Translation Talks: D M Bradford & Donald Nicholson Smith

Listen to a fascinating discussion on translation, featuring D. M. Bradford in conversation with Donald Nicholson-Smith.
Darby Minott Bradford is a poet, translator, and sometimes curator. They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (2021), which won the A.M. Klein QWF Prize for Poetry, was a finalist for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General Literary Award and Gerard Lampert Memorial Award, and was longlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. Bradford's first translation, House Within a House (2023) by Nicholas Dawson, received the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award and John Glassco Translation Prize, and was shortlisted for the Governor General Literary Awards for French-to-English translation. Their most recent book of poetry, Bottom Rail on Top (2023), works to complicate prevailing conceptions of Blackness by staging one personal present alongside American histories of antebellum Black life. Bradford lives and works in Tio'tia:ke (Montréal) on the unceded territory of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka nation.
Donald Nicholson-Smith is a translator and freelance editor. Born in Manchester, England, he is a long-time resident of New York City. His translations include works by Thierry Jonquet, Guy Debord, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Henri Lefebvre, Guillaume Apollinaire, Raoul Vaneigem, Antonin Artaud, Yasmina Khadra (with Alyson Waters), Jean-Patrick Manchette, and Serge Pey. His en-face translation of Abdellatif Laâbi’s In Praise of Defeat, including self-selected poems from the Moroccan author and dissident's long career, was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. Nicholson-Smith has been dubbed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his services to French literature in translation.
Translation Talks took place on Zoom on Monday, February 26, 2024. It was moderated by Griffin Poetry Prize editorial director Adriana Oniță and social media editor Medgine Mathurin.
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