2011 Found in Translation Award Winners - Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak for Szymborska's "Here"

Thu Sep 8 15:45:24 UTC 2011

CLARE CAVANAGH AND STANISLAW BARANCZAK WIN THE 2011 FOUND IN TRANSLATION AWARD

New York, September 6, 2011 — The Polish Cultural Institute in New
York, together with Found in Translation Award co-founders—The Polish
Book Institute in Krakow, W.A.B. Publishers in Warsaw, and the Polish
Cultural Institute in London—are pleased to announce that Clare
Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak have been named the winners of this
year’s award for their translation of Nobel Prize-winning poet,
Wislawa Szymborska‘s collection, _Here_ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2010). The award is given annually to the translator of the finest
publication of Polish literature in English to have appeared in book
form during the preceding calendar year and recognizes the great
importance of the original text. The winner receives a monetary award
and a three-month residency in Krakow funded by the Polish Book
Institute.

The first Found in Translation Award, in 2008, was given to Bill
Johnston for his translation of _New Poems_ by Tadeusz Rozewicz
(Archipelago Books, 2007). In 2009 the award went to Antonia
Lloyd-Jones for her version of Pawel Huelle's _The Last Supper_
(Serpent’s Tail, 2008), and in 2010 Danuta Borchardt won for her
rendition of Witold Gombrowicz’s novel, _Pornografia_ (Grove/Atlantic,
2009). Candidates for the Award may be nominated by private
individuals as well as by institutions in Poland and abroad.
Nominations should be sent with the subject-heading FOUND IN
TRANSLATION to: The Polish Book Institute, 31-011 Krakow, ul.
Szczepanska 1, Poland, e-mail: biuro at instytutksiazki.pl

"Szymborska is a poet of looking, and looking askance. Her voice,
expressed through simple, wry declarations and observations —
tactfully and succinctly translated into English for many years by the
team of Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak [….] Often,
Szymborska's poems re-create the fleeting instant when disbelief is in
suspension and an act of the imagination can take place. "– Dana
Goodyear, Los Angeles Times

"No reader, not even poetry-phobes, should miss the bright revelations
of Nobel laureate Szymborska. [...] Szymborska is sharply ironic and
lithely philosophical, pondering the phenomenal precision of dreams
and the elusiveness of meaning. The neat, prancing lyrics collected in
this slender, piercing book are delectable and profound." --Booklist

VERMEER

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end

- Wislawa Szymborska (tr. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)

The award will be presented at the conclusion of the “After Milosz”
Festival of Polish Poetry organized by Professor Michal Pawel
Markowski, The Stefan and Lucy Hejna Chair in Polish Language and
Literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, to take place
Sunday, October 2, 2011, at 4pm at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago’s
Wicker Park neighborhood.  The festival, in honor of the centenary of
the birth of Czeslaw Milosz, will run from September 31-October 2, and
will feature events including readings by leading poets from the U.S.
and Poland including Jorie Graham, Charles Simic, Adam Zagajewski,
Piotr Sommer, Marzanna Kielar, and others, a performance by Polish rap
duo Fisz/Emade, scholarly panels, and more.

________________________________

PRESS CONTACT:

For pictures, more information and all inquiries, please contact David
A. Goldfarb, 212.239.7300, ext. 3002, dgoldfarb at PolishCulture-nyc.org

________________________________

 WHAT:    Found in Translation Award Ceremony

                Translator Clare Cavanagh will receive the Found in
Translation award on behalf of herself and Stanislaw Baranczak from a
delegation including Grzegorz Gauden, Director of the Polish Book
Institute in Krakow, and Jerzy Onuch, Director of the Polish Cultural
Institute in New York.

WHEN:    Sun, Oct 2, 2011, 4pm
WHERE: Chopin Theatre
1543 W Division
Chicago, IL 60642
Tel. 773.278.1500
www.chopintheatre.com
DIRECTIONS: http://www.chopintheatre.com/directions.php
ADMISSION: Free and open to the public, but reservations required –
Contact Agata Kopacka,  akopacka at uic.edu

________________________________

Clare Cavanagh is a specialist in modern Polish, Russian, and
Anglo-American poetry.  Her book, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics:
Russia, Poland, and the West won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle
award for criticism, and her earlier work Osip Mandelstam and the
Modernist Creation of Tradition has received numerous prizes.  She is
an acclaimed translator of contemporary Polish poets such as Adam
Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska and is currently working on an
authorized biography of Czeslaw Milosz, entitled Czeslaw Milosz and
His Age: A Critical Life (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).  She is a
Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at
Northwestern University.

Stanislaw Baranczak (b. 1946) is one of the leading Polish poets of
the postwar “New Wave” also known as the “Generation of ‘68” as well
as an acclaimed and prolific translator, scholar, and editor.  He was
a co-founder of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) and its
journal Zapis, and he left Poland in 1980 under political pressure.
His works include A Fugitive from Utopia: The Poetry of Zbigniew
Herbert (1987), Breathing Under Water, and Other East European Essays
(1990),  Spoiling Cannibals’ Fun: Polish Poetry of the Last Two
Decades of Communist Rule (an anthology, ed. and transl. With Clare
Cavanagh), Wislawa Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected
Poems (1995, ed. and transl. with Clare Cavanagh), Jan Kochanowski,
Laments (1995, transl. with Seamus Heaney), and he is highly regarded
in Poland for his virtuosic translations of Shakespeare, among others.
 He is the Alfred Jurzykowski Professor of Polish Language and
Literature at Harvard University.

