The second volume of translations, transcreations, versions, and extensions of works by New York poet Charles Bernstein by Vienna-based collective Versatorium (coordinated by Peter Waterhouse). The first volume won the Münster International Poetry Prize for best translation in 2015.
Charles Bernstein = Karl Elektric, Gedichte und Übersetzen. Bd. 1.2
The second volume of translations, transcreations, versions, and extensions of works by New York poet Charles Bernstein by Vienna-based collective Versatorium (coordinated by Peter Waterhouse). The first volume won the Münster International Poetry Prize for best translation in 2015.
The full ensemble of my 18 collaborative translators, all of whom came to Münster for the occasion. Our Saturday night reading (May 9, 2015) was the final event of the Lyrik festival; it started with my reading solo on the stage, with other voices joining in with their translations. It ended with all of us on stage, reading simultaneously. Some people walked out, one shouting "Anarchists!" (Photo by Robert Golinski)
The 2015 Prize of the City of Münster for International Poetry, the leading translation prize in Germany, was awarded to two new translations of my work: Gedichte und Übersetzen, tr. Versatorium and Peter Waterhouse (Vienna: Edition Korrespondenzen) and Angriff der Schwierigen Gedichte tr. Tobias Amslinger , Norbert Lange, Léonce W. Lupette and Mathias Traxler (based on All the Whiskey in Heaven, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) (Wiesbaden, Germany: Lux Books). The Verstoarium collaborators included Judith Aistleitner, Katharine Apostle, Gabriella Attems, Aida Besirevic, Julia Dengg, Helmut Ege, Monique Ehmann, Nino Idoidze, Katharina Lehner, Astrid Nischkauer, Natalie Neumaier, Mirjam Paninski, Marlies Peter, Miriam Rainer, Julia Rosenkranz, Anja Sander, Katharina Schindl, Dimitri Smirnov, Nina-Victoria Truskawetz, Franz Vala, Jennifer Weiss, Katharina Widholm, Anna Zalesko, plus Waterhouse and me.
Since 1993, the city of Münster has awarded the poetry prize for a book of poetry and its translation. Prizewinners 2013 were the Caribbean Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and his German translator Werner von Koppenfels.
THE VERSATORIUM PLAYBOOK: HOW TO DO THINGS WITH TRANSLATION Seminar with Charles Bernstein & Peter Waterhouse on the poetics of transduction, substitution, and transformation, as well as the political role that translation can play as a site of activism and engagement. April 9, 2014.
Lyn Hejinan writes in The Book of A Thousand Eyes:
“The bed is made of sentences which present themselves as what they are Some soft, some hardly logical, some broken off Sentences granting freedom to memories and sights” [1]
If a bed is made of sentences, then we take rest, converse with the unconscious, locate freedom, the intimate, night, dark, gestational silence, the forming of images and ideas — all within what can be built from an assortment of varied sentences. Sentences become our increment, lumber, and leisure.
Lisa Robertson writes in her recent book, Nilling, “The most temporary membranes serve as shelter.”[2]
What is it about the sentence that encourages one to stretch out?
Der Hammer, a publication from Vienna's Alte Schmiede, has just published this issue of German translations, including multiple versions of "Johnny Cake Hollow" – a preview of a book in the works from Edition Korrespondenzen, translated by Peter Waterhouse, Katharine Apostle and the Versatorium crew at the University of Vienna, Comparative Literature program. Video of our Alte Schmiede reading was posted her last month.
A raucous evening of translations and transformations, performances and metamorphoses in/around All the Whiskey in Heaven and "Johnny Cake Hollow."Charles Bernstein with Miriam Rainer, Julia Dengg, Manuel Niedermeier, Dimitri Smirnov, Helmut Ege, Franz Vala, Judith Aistleitner, Nina Truskawetz, and Peter Waterhouse. With thanks to Katharine Apostle. Filmed by August Bisinger
Charles Bernstein = Karl Elektric: Versatorium transcreations, part two
The second volume of translations, transcreations, versions, and extensions of works by New York poet Charles Bernstein by Vienna-based collective Versatorium (coordinated by Peter Waterhouse). The first volume won the Münster International Poetry Prize for best translation in 2015.
The second volume of translations, transcreations, versions, and extensions of works by New York poet Charles Bernstein by Vienna-based collective Versatorium (coordinated by Peter Waterhouse). The first volume won the Münster International Poetry Prize for best translation in 2015.