EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY: “MY LANGUAGE IS NOT MY LANGUAGE. THIS IS WHY IT IS CALLED MY LANGUAGE.”
READING + CONVERSATION
APRIL 2 2024, 53 WALL ST, RM. 208
EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY is a poet and translator whose writing is described as “translingual” because of its focus on multilingualism and linguistic interference. His Feeling Sonnets (Carcanet, NYRB Poets, 2022) examine the effects of speaking a non-native language on emotions, parenting, and identity. An earlier book, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (NYRB Poets, 2017), discusses communication difficulties between pirates and parrots. As a translator, Ostashevsky is best known for his editions of the Russian avant-garde, such as OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern UP, 2006). His more recent translations include Lucky Breaks by the Ukrainian fiction writer Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions, 2022). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and won the National Translation Award, the City of Münster International Poetry Prize, and other prizes.
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, with the support of the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, co-sponsored by Yale Translation Initiative, Creative Writing of the Department of English, and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the MacMillan Center