Thursday, April 08, 2021

My first steps as a translator

In late 1994, I took a break from my dissertation to translate some German poetry into English: two poems each by Wolfgang Hilbig and Durs Grünbein. I then sent the translations to the two poets care of their publishers and waited to see if they would respond. While I never heard back from Hilbig, Grünbein sent me a postcard and encouraged me to translate more of his poems. A few months later (after I had handed in my dissertation in March 1995), I was asked by an art magazine in Berlin to translate a Grünbein essay, which was my first step in more than a decade of translating for art magazines. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 April 2021)

 

Falten und Fallen. Gedichte: Amazon.de: Grünbein, Durs: Bücher

 

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