Session Details

Friday, 07 January

290. Rendering Old English Poetry: A Reading and Discussion of New Poetic Translations

1:45–3:00 p.m., Plaza II, J. W. Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Michael E. Matto, Adelphi Univ.

Speakers: Greg Delanty, Saint Michael’s Coll.; Robert Hass, Univ. of California, Berkeley; Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Adelphi Univ.; Carol Muske-Dukes, Univ. of Southern California; Daniel Tobin, Emerson Coll.

Respondent: Daniel G. Donoghue, Harvard Univ.

This roundtable gathers together poets who have recently translated Old English poetry to engage in a reading and discussion of their practice. We begin with the premise that translating Old English into modern English might be different from translating from other languages because the English-speaking translator feels an inherited relationship with the source text. Each poet will read aloud his or her translation of an Old English poem, framed by a brief articulation of how the poet found a way into the poem.

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