Frankel Institute Event Series: Stranger Still: Translating Contemporary Poetry from Israel/Palestine

This series showcases the diversity of poetic voices from Israel/Palestine through the lens of translation. Each event features a multilingual poetry reading and a conversation between poets and translators on the careful negotiations that are involved in the act of translation, highlighting work that creates its own currents against and beyond the Israeli mainstream.

Vaan Nguyen has been described as “a veritable juggler of Hebrew.” Born in 1982 in Israel to refugees of the Vietnam War, Nguyen’s poems travel far and wide, taking in views of Hanoi, Manhattan, Paris, Milan, Salzburg, Pasadena and more. Through these movements, Nguyen reflects on how our lives take shape in the daily migrations we make between lovers, family, work, and the places we call home. She is the author of the poetry collections The Truffle Eye (Ma’ayan Press, 2013) and Vain Ratio (Barchash, 2018). In addition to poetry, she has worked as an actress, journalist, and social activist. She currently lives in Jaffa and is writing her first novel.

Adriana X. Jacobs is this year’s Co-head Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies and Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Her translations have appeared in various print and online journals, including Gulf Coast, Seedings, World Literature Today, Poetry International, and The Ilanot Review. Her translation into English of Vaan Nguyen’s The Truffle Eye will be published by Zephyr Press in early 2021.

Advance Registration Required: https://forms.gle/Z6WRekCB974Hz8EbA
The Zoom Webinar link will be sent out before the event.

(photo credit: Shaxaf Haber)