Rod Mengham: Grimspound
(Carcanet, 2018; p. 57)
British poet, literary critic and translator Rod Mengham will be this year’s international guest at the Campus Book Festival, organised by the National Book Council in collaboration with Għaqda tal-Malti - Università, and taking place at the University Quadrangle later this month.
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Mengham currently holds the positions of Reader in Modern English at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College. He has published various literary and academic works. His books of poetry include Chance of a Storm (Carcanet), Unsung: New and Selected Poems (Salt) and Parley and Skirmishes (Ars Cameralis).
In an event taking place on Thursday, March 28 at 10am, English university and college students from Malta and Gozo will be able to discuss with Mengham his latest work, Grimspound and Inhabiting Art (Carcanet). The audience will have the opportunity of sharing their feedback on the book with the author himself, who will in turn read excerpts from his work and answer questions. Not strictly a poetry collection, Grimspound and Inhabiting Art is comprised of two complementary halves: a poetic meditation on a place (the Bronze Age site of Grimspound on Dartmoor), and a series of short essays on language, history and poetic forms. The book club marks a homecoming of sorts for one of these essays, ‘A Genealogy of the Prose Poem’, which first appeared in the UOM English Department peer-reviewed journal CounterText.
Mengham’s presence throughout the duration of the festival will provide different audiences with numerous opportunities to discuss aspects of the author’s work. On Wednesday, March 27, Mengham will be joining in a seminar on Translating Poetry with Prof. Clare Vassallo from the Department of Translation, Terminology and Interpreting Studies, and translator Kevin Saliba at 1pm. They will talk about the challenges, as well as the merits, of literary translation, particularly when translation has to abide to a range of poetic devices.
On the last day of the festival, Maltese poet Antoine Cassar, who was awarded the 2018 National Book Prize for poetry with Erbgħin Jum (EDE Books), will be catching up with Mengham for an author’s interview at 5.30pm.
The Campus Book Festival 2019 will run at the University of Malta’s Quadrangle in Msida from 9am to 4pm on Wednesday and Thursday, March 27 and 28, and from 9 am until late on Friday, March 29.
For updates, further details and the full programme of events, visit the NBC Facebook page and the festival’s event pages.
https://www.facebook.com/events/281884592429111
http://ktieb.org.mt/campus-book-festival-2019-programme-of-events