The Art of Translation: Dialogues

Program #2. Irina Mashinski - Mary Jane White

Monday, May 23, 2022

A series of conversations in the RACC movable studio: the author and host Irina Mashinski in dialogue with masters of the ancient art of translation, as they reflect on their work.

Event Venue:

RACC Movable Studio, New York

Event Date:

Monday, May 23, 2022

A series of conversations in the RACC movable studio: Irina Mashinski in dialogue with masters of the art of translation, as they reflect on their work.

What is translation, after all? What is the nature and the role of the ‘original’ in each particular case? And what is actually being translated? And why is it relevant now, of all times?

In Memory of Alexander Sumerkin


In this program Mary Jane White reflects on her apprenticeship with Mary Barnard, John Glad, Daniel Weissbort, her own translations from Tsvetaeva, Gumilyov, V. Ivanov, Khodasevich, Limonov, and Gorbanevskaia.

Video recording on the RACC/Roman Khidekel YouTube channel

Mary Jane White is a poet and translator who practiced law in Waukon, Iowa, and is now retired. Originally from North Carolina, she earned degrees from The North Carolina School of the Arts (HS, visual arts), Reed College (BA English, creative poetry thesis), The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA, poetry), and studied law at Duke University and The University of Iowa. She has been awarded NEA Fellowships (poetry and one in translation). New poems Dragonfly. Toad. Moon. appeared in April 2022 from Press 53 (Winston-Salem, N.C.); new translations of Marina Tsvetaeva – in After Russia (Adelaide Books, 2021).

Irina Mashinski was born in Moscow and graduated from Moscow University where completed her Ph.D. In 1991, she moved to the US, where she worked as a high school mathematics and science teacher and taught at universities. Irina Mashinski is the author of eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations in Russian. She is co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015) and of Cardinal Points, the journal of Slavic literature in English (Brown University), and co-translator of Lev Ozerov’s Portraits Without Frames (NYRB Classics, 2018). Irina Mashinski is the recipient of several Russian literary awards and, with Boris Dralyuk, of the first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky / Stephen Spender International Translation Prize competition. Her English-language debut, is The Naked World. A Tale with Verse (MadHat Press, 2022).

 http://www.irinamashinski.com

On YouTube: Irina Mashinski

On Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/mashinski/

This program is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.