Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka
"The poems are the work of a profoundly serious temperament and a professional translator of world into word"– Michael Salcman, Judge, Harriss Poetry Prize
Szklana góra/Glass Mountain — Multi-Lingual Events
Glass Mountain (pdf) |
Recent reviews of the book:
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“Lidia Kosk’s own real-life glass mountain…has become [the translators’] as well.”
—Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, introduction to Szklana góra/Glass Mountain
8.
Szklana gora/Glass Mountain includes translations in what could be considered minority languages. For example, one of the languages, Occitan, has at the most 800,000 native speakers. [ ]
excerpt from the review by Nitin Jagdish in The Adirondack Review
[….] The book, whose very cover is a work of visual art on the theme of Lidia Kosk’s glass mountain, contains 21 translations of Kosk’s short poem “Szklana góra,” whose English version (translated by Kosk-Kosicka) begins
The load is bigger than I
as I climb the frozen hill
carrying the treasure
bucket of water from the stream…
Even if you don’t read Spanish or Hungarian or Mandarin, this little book will capture your imagination. Kosk-Kosicka’s unusually thoughtful introductory note not only describes how the project was conceived and then took on a life of its own, but her own shifting and sometimes-nervous responses as her mother’s poem wandered into languages she herself could not read and whose translated versions she could neither understand nor evaluate. [ ] While Kosk-Kosicka personally knew a number of the translators, others were internet acquaintances. As she writes, “Poetry has linked us on an emotional plane, and that bond now takes physical form in the pages of this book.” Kosk-Kosicka’s note – and the remarkable project it describes – is an unabashed valentine to the power of poetry and translation to cross borders, to open hearts and minds, and to bring people together.
excerpts from Katherine E. Young's review in Loch Raven Review
The poem “Glass Mountain” has also been translated into additional languages:
Swiss German — by Burgi Zenhaeusern
Breton –by Patrig Dreon Multiple Versions
Szklana góra/Glass Mountain — Multi-Lingual Reading Events
June 5, 2018 at the Arts Club of Washington
On May 4, 2018 in the Lit & Art Reading Series event at the Historic York Inn/Smyser-Bair House, in York, PA
Danuta and Fernando Quijano III read the Glass Mountain. Fernando did a passionate rendition in Spanish.
On April 22, 2018, at the annual Kensington Day of the Book Festival Danuta presented Szklana góra/Glass Mountain in the Making Poems, Making Peace event.
The book of Lidia Kosk poem brings so many languages together towards a common understanding of the beauty of diversity!
Danuta and Burgi Zenhaeusern read “Glass Mountain” in four languages. DC-ALT also had a book table with our members’ books and it was a good opportunity to mingle and have conversations with poets, translators and other book enthusiasts. And Roman Kostovsky, DC-ALT president, played his guitar to accompany the poetry.
On February 18, 2018, Café Muse in Friendship Heights Village Center featured Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka presenting her three most recent books.
In the Open Mike Burgi Zenhaeusern read her Swiss translation — the newest addition to the growing language family of “Glass Mountain” renditions.
Danuta reads Lidia Kosk’s Polish original: “Szklana góra”
Danuta reads her English translation: “Glass Mountain”
Burgi Zenhaeusern reads Ewa Woziwodzka’s German version and her own Swiss rendition!
On February 3, 2018, DC-ALT – a network of literary translators in the Greater Washington DC area – presented:
Szklana Góra/Glass Mountain, Lidia Kosk’s poem rendered in 22 languages,
hosted by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, the book’s editor.
Danuta shared her experience of conceiving the idea and living the project for five years. In the book she brought together twenty-one translators of distinctly different cultural backgrounds, translation philosophies and experiences — a fellowship of the community of translators from fifteen countries and several language families. In celebrating Lidia Kosk and her beautiful poem, the project reveals a unifying role played by the art of translation and the English language, which was the basis for most of the renditions. And what a wonderful discussion we had! We read the poem in THIRTEEN languages:
English & Polish, read by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka:
Chinese, read by Ting Wang, participant in the project
French, read by Keith Cohen, participant in the project:
Spanish & Arabic, read by Yvette Neisser:
Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian & Russian, read by Roman Kostovski:
German, Swiss German & Italian, read by Burgi Zenhaeusern:
New Year’s Eve 2017 Reading of Szklana góra/Glass Mountain
Szklana góra/Glass Mountain at the Translators Conference “Confluence 2017,” Silver Spring, Maryland, USA, September 23, 2017 in the Panel Session titled:
“Making Poetry Global: One Poem (Lidia Kosk’s Glass Mountain) in 22 Languages”
Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka and her co-panelists — Patricia Bejarano Fisher, Natalia Romanova & Paul Thorfinn Hopper, all members of DC-ALT — discussed their approaches to their reading and translating of Lidia Kosk’s poem. Natalia presented a comparative forensic analysis of the Polish and Russian language versions, while Patricia compared the Spanish and the Catalan. Danuta shared also her experience of coordinating and managing such a diverse group of languages and translators, from Arabic to Upper Sorbian, from four continents. Translations from the book were read by the four translators on the panel as well as the language enthusiasts in the audience. Recordings of Lidia’s rendition of her poem in Polish and Silvia Aymerich-Lemos’s Catalan translations were shared.
Selection of video snippets with multilingual readings of the poem:
Multilingual readings and SINGING of Szklana góra/Glass Mountain at the September 18, 2017 gala celebration of Lidia Kosk’s oeuvre in Warszawa
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The Polish original, read by Lidia Kosk
Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, reading her English translation
Józef Lorski, reading his Czech translation
Ewa Woziwodzka, reading her German translation
Grzegorz Śmioch, reading the Russian translation by Natalia Romanova
Vladan Stamenković, reading his Serbian translation
Alicja Walicka, reading the Hungarian translation by Elżbieta Adamska-Mohos
Launching Lidia Kosk’s book Szklana góra/Glass Mountain at the House of Literature in Warsaw, Poland
Launching Lidia Kosk’s book Szklana góra/Glass Mountain at the House of Literature in Warsaw on May 10, 2017 (selection of video snippets with multilingual readings of the poem):
