
Also welcome new and old friends from lakeside academy of Canada, coviews, wechat book clubs. Thank you all.
Now it is my honor to introduce today’s guest poet: AF Moritz. here I share his biography.
- F. Moritz is a Canadian-American poet, teacher, and scholar. He is the 6thPoet Laureate of Toronto (2019-2022). He has published more than 20 books of poetry, and several volumes of poetry translated from French and Spanish. His most recent books are As Far As You Know (2020) and The Sparrow: Selected Poems(2018),on the screen you will see some of his books. In 2015, Princeton University Press republished his 1986 volume in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, The Tradition. His poetry has received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Ingram Merrill Fellowship. He is a three-time nominee for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry. He teaches at the University of Toronto.
Al has made a lot of achievements; you will find plenty online and on his website. I encourage you to watch his poetry reading videos and interviews.
Now before our discussions, I will quickly introduce myself. I am Anna Yin, the inaugural poet laureate of Mississauga. I have authored five poetry collections. My next book “Mirrors and Windows” will be published in 2021 by Guernica Editions. Today, we will discuss three poems by A.f. Moritz from that book.
I will stop sharing, let us welcome Al to speak…
Al says…
Yes. Al you are the current Toronto Poet Laureate. I know you are very busy with many duties for your position. could you quickly describe your role and tasks?
Cool. Thank you Al for sharing these. I still miss these moments when I was poet laureate for Mississauga. How time flies… Now let us talk about Poetry and Translation. How about you sharing your translations and talking about your experience as translator?
I guess you have had some great influence from the work of Pablo Neruda.
Now could you please read a few of your translations in both languages as I show them on the screen?
Now we will return to your own poem, could you read :
then I will share the screen with my translation. here I want to quickly show you, and summarize the common difficulty and challenges.
Contrasting words, opposite words, add some intensity. literally (word for word)
They, gender… (sexual meaning imply)
then show slide show again…
More humanity, more caring, more essential, more nature…
… wiser… sage
I remember I translated this poem in 2014, I was impressed by the quiet yet intense beauty you expressed for Poetry or Love, and I was touched by the loneness also, so I wrote a poem afterward. I would like to share the poem now…
Late Train.
I guess you mentioned the boys in the poem brought back my own memory for my first love.
How about you read: Each Step into the world.
This poem is not
innocence