The University of Southern Indiana’s College of Liberal Arts will host an International Poetry Celebration on Thursday, October 16, with readings by visiting poets as well as USI students and faculty during three free and open to the public events. As part of the celebration, USI’s Southern Indiana Review Press will host a reading from its first full-length poetry collection published this summer.
The celebration kicks off with Romanian poet and translator Mihaela Moscaliuc, who will present “The Poetics of Translation: Theory and Practice†at 11 a.m. in University Center East Rooms 2217-2218.
Moscaliuc’s first poetry collection, Father Dirt, was published by Alice James Books in 2010. Her upcoming book, Immigrant Model is forthcoming through the University of Pittsburgh press. Her poems, translations, reviews and articles have appeared in The Georgia Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Pleiades, Arts and Letters, Connecticut Review, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. She teaches at Monmouth University and in the MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University, both in New Jersey.
During her lecture at USI, she will discuss the place of literary translation in our culture and outline approaches to translating poetry. Her talk will provide a taste of the translator’s tasks and, time permitting, will engage the audience in a translation exercise.
In a second event, World Languages and Cultures will present a Multilingual Poetry Reading from 3 to 6 p.m. in Kleymeyer Hall in the Liberal Arts Center. Students will read poetry in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin and Spanish.
The final event of the day is a release reading for Doug Ramspeck’s Original Bodies, the first full-length poetry collection published by Southern Indiana Review Press at 6 p.m. in the Traditions Lounge in University Center East. Southern Indiana Review Press is the publishing arm of Southern Indiana Review, USI’s biannual national literary review. Original Bodies won Southern Indiana Review’s 2013 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. The prize is named in honor of Michael Waters (Moscaliuc’s husband), who has written 10 books of poetry, including Gospel Night (2011); Darling Vulgarity, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2006); and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems, finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize (2001).
Ramspeck is the author of four poetry collections. His most recent, Mechanical Fireflies (2011), received the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. His first book, Black Tupelo Country (BkMk Press, 2008), received the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in journals that include Slate, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and AGNI. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Ramspeck teaches creative writing and directs the Writing Center at The Ohio State University at Lima.
“Doug Ramspeck acknowledges the elemental rain and mud as world enough in which to perform ‘this privilege of naming,’ what he calls ‘a languaging,’ said Waters. “Such simplicity belies the depths of perception that make these poems moving and memorable.â€
For more information about the readings, lecture and release, contact Ron Mitchell, instructor in English and editor of Southern Indiana Review, at sir@usi.edu or 812-461-5202. For more information about the Multilingual Poetry Reading, contact Dr. Manuel Apodaca-Valdez, associate professor of Spanish, at mdapodacav@usi.edu or 812-465-7026.
