John R. Keene is the author of Annotations and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Born in St. Louis, Keene is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. He is the recipient of many awards and fellowships—including a MacArthur Genius Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Whiting Foundation Prize for fiction. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark. (Bio adapted from New Directions.)
John Keene talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about his experiences—starting as early as middle school—with translation, why he believes translation is so important, and how his work as a poet and fiction writer is informed by his work as a translator. Keene, who primarily translates from Portuguese, French and Spanish, speaks about his article “Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness,” and how the dearth of translations of non-Anglophone black diasporic writers into English compounds problem of the lack of representation in media and literature. Keene also discusses the whiteness of the publishing industry, the unique challenges of translating LGBTQ+ literature across cultures, and more.
EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 64Books by John KeeneCounternarratives (New Directions, 2016)
Seismosis (1913 Press, 2013)
Annotations (New Directions, 1995)
Books Translated by John KeeneLetters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst (Nightboat, 2014)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the EpisodeBroken Glass by Alain Mabanckou (Soft Skull, 2010)
Walter Benjamin
Roman Jakobson
François Charles Mauriac’s Viper’s Tangle
Edimilson de Almeida Pereira
Samuel Richardson
NATHANAËL
Patrick Sylvain
Clarice Lispector
Patrick Chamoiseau
Paulo Leminski
Eric M. B. Becker
Dorothy J. Wang
Prageeta Sharma
Daniel Borzutzky
Rupi Kaur
Rosa Alcalá
Christiane Sobral
Reginald Gibbons
Susannah Gottlieb
Other Relevant LinksJames Sweet (historian)
Nicholas Muellner
Adrian MS Piper
Cave Canem
Dark Room Collective
Black Panther
Crazy Rich Asians
Lee and Low Books’ Survey on Diversity in Publishing
William S. YellowRobe
Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness”
Words without Borders’ special issue on Afro-Brazilian writing
Episode 41: Danez Smith
Episode 40: Kaveh Akbar
Episode 39: Erika L. Sánchez
Episode 38: Sharon Olds
Episode 37: Sheila Heti and Sarah Manguso
Episode 36: Dialogue Arts Project
Episode 35: Aracelis Girmay
Episode 34: Dr. Joshua Bennett
Episode 33: Sabrina Orah Mark
Episode 32: Laynie Browne
Episode 31: Carmen Giménez Smith
Episode 30: Sarah Vap
Episode 29: Molly Peacock
Episode 28: Poems for Mother's Day
Episode 27: Rita Dove
Episode 26: Alice Notley
Episode 25: Ross Gay
Episode 24: Julie Carr
Episode 23: Morgan Parker
Episode 22: Undocupoets 2 — Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Janine Joseph
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
50 Tastes Of Gray
Dear Alice | Interior Design
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
The Art of War
Gulliver’s Travels
The Magnus Archives
The Moth