Special Events
VII Semana Poética
VII Semana Poética
October 19-23, 2008
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese, along with co-sponsorship from the Departments of German, French and Italian, Russian, English, Middle East Studies, Judaic Studies; Academic Affairs, Global Education; Common Hour, and the Waidner Spahr Library, is proud to announce the seventh Semana Poética, to be held on October 19-23, 2008. Semana Poética is a poetry festival featuring bilingual readings of world-known poets in the Spanish, German, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, and English languages. Every year this event reaches people across the curriculum, as well as members of the Carlisle and Harrisburg community, in different ways.
1) Students participate in the bilingual readings.
2) The poets visit classrooms to address issues on poetry and the art of translation.
3) Students read and work with the poetry of the authors in their classrooms.
4) Dickinson College, through this event, crosses over the academic world and reaches individuals in the community, promoting not only world literature but also the global and interdisciplinary view on education and current events, which makes Dickinson College what it is.
5) Selected poems and their translations are published a future issue of Sirena: Poetry, Art, and Criticism, an international an multilingual journal published by the Johns Hopkins University Press for Dickinson College. Sirena is a journal with a world-wide circulation, and known for publishing renown poets from around the globe.
This year’s Semana Poética includes the following poets:
Michael Augustin works as a writer and broadcaster with Radio Bremen. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, mini plays, and short prose; he has also published several audio books. Translations of his books have appeared in many languages, and his drawings have appeared in literary magazines around the globe. He has read at numerous international literature festivals and is the recipient of the Friedrich-Hebbel-Prize and the Kurt-Magnus-Prize. He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Iowa and Dickinson College.
Rafael Ballesteros was born in Málaga, Spain, in 1938. He received a M.A. degree in Literature and Philosophy from the Universidad de Granada and has been a guest lecturer at many universities. He has published several collections of poetry, among them: Las contracifras, Testamenta, and Los dominios de la emoción
Sujata Bhatt has published seven collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, UK. The recipient of numerous awards, she was one of the judges for the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize, administered by Eliot’s widow, Mrs. Valerie Eliot, and the Poetry Book Society, London. Currently, Bhatt lives in Germany. She is an Honorary Fellow of Dickinson College.
Alessandro Carrera was born in Lodi, Italy. Between 1978 and 1984 he traveled extensively in Italy and Germany as a lecturer and singer-songwriter. He released an album of songs, Le cartoline, in 1981, and in 1998 his short story, La stagione della strega, was awarded the Arturo Loria Prize for Short Fiction.
Jorge Chen Sham received his PhD from Universitè Paul Valéry, Montpellier III. He is a full professor at Universidad de Costa Rica, the chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures as well as the Director of Graduate Studies. His area of studies focuses on Cervantes, Peninsular and Spanish American prose of the 18th Century, literatures of Central America, 19th and 20th Century poetry and women writers.
Steve Gehrke’s third book of poetry, Michelangelo’s Seizure, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published in 2007. His second book, The Pyramids of Malpighi, won the Philip Levine Prize. He teaches at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
Natalya Handal is a poet, playwright and writer who has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines and has been translated into more than 15 languages. She has been featured on NPR and PBS Radio as well as in The NewYork Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and Reuters.
Nitsa Kann is a professor of religion at Dickinson College. She is the author of two Hebrew books of poems, Black Soul Singer and A Woman With Child, and two Hebrew novels, A Loveable Woman and Sexsophone.
Uwe Kolbe was born and raised in East Berlin, undertook military service after leaving school in 1976, and first published his poetry in the journal Sinn und Form in June 1976. Between 1982 and 1985 he was banned from publishing because of anti-government statements. He survived this period by taking up literary translation. From 1982-1987 he published the underground magazine Mikado with Lothar Trolle and Bernd Wagner. In 1985 he was granted a visa, which permitted him to travel to Western Europe and the USA. In the summer of 1988 he left East Berlin for Hamburg, but returned to a united Berlin in 1993. From 1997-2004 he was Director of the Literature and Theatre Studio at the University of Tübingen. Uwe Kolbe has held guest lectureships at the Universities of Texas at Austin, Vienna, and Essen, and has been awarded a number of prestigious literary prizes. In addition to his many books of poetry, such as his first and most well-known Heineingeboren (Born Into) of 1980 and Heimliche Feste (Secret Celebrations) of 2008, he has also published detective fiction and a number of essays.
