Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Now on Wordplay: Nan Watkins translates Yvan Goll



















This week on Wordplay, translator Nan Watkins shares her work on Alsatian poet Yvan Goll. Goll helped define Surrealism, and wrote some of the most enduring poetry to spring from that movement, though little of it has appeared in English. Nan's been working on Goll's last book, Das Traumkraut (she translates the title as The Dream Weed), and, after we review the basic contours of his work and the lineaments of his life, reads from her fresh, and often stunning, versions.

The show's rebroadcast streams Tuesday at 6:00 pm and Wednesday at 7:00 am - but the show is available 24/7 from the station archive page as both a stream and podcast.

Definitely worth a listen.
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Update: The translations from Das Traumkraut that Watkins read during our interview are, sadly, for the most part not yet in print - though a few, as she mentions, appear in the new issue of the Asheville Poetry Review.

Watkins has published other translations of Goll, though, and of Claire Goll, including those in 10,000 Dawns (published in 2004), on which she collaborated with Thomas Rain Crowe.









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The photo of Goll comes from findagrave.com. Yes, there's a site for everything on this ole internet thingy.

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