Presenting five nights of readings by poets from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the festival Translations 2010: Cross-Cultural Awareness Through Poetry takes place at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Nov. 7-11.

Introduced by members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ languages faculty, eight poets will read from their work in the original languages with translations projected simultaneously for listeners. Each reading takes place at 7 p.m., and the entire festival is open to the public at no cost. It is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Innovation Fund and support from the language departments and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.

For more information, please contact 207-786-8293 or this gdumais@bates.edu.

Here’s a festival schedule, followed by more information about the poets.

Sunday, Nov. 7: Franco-American poet Susann Pelletier and Somali poet Omar Ahmed read their poetry in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Monday, Nov. 8: Emeric de Monteynard (France) and Cristián Gómez Olivares (Chile) read in the Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Tuesday, Nov. 9: Readings by Ana Merino (Spain) and Lothar Quinkenstein (Germany), also in Muskie.

Wednesday, Nov. 10: Guangxin Zhao (China) and Irina Mashinski (Russia) read at Muskie.

Thursday, Nov. 11: The festival concludes with a gathering of all participating poets in Chase Hall Lounge.

About the festival

The festival is the brainchild of Claudia Aburto Guzmán, associate professor of Spanish at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Her goal is to highlight the potential of poetry, and particularly the role of translation, for expanding and shaping our perceptions of other cultures.

Aburto Guzmán explains that she was inspired to produce the festival by a perception among some students that poetry had become irrelevant. She says, “I found this paradoxical since at the same time that students were pronouncing poetry dead, they were writing amazing examples of the genre in Spanish.”

But Aburto Guzmán had recently participated in a poetry festival at another college, and that experience reminded her of the importance of seeing and hearing poets read their work in public. “Unless poetry has a performative element,” she says, “the present generation can’t perceive how appropriate and timely it can be for transmitting cultural change.”

With the poets at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ event reading in their native languages, faculty and students will prepare most of the English translations that will be projected on a screen during the readings. “The act of translation is paramount to the communication process,” Aburto Guzmán explains.

“The poets have been given carte blanche as to the content of their poetry. They write within their own cultural parameters, and we are not asking them to accommodate us or make it easier for us to understand their message.”

About the poets

Pelletier, a Lewiston native, began writing poems when she was 11.

Her work expresses deep connections to the Franco-American community, as well as her vision of social justice and dignity. She has worked as a journalist, market gardener, college instructor and co-editor of a progressive monthly, and her work has been published in anthologies, literary journals, chapbooks, and political and environmental magazines around the world. Pelletier is working on a book-length collection of poems titled What We Gather in November.

Ahmed grew up in Somalia and worked for the Ministry of Education there. He lived in Lewiston for a time, working for the city social services department, and is now a freelance writer in Arizona. His most recent play, Love in the Cactus Village, was produced by L/A Arts and performed in Auburn in 2003.

He is working on a novel about a peaceful village destroyed by civil war. With a master’s degree in leadership and organizational studies, Ahmed is a Somali elder and has co-authored papers on substance abuse and mental issues among Somali refugees.

De Monteynard lives in Paris, but does the majority of his writing in Normandy, inspired by the sea. His six books of poetry include Aux Arbres Penchés (To Bending Trees; L’Arbre à Paroles, 2006), which received the Amélie Murat Prize in 2008.

Assistant professor of Spanish at the University of South Dakota, Gómez Olivares is a poet, translator and critic. His published work includes Homenaje a Chester Kallman (A Tribute to Chester Kallman; Luces de Gálibo, 2010) and Malditos latinos, malditos sudacas (Dammed Latinos, Dammed South Americans; El Billar de Lucrecia, 2009), an anthology of Spanish American poetry that he co-edited with Mónica de la Torre. He has received several awards.

Associate professor of creative writing in Spanish and an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Iowa, Merino has published six books of poetry, a youth novel and a scholarly book on comics. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, has received several awards and is included in more than 20 collections. Merino’s seventh book of poetry, °ä³Ü°ù²¹³¦¾±Ã³²Ô, will be published this fall.

Quinkenstein was born in Bayreuth, Germany, and grew up in the Saarland, along the French border. He has lived in Poland since 1994, and in 1999 began teaching German at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, where he also completed his doctorate. His poems, short stories and translations from Polish have been published in various publications, most recently the poetry volume, Beim Stimmen der Saiten (While Tuning the Strings; Geistkirch Verlag, 2007).

A bilingual poet and translator, Mashinski was born in Moscow and immigrated to the United States in 1991. She is the author of seven books of poetry and winner of several prestigious Russian national literary awards. Her poetry has been translated into several languages including Serbian, Italian, English, Spanish and French, and is often featured in leading literary periodicals and anthologies in Russia and abroad.

Zhao majored in English language and literature at the Jiangsu Teacher’s Training College in Suzhou, and later taught at the U.N. Language Program of Beijing Foreign Studies University. Zhao draws from the aesthetics of old-style Chinese poetry.

Three ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College faculty members who share a passion for photography have mounted their images in an exhibit titled “After Image” in Chase Hall Gallery, 56 Campus Ave. Open to the public at no charge from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, the exhibition continues through May 15.

The faculty photographers are Associate Professor of Spanish Claudia Aburto Guzmán, Associate Professor of French Kirk Read and Michael Reidy, technical director and lecturer in theater.

Aburto Guzmán suggested the idea of an exhibit to Read as a way of talking about their shared interest in photography and working on a project together that would encourage them to display their work in a public space. Read knew that Reidy was a photographer and invited him to take part. Other faculty members have since indicated interest in the conversation. “The theme seems to be photography as more than a hobby, but at this point, less than a profession,” says Read. “I really enjoyed the process of sharing ideas, reactions and sensibilities.”

Aburto Guzmán displays a series of black and white still lifes. Working with  Polaroid prints, Reidy presents a series of individual photographs that are combined in various ways, he writes, to “discover new, unplanned images.”

Using a macro lens, Read creates a series of portraits of plastic figurines that, depending on their environments, Read writes, appear “melancholy, inquisitive, naïve, rebellious, triumphant and desperate.”

The display is sponsored by the departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Theater.

The Kroepsch Award honors outstanding performance as a teacher. Each year, faculty members may be nominated from one of the College’s divisions: humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and interdisciplinary programs. This year’s competition was in the humanities.

The students who nominated Guzman praised her enthusiasm and creativity as a teacher, her vast interdisciplinary knowledge of literature and her ability to encourage intellectual growth in every student. Nominations cited her rigor and high expectations, her commitment to academic honesty and her passion for knowledge. Her devotion to her students, wrote one of them, reflects the “privilege of learning itself.”

In nominating Taylor, students celebrated her dedication, her exceptional teaching, her love of English and American literature, her respect for students as independent thinkers and her commitment to infusing academic work with social justice in thought and action. She was singled out as an exemplary thesis advisor, deeply devoted to the thesis as a learning process. Students reported that under Taylor’s guidance they discovered new ways of reading fiction and understanding their connections to the world.

The Kroepsch Award is made through a process in which students, alumni and faculty may nominate faculty members whose teaching they deem exceptional. The nominations are reviewed by a committee including the last several Kroepsch Award winners.

“The Kroepsch Award is one of the most important honors we can bestow upon a faculty member,” said Dean of the Faculty Jill N. Reich, “because at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ our highest priority is to create an environment that fosters excellence in learning. The opportunity to work with exceptional students attracts outstanding professors to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

The Kroepsch Award is funded by an endowment established by the late Robert H. Kroepsch, a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class of 1933.