2008 Robert Fagles Translation Prize

I can’t find a listing at the National Poetry Series website, but Lawrence Venuti has been awarded the 2008 Robert Fagles Translation Prize for his translation of Edward Hopper by Ernest Farres.

The prize—which was awarded for the first time last year—is given each year to a translation who has “shown exceptional skill in translating a book of contemporary poetry into English.”

Venuti is an incredible force in the world of translation and translation studies. He translated from Italian, French, and Catalan and is also the author of The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. He’s been awarded a number of grants and fellowships, including ones from the NEA, NEH, and PEN, and in 2007 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He currently teaches at Temple University.

I’ve read some of the poems from Edward Hopper in Two Lines, Calque, and Words Without Borders and it promises to be an interesting collection. (It’s coming out next year from Graywolf Press.) Basically, each poem is named after and based on an Edward Hopper painting. Based on that, it’s sort of surprising that Edward Hopper has been “adapted to the stage in both Catalan and Spanish.” In addition to writing poetry, Farres is also an editor for the cultural supplement of La Vanguardia.