Translator Gives Voice to Bolivian Poet's Verse

The Center for Translation Studies presents Kent Johnson reading from his translations of Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 20.

Saenz Translation Excerpts • As the Comet Passes • The Night

The reading starts at 7 p.m. in the McDermott Suite, on the fourth floor of McDermott Library. The event is free, and the public is invited.

Johnson has been the author, editor or translator of more than 20 books and chapbooks, including three collections of poetry recently published in translation abroad.

His most recent books of translation (in collaboration with Forrest Gander) are of Saenz: Immanent Visitor (California University Press) and The Night (Princeton University Press). Both books have received awards from the PEN international association of writers.

Kent Johnson grew up in Montevideo, Uruguay, and worked in 1980 and 1983 as a literacy teacher in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. That experience led to his translation of many poems that were later collected in the volume A Nation of Poets: Writings from the Poetry Workshops of Nicaragua (West End Press).

Johnson has lived for the past 17 years in Freeport, Ill., where he teaches Spanish and English at Highland Community College.

Poems from his 2005 collection, Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz: Eleven Submissions to the War (Effing Press), have now been published in more than a dozen countries, and over the past few years he has been invited to give readings in England, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, and India.

Homage to the Last Avant-Garde, a large gathering of new and selected poems, will be released this year by Shearsman Books in the UK.

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