Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Ekleksographia: Volume Two: Anny Ballardini and Translations

Ekleksographia is an exercise in asymmetrical publishing, and is a shoe (or even two!) thrown at the spotlit shrug and yawn. This issue is dedicated to translation and edited by Anny Ballardini.

Anny Ballardini lives in Bolzano, Italy. She grew up in New York, lived in New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Florence. A poet, translator and simultaneous interpreter for English, French, Italian, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNO, University of New Orleans, Chair and Director Bill Lavender. She teaches high school; edits an online poetry site; and writes a blog: Narcissus Works. Besides various full length publications of translations, to be mentioned are her two collections of poems, Opening and Closing Numbers, Moria Editions, Editor Bill Allegrezza, 2005; and Ghost Dance in 33 Movements Otoliths Press, Editor Mark Young, 2009.

The Passionate Gardener

Ekleksographia: Volume Two: Anny Ballardini and Translations

The artwork above is by Berty Skuber, cover for Rudolf Borchardt's The Passionate Gardener in the English translation by Henry Martin (McPherson & Company, Kingston, New York, October 2006).
"Rudolf Borchardt's The Passionate Gardener is one of the most beautiful books ever written about gardening and the world of plants, about the poetry of observing and making sense of the world around us. It's a very difficult book, full of the language and the feelings of a former era, full of the hopes and aspirations of a former time. My own relationship to works in translation is highly poetic, since written language always turns itself for me into images. I constantly think and dream in various languages, and I think of translation as something magical. The images I see while reading a book like Anna Maria Ortese's L'Iguana in Italian and then while reading the same book in English are very different, even in passages where the meaning of the words is precisely the same."

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