Poet, translator, and teacher George McWhirter was Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate, and holds a startlingly impressive list of awards and honours since then, most recently as translator from Spanish of the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize Winner, Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence by Mexican novelist, activist, and journalist Homero Aridjis. In conversation with author and translator Carmen Rodríguez, he speaks to what the jury cited as “the book’s enchanting variety of tones and subjects… A keynote is the sense of a person speaking with us plainly and yet from kinship with a light that bathes, and springs from, each thing.” McWhirter offers a unique perspective on not only the singular collection but the enigmatic process of translating poetry.