Friday, June 10, 2016 - 22:30
Proud that MPT has selected one of my translations as their German poem #eu - it's by Durs Grünbein and it was a commission for the Poetry International festival at the Southbank Centre in London in 2014 as part of a celebration of that 'international' poet Rilke. The title of the poem, 'Torso of Polyphemus', is a reference to Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' which was included in Rilke's New Poems, the collection influenced by his acquaintance with Rodin, French art and his life in Paris. Translator Karen Leeder comments that 'the luminous seeing of that poem [is] countered by an altogether darker response of a post-enlightenment age' in Grünbein's poem.