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Please note: the conference is in BUILDING 2 on the UC Bruce campus. 
Watch this space for information updates. 

DAILY FORECAST (care of Describing Things in Canberra):  

Wednesday Canberra weather: regardless of any thing Neil Finn may have said, you don’t really have your own personal weather bubble. You can easily test this by travelling from the Woden Valley to the northside on foggy morning. Or getting on a plane in December and flying to Helsinki.

So those of you who are in Canberra today will probably experience much the same weather as each other. Warm to hot and slighty sticky. The weather equivalent of spilling cocoa on your new trousers.

Chemical interventions such as deodorant, sunscreen, mosquito repellent and anti-histamines are strongly indicated. Consider long before you commit to opaque tights, however hairy your legs are. Once the sun is over the yard arm, applications of gin and tonic may be beneficial.

 

 

 
Monday, November 28 • 11:30am - 12:30pm
Welcome and Keynote 1: Collaborating with the Dead: Authorised Theft in Translation as Re-Creation: 2B9

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Does Ezra Pound's credo 'make it new' exalt authorised theft of past literary works? According to poet and translator Tony Barnstone, 'even the phrase "make it new" derives from the Chinese characters which the founder of the Shang Dynasty, King Tang (1617–1588 BCE), had inscribed in gold on his bathtub', and so the past is washed clean to be used today. According to Emerson, 'In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty'. Then is genius the ability to renew and redefine a certain past, make it relevant? In this light, translation of poetry will be closely examined. It is impossible to convey the emotions and allusions contained in a poem by translating it faithfully word for word. After all, what distinguishes poetry from prose is the use of language's metaphoric life force, as well as its use as a musical tool. Therefore, a translator of poetry can become the unwitting destroyer of poems or, alternately, a re-creator of new ones. Consequently, does literary history readjust itself with each effective translation? Is two-way authorised theft crucial in translation of poetry?

Moderators
PH

Paul Hetherington

Professor of Writing, University of Canberra
Paul Hetherington is Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra and Head of the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) there. He has published ten full-length collections of poetry, including Burnt Umber (UWAP, 2016) and five poetry chapbooks, most recently Earth. His... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for Sholeh Wolpé

Sholeh Wolpé

Writer
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet and literary translator. She is the recipient of the 2014 PEN/Heim, 2013 Midwest Book Award and 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize. Wolpé's nine books include, Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths, Rooftops of Tehran, Sin—Selected Poems... Read More →


Monday November 28, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm PST
2B9: Lecture Theatre Building 2, UC