Born in Almería, Spain, Aurora Luque teaches Greek and is a
frequent collaborator for Diario Sur in Málaga, Spain. Her books of poetry include Hiperiónida, Problemas de doblaje, Carpe noctem, Transitoria, Camaradas de Ícaro and Haikus de Narila.
Julio Neira is a professor at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia and the director of the Cultural Center for the Generación del 27 in Málaga, Spain. His research focuses primarily on authors from the Genreación del 27 and has published books and numerous articles on Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén, Luis Cernuda, Gerardo Diego, José María de Cossío, José Antonio Muñoz Rojas, Blas de Otero, José Hierro, Ángel González, and Lorenzo Oliván. To him the academic world owes the first treatise on the subject dealing with the problems of critical editions of the poetry of the 20th Century in Spain. He is also a renowned specialist in epistolary literature between contemporary poets.
Merit O’Hare is from McCandless, PA and graduated from North Allegheny Senior High School. She is a First Year student at Dickinson College, and the recipient of the 2008 Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest.
Born in Moscow, Vera Pavlova completed Advanced Studies of Music in the Schnittke Academy of Music, specializing in the history of music. Her poems have been published in numerous newspapers and periodicals. Her first book, Celestial Animal, came out in 1997 and was followed by Second Language, Line of Detachment and Fourth Sleep. The latter, published in 2000, won the Apollo Grigoryev Prize for poetry.
Born in 1954, Utz Rachowski is a German writer who grew up in East Germany. He studied medicine, worked at odd jobs, and was sentenced to 27 months in jail for copying and distributing literary texts by dissident writer friends such as Jürgen Fuchs, Wolf Biermann, and Reiner Kunze. He was released from jail because of the West German government’s intervention and left East Germany in 1980. He then studied art history and philosophy in Göttingen and West Berlin, where he still resides as a freelance writer.
Alexei Tsvetkov is a Russian poet who lives in Washington, D.C. He was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize for poetry for his most recent collection of poems, Names of Love, published in 2007.
Schedule of Events:
Sunday, October 19, Opening Night
Bosler Hall Atrium, 6 p.m. Free
Opening poem by Dickinson First Year student, Merit O'Hare I USA,
recipient of the 2008 Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest
Poetry Readings by:
Sujata Bhatt | India/USA/Germany
Nathalie Handal | Palestine
Monday, October 20
Waidner-Spahr Library, Blumberg Reading Area, 12:noon. Free
Poetry Reading* by:
Rafael Ballesteros | Spain
*Reading will be bilingual
Followed by:
Roundtable Discussion Presented by Literary Critic,
Julio Neira | Spain
“Historia de la poesía contemporánea española”
*Presented only in Spanish
Monday, October 20
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m. Free
Poetry Readings by:
Steve Gehrke | USA
Nitsa Kann | Israel
Tuesday, October 2
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m. Free
Poetry Readings by:
Michael Augustin | Germany
Alessandro Carrera | Italy
Wednesday, October 22
Waidner-Spahr Library, Blumberg Reading Area, 12:noon. Free
Poetry Reading* by:
Utz Rachowski | Germany
*Reading will be bilingual
Followed by:
Roundtable Discussion Presented by Literary Critic
Jorge Chen | Costa Rica
“La dimensión de la traducción poética para los poetas de las vanguardias y las razones por las cuales la traducción se convierte en un ejercicio de filiación estética y de homenaje”
*Presented only in Spanish
Wednesday, October 22
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m. Free
Poetry Readings by:
Uwe Kolbe | Germany
Aurora Luque | Spain
Thursday, October 23
Common Hour, Weiss Center for the Arts, Rubendall Recital Hall, 12:noon. Free
Poetry Reading by:
Alexei Tsvetkov | Russia
Vera Pavlova | Russia
Thursday, October 23, Closing Night Reading and Reception
Bosler Hall Atrium, 7 p.m. Free
Poetry Readings by:
Each participating poet in Semana Poética VII will read one poem
Closing poem by Dickinson First Year student, Merit O'Hare I USA,
recipient of the 2008 Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest.