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Translation Talks with Valzhyna Mort and Erín Moure

Join us on Thursday, February 16th at 7:00pm ET on Zoom for our fourth Translation Talks, featuring Valzhyna Mort in conversation with Erín Moure. Register here for free.

Valzhyna Mort is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), winner of the 2021 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the UNT Rilke Prize, and named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by the New York Times. Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Foundation. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for her translation of Polina Barskova’s Air Raid (Ugly Duckling, 2021). Her translation, together with Hanif Abdurraqib, of Julia Cimafiejeva’s Motherfield (Deep Vellum, 2022) is longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Born in Minsk, Belarus, Mort writes in English and Belarusian, and translates between English, Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish. Find out more about Mort’s work on her website.

Erín Moure is a poet and poetry translator based in Montreal. She has published 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, essays, articles on translation, a biopoetics and two memoirs, and is translator or co-translator of 26 books, mostly poetry, from French, Galician, Portunhol, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian (with Roman Ivashkiv) into English. Her most recent books include a translation of Chus Pato’s The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021) and two chapbooks, Retooling for a Figurative Life (Vallum, 2021) and Arborescence (Columba, 2022). Her translation of Chantal Neveu’s This Radiant Life (Book*hug Press, 2020) won the 2021 Governor General’s Award for translation into English. Moure’s work was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002 for Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person, in 2006 for Little Theatres, and in 2008 for Notebook of Roses and Civilization, a translation of Nicole Brossard’s work alongside Robert Majzels. Moure’s Theophylline: a-poretic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké, is forthcoming in Fall 2023 from House of Anansi. Find out more about Moure’s work on her website.

Translation Talks will run for approximately one hour on Zoom and will be hosted by Griffin Poetry Prize social media editor Mirene Arsanios and editorial director Adriana Oniță.

You will receive the Zoom link via Eventbrite after registering. Autocaptioning will be available.

If you have any questions, please contact Mirene Arsanios at socialmedia@griffinpoetryprize.com.

Check out our past Translation Talks on SoundCloud, featuring exceptional poet-translators Khaled Mattawa, Sarah Riggs, Ani Gjika, Dunya Mikhail, Ali Kinsella, Dzvinia Orlowsky, and Mira Rosenthal.


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