With just over a month to go until VERVE explodes back onto the scene, we’re giving you the lowdown on some of our much-anticipated events. If you’re looking for more background info and what to expect when you get your tickets, you’re in the right place!
First up is our collaboration with Poetry Translation Centre, To Love A Woman / Amar a una mujer with Diana Bellessi & Leo Boix.
We’re so excited to be inviting you to celebrate the publication of ‘To Love a Woman’, a long-overdue translation of selected poems from the extensive oeuvre of Diana Bellessi, a poet whose life and work has been hugely influential on poetry in Latin America and beyond ever since her first collection was published in 1972. Among those inspired by Bellessi is Leo Boix, who has written a few words on how he first came across her work and why it was so important to him that more of it be translated:
"I came across the work of Diana Bellessi on one of my first trips to Buenos Aires after emigrating to the UK in 1997. I first read her 'Selected Poetry' and immediately fell in love with her work, especially her poems on lesbian love and desire, and the work that reveals her fascination with the natural world, her ardent feminism and her political activism. I became a big follower of her poetry. I even wrote to her to tell her about it and dedicated the first poem of my debut collection in Spanish (Un Lugar Propio- Letras del Sur Editora 2015) to her.
When the Poetry Translation Centre asked me to put together a list of possible poets from Latin America to translate, I immediately thought of Diana's work, as her poetry is hardly known in the English-speaking world. I was delighted when we finally decided to go ahead and publish a book of her poetry in translation, which will be out in February.
Working with Diana on this book has been a wonderful experience. We speak on the phone on a regular basis to discuss aspects of her work (Diana is a great translator herself), about Argentinean current affairs, her house in the town of Zavalla (in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina) or about contemporary English poetry, among other topics. We became good friends and I'm very excited to finally meet her in person. We already have plans to visit some places in England, she wants to see Stonehenge and also Deal (East Kent) where I live, a place by the sea she heard so much during our telephone conversations."
Leo Boix
Unfortunately, it’s been decided that Diana won’t be able to travel to us right now, so Stonehenge will have to wait, but she will still be at VERVE through a video call, as she and Leo read the poems from To Love A Woman / Amar a una mujer and discuss Diana’s life and work as well as the process of putting this particular collection of translations together. It promises to be an incredible event and the perfect introduction to vital work that has been woefully inaccessible to English-speaking poetry readers until now.
For info and tickets for this and all our other amazing VERVE 2022 events, head over to our line-up page! In the meantime, be sure to check back here regularly for updates and sign up to our mailing list for all the latest direct to your inbox.