Anthony Rudolf was born in 1942 in London, where he still lives. He is a major translator of literary works from French, Russian and other languages, and he was the founder and publisher of Menard Press. His latest book European Hours: Collected Poems represents a life's work severely curated - including poems, prose texts and prose poems - and was published by Carcanet in May 2017.
Poetry Readings
Memory tells me my first public reading was at the inaugural Poetry International in 1967 and my second during the same year or in 1968, at the Oxford Poetry Society. The president of the latter, if he can be tracked down, was an undergraduate who may remember the year: Michael Schmidt. On both of these occasions I read my translations of Yves Bonnefoy: revised versions of some of these will be in my forthcoming Bonnefoy selection, Poems, from Carcanet.I am one of the last surviving participants of Poetry International 1967, the others being Nathaniel Tarn, Al Alvarez and Peter Jay. It was unusual in those days for a translator to read alongside a visiting poet. The plan was that an actor or the founder of the festival, Ted Hughes, would read the translations, but Ted had hurt his back and in the end he suggested that I read them. Among the poets on stage with Bonnefoy and me was W.H. Auden. At one point I heard Auden say in a stage whisper: “I wish that young man would hurry up. I need a drink." In the green room afterwards I presented him with a volume of his poems to sign and apologised for keeping him from his drink. He was gracious.
Over the succeeding fifty years I have participated in many readings, almost all as translator or co-translator of the visiting poet or as chairman of the event. Sometimes the event was a Menard Press launch. Rarely have I read or wanted to read my own poems. It was with some anxiety, if not foreboding, that I agreed to a book launch of European Hours, my collected poems, at Waterstones (formerly Dillons) in Gower Street, a shop where I have been buying books since about 1965. My dear friend Elaine Feinstein agreed to read with me. That way I would feel less exposed, plus she is, in my opinion, the best reader of poetry since the grand master himself, Ted Hughes.
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| Anthony Rudolf & Elaine Feinstein at the launch of European Hours. Photo credit: Deryn Rees-Jones. |
The evening before the event I felt the need for a cover story, or a pre-emption of whatever, and wrote an introduction, a prose sonnet in fourteen numbered paragraphs, numbered prose paragraphs being my preferred poetry medium these days. First thing on the day of the reading I sent it to a friend who sternly, and rightly, forbade me from reading it. In the event (at the event), I read out one of the paragraphs in which I explain that most of the poems in the book have been revised over the years and that therefore I need not necessarily read the poems according to the official chronology. But I did.
The introduction is to be published instead in PN Review and maybe I will submit a new non-prose poem, my first one for four years. Next week I am reading my co-translations of the Hebrew poet, Miriam Neiger-Fleischmann, who is coming over from Jerusalem to launch the publication of our book, Death of the King and Other Poems (Shoestring Press) at 7pm at Bookmarks Bookshop (1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE). What with publication of European Hours, Death of the King, Bonnefoy’s Poems and my Shearsman book Jerzyk (the wartime diary of my cousin who killed himself in hiding in West Ukraine, the only recorded child suicide of the Holocaust), this has been quite a year.
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Anthony Rudolf's European Hours is available to buy here.
Yves Bonnefoy's Poems is available to pre-order here.
