Sunday, September 18, 2011

Compass Award entry--I am shortlisted!

I am very pleased to have been shortlisted for the Compass Award, an international competition of translators, for my translation of Nikolai Gumilev's acrostic on the name of his wife, Anna Akhmatova. Here is the Russian and my translation.

Acrostic

Addis Ababa, city of roses.
Near the bank of transparent streams,
No earthly devas brought you here,
A diamond, amidst gloomy gorges.

Armidin garden … There a pilgrim
Keeps his oath of obscure love
(Mind, we all bow before him),
And the roses cloy, the roses red.

There, full of deceit and venom,
Ogles some gaze into the soul,
Via forests of tall sycamores,
And alleyways of dusky planes.

Акростих

Аддис-Абеба, город роз.
На берегуручьёв прозрачных,
Небесныйдив тебя принес,
Алмазной,средь ущелий мрачных.

Армидинсад… Там пилигрим
Хранитобет любви неясной
(Мы всесклоняемся пред ним),
А розыдушны, розы красны.

Тамсмотрит в душу чей-то взор,
Отравыполный и обманов,
В садахвысоких сикомор,
Аллеяхсумрачных платанов.
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Larissa Shmailo's new poetry CD is Exorcism (http://cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2) and her new book is In Paran (BlazeVOX 2009). She has been published in the Penguin anthology Words for the Wedding, the Unbearables Big Book of Sex, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Lungfull!, Big Bridge, About: Poetry, and other publications. She has received “Critic’s Pick” notices for her readings and radio appearances from the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Time Out magazine. She translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and at theaters and museums internationally. She recently contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry from Dalkey Archive Press. Her first poetry CD, The No-Net World, has received rave reviews and is frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts in the U.S. and the U.K. Friend Larissa Shmailo on Facebook.