Wislawa Szymborska (b.1923), poet, translator, editor, was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, "for poetry that with ironic
precision allows the historical and biological context to come to
light in fragments of human reality."

Immediately following the war, Szymborska studied sociology and Polish
literature at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, then worked as an
editor for many years at literary periodicals. Two books of her poems
came out in the early 50s in which she had attempted to satisfy the
requirements of socialist realism and which she now disclaims. Her
real debut, in her own authentic voice, was a book of poems in 1957,
Calling Out to Yeti, the fruit of a basic re-evaluation of her
artistic and philosophical views, a book that shaped her creative work
from then on, and a key influence in the renewal of Polish poetry
following the political thaw of 1956. Works that enhanced her stature
and popularity in the 60s include Salt and A Hundred Consolations. As
a nationally celebrated poet she signed the letter of protest against
changes to the Constitution proposed in 1975, and in 1978 she openly
helped organize an oppositionist program of unauthorized academic
studies.  Her most recent work to appear in English is entitled Here
(Harcourt 2010), translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak,
and she was the subject of the recent documentary Life is Bearable, At
Times… (dir. Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska, 2009) screened at the 2010 PEN
World Voices Festival.

________________________________

The POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE (www.PolishCulture-NYC.org), established
in 2000, is a diplomatic mission dedicated to nurturing and promoting
cultural ties between the United States and Poland, both through
American exposure to Poland’s cultural achievements, and through
exposure of Polish artists and scholars to American trends,
institutions, and professional counterparts.

The Institute initiates, organizes, promotes, and produces a broad
range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, and the
fine arts. It has collaborated with such cultural institutions as
Lincoln Center Festival (Kalkwerk in 2009); BAM (Krum by TR Warszawa
in BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, which received a Village Voice Obie
Award); Art at St. Ann’s (TR Warszawa’s Macbeth, 2008); Martin E.
Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center; La MaMa E.T.C.; Film
Society of Lincoln Center (Kieslowski and Wajda retrospective, among
others); The Museum of Modern Art; Jewish Museum; PEN World Voices
Festival; Poetry Society of America; Yale University; and many more.
PCI co-produced the off-Broadway run of Irena’s Vow, with Tovah
Feldshuh, which ran on Broadway in 2009, as well as the widely
acclaimed New York Unsound Festival of contemporary music in 2010 and
2011, and the Focus! Festival of work by modern Polish composers at
Juilliard in 2011.

________________________________

The Polish Book Institute (Instytut Ksiazki) is a national institution
established in Krakow by the Polish Ministry of Culture in 2004.  The
Institute’s basic aims are to popularize books and reading within
Poland, as well as to promote Polish literature worldwide. These aims
are accomplished by:

promoting the best Polish books and their authors;
educational activities designed to encourage regular book reading;
introducing Polish literature abroad;
organizing research visits for translators;
increasing the number of translations from Polish into foreign
languages through the © POLAND Translation Program; and
making information on Polish books and the Polish publishing market
accessible to foreign consumers.

The Polish Book Institute presents Polish books at national and
international book fairs, arranges appearances by Polish writers at
literary festivals, participates in programs designed to promote
Polish culture worldwide, publishes catalogues of “New Books from
Poland”, runs study and educational activities, and sets up meetings
and seminars for translators of Polish literature.

http://www.bookinstitute.pl/

________________________________

The Polish Cultural Institute in London is a part of the Polish
diplomatic mission in the UK, tasked with the aim of promoting and
fostering an understanding of Polish culture throughout the country.
With offices based in Soho, the heart of creative London, the
Institute devises programmes of cultural evens in the genres of visual
arts, film, theatre, music and literature, in collaboration with the
most established as well as cutting-edge British cultural
organisations.

http://www.polishculture.org.uk

________________________________

W.A.B. Publishers was established up in 1991 as a private company by
three partners: Wojciech Kuhn, Beata Stasinska and Adam Widmanski. The
money to publish the first titles came from the founders’ private
savings.

The firm started with medical handbooks, but now W.A.B. Publishers is
a successful company publishing Polish and foreign contemporary
literature. Currently W.A.B. has the leading position in publishing
and promoting Polish contemporary fiction. W.A.B. is also a leader in
selling rights for the Polish authors' books abroad. W.A.B. has signed
almost 300 contracts concerning about 100 titles. W.A.B. publishes
over 120 new titles per year, and approximately half of them are
foreign.

http://www.wab.com.pl/?en-content=about-us

--
David A. Goldfarb
Curator of Literature and Humanities
Polish Cultural Institute in New York
350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 4621
New York, NY 10118
tel. 212-239-7300, ext. 3002
fax 212-239-7577
www.polishculture-nyc.org
--
http://www.davidagoldfarb.com

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