Diana Anphimiadi, one of Georgia’s foremost contemporary poets. Diana’s translators Natalia Bukia-Peters and poet Jean Sprackland will be in person at Bookhaus Bristol, joined by Diana herself calling in on video from Georgia to talk about their collaboration on the translation of Diana’s PTC collection Why I No Longer Write Poems.
They will give a bilingual reading from the book in Georgian and English, and will be in discussion about Diana’s work, the collaborative translation process to realise it in English, and the wider geopolitical context that the book now appears in – Ukraine and Russia being close neighbours of Georgia.
The conversation will be hosted by acclaimed poet and champion of poetry in translation, Fiona Sampson, who said of Diana’s new book: “This is gorgeous, fabulising verse.”
Why I No Longer Write Poems ranges from the contemporary thrum of a train carriage to the ancient grievance of Greek myth, navigating the heartache and absurdity of love, and offering profound reflections on the limits and possibilities of language itself.
The event is presented in partnership with Bookhaus and the Bristol-Tbilisi Association who are generously supplying Georgian wine for attendees. Tickets are free.
Diana Anphimiadi’s tour has been co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. She has published five collections of poetry: Shokoladi (Chocolate, 2008), Konspecturi Mitologia (Resumé of Mythology, 2009), Alhlokhedvis Traektoria (Trajectory of the Short-Sighted, 2012) and Kulinaria (Personal Cuisine, 2013). Her poetry has received prestigious awards, including first prize in the 2008 Tsero (Crane) literary contest and the Saba literary award for best first collection in 2009. She lives in Tbilisi with her son.
Natalia Bukia-Peters is a freelance translator, interpreter and teacher of Georgian and Russian. She studied at Tbilisi University and she has an MA in Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists in London and has worked collaboratively with the PTC since 2013. Her translations have been published both in the UK (Fal Publications, Francis Boutle) and USA (Dalkey Archives). Her other recent poetry books are Diana Aphimiadi’s Beginning to Speak (PTC, 2018), translated in collaboration with Jean Sprackland, and Salome Benidze’s I Wanted to Ask You (PTC, 2018), translated in collaboration with Helen Mort.
Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL is a leading British poet and writer, published in thirty-eight languages, and the recipient of a number of international awards, most recently the 2019 Naim Frashëri Laureateship (2019), and European Lyric Atlas Prize (2020). A broadcaster and newspaper critic, librettist and literary translator, she’s also an acclaimed literary biographer: Two- Way Mirror: The life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2021) is a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Washington Post and Prospect Book of the Year 2021, a Sunday Times Paperback of the Year 2022, and longlisted for the 2022 Plutarch Prize and the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Her latest collection, Come Down, was awarded the Wales Poetry Book of the Year 2021.
Jean Sprackland is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Green Noise (Cape, 2018). Her collection Tilt won the Costa Poetry Award in 2007. She is also an acclaimed prose writer, winning the Portico Prize for Non-Fiction for her book Strands (Cape, 2012). Her most recent book is These Silent Mansions: A life in graveyards (Cape, 2020), which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was Chair of the Poetry Archive from 2016 to 2020.
