Poetry Voices Many Places

Arthur Solway, Gleb Shulpyakov, and Sawako Nakayasu were the evening’s featured readers at the NYU Shanghai Literary Reading Series, bringing translations and original works of poetry to the podium.

“We had three very different poets read very different work that nonetheless intersected in numerous way, for example, the convergence in the art world,” said NYU Shanghai Lecturer and poet David Perry, who hosted and introduced the writers on December 5.

Solway, the founding director of the James Cohan Gallery Shanghai -- the first gallery from New York to establish itself in mainland China -- read poetry encompassing over a decade of living in Shanghai. He read “poems about movement, about travelling, that try to progress to a sense of stillness.”

Shulpyakov read original poems that draw on Russia's deep lyric tradition, blending aesthetics, politics, a wary spirituality, and the relentlessly personal. He read in Russian from his book A Fireproof Box (Canarium Books, 2011), while Perry performed the English translations.  Shulpyakov has translated poetry of Ted Hughes, Robert Hass, and W. H. Auden into Russian.

Nakayasu, a Japanese experimental writer and translator raised in California, works in the avant-garde tradition and draws from visual arts, theater, film and performance art. She read from her recent books The Ants (Les Figues Press, 2014) and Texture Notes (Letter Machine, 2010). Experimenting with “unfaithful, roguish translations” was her way of balancing the demand of translated poetry being “simultaneously faithful and beautiful.”

Students were also part of workshops and conversations with the featured readers, giving them a peek into what it means to be a poet, translator, essayist, or artist.