Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures will host poet and translator Arthur Sze on April 27, 2027, as part of its Ten Evenings series.
“Now more than ever, dismantling walls and cultural barriers will help to find the common ground that seems to be shifting and eroding underfoot. ‘Translation,’ Sze affirms, ‘builds bridges and makes connections.’”—Veronica Corpuz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry is a personal guide to global poetry in translation by 25th U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze. Focusing on an accessible selection of key works, Sze takes readers through nearly two millennia of poetry from every part of the world, constructing fifteen different “zones” of literary discussion with a critical focus on the artistic dimensions of translation itself. Using multiple translations of the same source poems—as well as original poems written by translators—he explores deep connections between the acts of writing and reading. Sze invites readers to consider their own acts of engaged reading as a creative pursuit, giving them tools to begin translating poems themselves as well as tools that will unlock foreign-language works as inspirational sources. At its core, this unique anthology, published in association with the Library of Congress, showcases a profound goal of global literary citizenship: to open works up to all readers and to encourage poetic creativity at the fundamental level of language itself.
Copies of Transient Worlds are available to purchase from White Whale Bookstore. After the lecture, the author will sign books in the Music Hall Foyer.
The talk will be held at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland (map), and tickets are available online.
