Kiwao Nomura’s “Spectacle & Pigsty” wins 2012 Best Translated Book Award

May 8, 2012


THE 2012 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD WINNERS: WIESŁAW MYŚLIWSKI’S “STONE UPON STONE” AND KIWAO NOMURA’S “SPECTACLE & PIGSTY”

The winning titles and translators of this year’s Best Translated Book Award were announced earlier this evening at McNally Jackson Books as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. In poetry, Kiwao Nomura’s Spectacle & Pigsty, translated from the Japanese by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander, took the top honor, and Wiesław Myśliwski’s Stone Upon Stone, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston, won for fiction. Organized by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best Transalted Book Award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the previous year.

Tom Roberge of New Directions and Chad W. Post of Open Letter (who are also co-hosts of the weekly Three Percent Podcast) hosted the celebration, which took place at one of the premiere independent bookstores in the country. Thanks to the support of Amazon.com, $20,000 will be distributed among the winning authors and translators. This is the second consecutive year that Amazon.com has underwritten the BTBA.

“It’s extremely satisfying to be able to give these authors and translators such a significant cash prize,” said BTBA co-founder Chad W. Post, “and it’s especially pleasing to do so in this environment—at such a great bookstore, during such a great festival.”

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Poetry: Joshua Corey

May 8, 2012

Sæglópur

Gut of static hush the single voice venturesome and small
signal to noise the toe-tap adjustment
a Turner reality a Whistler’s frost of decadence
filming whipped grays and blacks indicative of sea
fog rushing the viewer’s 3D-glasses slack
planked lines for a ship a dislodged mast
for the ear to cling to sirens mob the horizon
somersaulting breathless in radioactive waves
exultant the listener at the proper remove
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Rusty Morrison interviews Melissa Kwasny

May 8, 2012

one of the two co-editors of the anthology I GO TO THE RUINED PLACE: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights

Co-editors of the anthology:

Melissa Kwasny is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Nine Senses (Milkweed Editions 2011), as well as the editor of Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950 (Wesleyan University Press 2004).

&

M.L. Smoker belongs to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation. Her first collection of poems is entitled Another Attempt at Rescue. Her poems and stories have appeared in Shenendoah, South Dakota Review, Many Mountains Moving and many anthologies. She resides in Helena, Montana, where she is Director of Indian Education at the Office of Public Instruction.

Two poems from the anthology appear at the bottom of this interview.

To see more about the anthology, or to order, click here. Or, simply visit the Lost Horse Press website here.
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