Honoring René Gallet

A Festschrift in honor of Hill's long-time translator René Gallet has been published in La Revue LISA/LISA e-journal.  Geoffrey Hill contributed new poetry, "Seven Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres."  The issue also features five critical articles about Hill's poetry, as well as numerous studies of Hopkins.  René Gallet's critical writings on Graham Greene as well as  "Dracula entre Darwin et Bunyan," and "Hopkins à l'époque de Maxwell" make this a memorable issue of the periodical, edited by Renée Dickason.

Links:

Geoffrey Hill, "Seven Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres," (2009).

Table of Contents, LISA e-journal 7:3 (2009).

Geoffrey Hill's interview with Anne Mounic in English

As Carole Birkan-Berz noted on "The Geoffrey Hill Exchange" page, Sylvia Paul has translated Anne Mounic's interview with Geoffrey Hill into English for The Geoffrey Hill Study Centre, accompanied by a photo of the "Moulin Mystique" sculpture from Vézelay.

Geoffrey Hill in conversation with Anne Mounic

Religious poetry in English and in French is the uniting feature of Temporel #6 (October 2008).  Geoffrey Hill's poems in French translation by René Gallet, Jacques Darras, Patrick Hersant and Anne Mounic appear along with poetry by Michael Edwards,  as well as Anne Mounic's interview with Geoffrey Hill and a review of René Gallet's translation of The Triumph of Love.

    One sentence from the interview, drawn out of a hat, as it were:  "Le véritable poète est complètement isolé."  For some reason, the paragraph where that sentence appears reminds me of the first stanza of Donald Hall's poem "To a Waterfowl."

    Longtime readers of Hill will find this issue essential reading.  One example: Hill reveals that "September Song" is indeed an elegy for a deported girl.  While at an exhibit of children's artwork from Theresienstadt, he viewed a painting with dates of birth that closely matched his own. 

Ira Lightman on Geoffrey Hill and Jeffrey Wainwright

In a review of Jeffrey Wainwright's Acceptable Words (2005), Ira Lightman talks about Wordsworth, Prynne, and Silliman, while singing  "I'm not in love, and don't forget it." Read it yourself in Stride Magazine (2008).

Translating according to Patrick Hersant

Patrick Hersant, in an article published in Poétique de l'Etranger #4 (when? no date on the site) describes translation as a way of generating dialogue between languages, using examples from Mercian Hymns and Hill's renditions of Celan.

http://www.univ-paris8.fr/dela/etranger/pages/1-4/Hersant.pdf