Book Break

"One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: Translating the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu"
By Peter McMillan

Thursday, November 6, 2008 6：30PM to 8:30 PM

Talk by the Author

(The speech and Q&A will be in English)

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (Translations from the Asian Classics) (Hardcover) (with a foreword by Donald Keene and an afterword by Eileen Kato) by Columbia University Press (Spring 2008). Available on Amazon, Kinokuniya, Maruzen.

Peter McMillan’s translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each Donald Keene and by Columbia University Press (Spring 2008). has been widely reviewed in the media including Sankei Shinbun, TIME magazine which praised the book highly. It has been unanimously awarded the 2008 Donald Keene Center Special Prize for the best translation of a work of classical Japanese literature and the Special Prize of The Japan Society of Translators (Nihon Honyakuka Kyokai.) 2008. The book has also been awarded a publication grant from the Suntory Foundation and Kyorin University. A Japanese edition will be published by Shueisha Shinsho next spring.

An Excerpt from the review in Time
An excellent new translation of these poems makes clear why they have mattered so much for so long. One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu by Peter McMillan reveals the vivid emotions that have kept the heart of the collection beating all this time. The poems of the Hyakunin Isshu are waka: 31-syllable verses of five lines. Like the better known haiku, which they spawned, waka have a brevity and a strictness of topic and word-choice that demand economy of expression. They exemplify the idea that art is born of constraints and dies in freedom. But imposing restrictions that are unnatural in English has doomed many translations. McMillan succeeds by following a more sensible rule: abandoning the stipulated meter, but making the poems as lyrical in translation as they are in classical Japanese.
Nearly half of the Hyakunin Isshu poems are about love. Teika drew from poets as far back as the 8th century, and one of the pleasures of reading the collection is to realize that nothing has changed.

Peter McMillan

Irish
Poet, printmaker, translator, professor, public speaker.
Professor Kyorin University Graduate and Undergraduate schools teaching poetry, translation, ekphrasis.

A dinner will be served at a cost of 1,850 yen (including tax). Sign up now at the reception desk (3211-3161) or online at http://www.fccj.or.jp. To help us plan proper seating and food preparation, please reserve in advance, preferably by noon of the day of the event. Those without reservations will be turned away once available seats are filled.

Reservations cancelled less than 24 hours in advance will be charged in full.

Library Committee, THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB OF JAPAN