In an age where translation can be accomplished by shoving letters into a box on a website, it's easy to forget that translating poetry is difficult business; it requires as much artfulness and creativity as the writing of poetry. All weekend long, Wave Books will be celebrating their Poetry in Translation festival at the Henry Art Gallery. Noteworthy poets include Don Mee Choi, Kevin Craft, Zhang Er, Summer Robinson, and Maged Zaher.
Friday's schedule started earlier this morning, but you can read more about what's coming up right here. The day to beat is Saturday, which has a bunch of awesome programs, including a discussion about contemporary Chinese poetry, a discussion about the translation of Egyptian poetry, and a workshop on reading translated poetry. Sunday concludes with a big whiz-bang discussion about translation at the Neptune Theatre. You don't get many opportunities in a year to sink yourself into an intense discussion about communication, and to get totally lost in language.