Circumference, a lovely magazine devoted to poetry in translation, is now returning after a two-year hiatus with an new editorial team, a new look and – as always – new poems. The magazine sprang out of the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University (the previous incarnation of what is now called Literary Translation at Columbia) and put out seven issues under its founding editors, Stefania Heim and Jennifer Kronovet. Now a new posse of current and recent Columbia MFA students (Elizabeth Clark Wessel, Iris Cushing, Tanya Paperny, Josh Edwin and Julia Guez) is taking the helm, and as I understand it, the idea is to establish a stable longterm model to keep the journal going in perpetuity.
I’m looking forward to seeing the new Circumference website, which is scheduled to launch on May 18, i.e. this coming Friday. Its launch will be celebrated by an evening of festivities hosted by A Public Space and featuring readings by founding editor Stefania Heim and contributors Idra Novey, Matthew Rohrer, and Eliot Weinberger. The editors write:
With our new website we will be continuing and expanding upon our mission. The website will allow us to feature a podcast series, audio and video, and other work that lends itself to the digital format. It will also be an ideal place to facilitate conversations about poetry in translation, to feature interviews with poets and translators, and to blog about current events in the world of translation. We will also be sharing work from our archives in a searchable database ideal for students and researchers.
Most importantly, the website will allow us another platform for publishing the kind of work Circumference has always been interested in: translations of new work from around the globe, new visions of classical poems, translations of foreign language poets of the past who have fallen under the radar of American readers, and, as always, to show translation as the vibrant, necessary interaction that it is.
So come raise a glass to this excellent magazine on the occasion of its web launch! I’m told a new print issue will be coming our way this fall. Where and When: A Public Space, 323 Dean St. in Brooklyn, 8:00 p.m. Details here.