Professor Andrew Zawacki recommended for NEA Literature Translation Fellowship
The National Endowment for the Arts has announced that Andrew Zawacki, associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program, has been recommended for an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship of $12,500. Zawacki is one of 20 recommended fellows for 2015. In total, the NEA plans to distribute $300,000 in this round to support the new translation of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry from 12 different languages into English.
Zawacki’s NEA Fellowship will support his translation from the French of Sébastien Smirou’s second poetry book, See About: Beastiary. Zawacki undertook the project with the help of a 2012-2013 Willson Center Faculty Research Fellowship. Smirou (b. 1972) is a psychoanalyst specializing in working with troubled children. See About: Beastiary is his second volume of poetry; each chapter features a different animal – lion, giraffe, chamois, cow, cat, turtle, glowworm, and dodo – each presented in order of decreasing size. The book is divided into eight chapters, each containing eight poems, with each poem exactly eight lines. The last line, or a portion of it, is repeated in every poem within a section. The title is eight letters, and the full volume is exactly 64 pages. Smirou’s work has been described as poised between exhibition and exhibitionism, inventory and invention.
Zawacki is a poet, editor, and translator, as well as a professor. His translation of Smirou’s My Lorenzo was published by Burning Deck Press in 2012. His poetry collections include Videotape (Counterpath Press, 2013); Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House, 2009); Anabranch (Wesleyan University Press, 2004); and By Reason of Breakings (University of Georgia Press, 2002).
The complete list of FY 2015 NEA Literature Translation Fellows is available here.