Translating a Moving Target – Poetry of a New Romania
On March 26th, 2009, Boston University presented “Translating a Moving Target – Poetry of a New Romania”. The discussion featured internationally acclaimed Romanian poet Liliana Ursu, Romanian translator Sean Cotter, and Askold Melnyczuk as moderator.
Apart from being a Romanian poet, Liliana Ursu is also a prose writer and translator. She was born in Sibiu, Romania in 1949 and has published eight books of Romanian poetry. In 1997, Ursu published her first book in English, entitled The Sky Behind the Forest. This book became a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Ursu has held positions such as Fulbright Lecturer at Penn State’s University Park campus, visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Louisville, and Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry.
Professor of Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Texas in Dallas, Sean Cotter collaborated with the Center for Translation Studies there. From 1994 to 1996, Cotter worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania. He was awarded a Fulbright-Hays research grant from 2001 to 2002.
The moderator, Askold Melnyczuk, is the founding editor of AGNI where he writes an essay series entitled “Shadowboxing”. He received a Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Award in Fiction in 1997.
WBUR aired this discussion on April 5th, 2009.
