Why I No Longer Write Poems: [Bilingual Georgian-English] - Paperback

by Diana Anphimiadi (Author), Jean Sprackland (Translator), Natalia Bukia-Peters (Translator)

A boldly inventive selection of collaborative translations from one of the most widely revered Georgian poets of her generation.

Diana Anphimiadi's award-winning work reflects an exceptionally curious mind and glides between classical allusions and surreal imagery. She revivifies ancient myths and tests the reality of our senses against the limits of sense. Prayers appear alongside recipes, dance lessons next to definitions. Her playful, witty lyricism offers a glimpse of the eternal in the everyday.

The poems in this selection have been collaboratively translated into English by the leading Georgian translator Natalia Bukia-Peters and award-winning British poet Jean Sprackland. A chapbook selection of their translations of Anphimiadi's work, Beginning to Speak, was published in 2018 and praised by Adham Smart in Modern Poetry in Translation for capturing the 'electricity of Anphimiadi's language' which 'crackles from one poem to the next in Bukia-Peters and Sprackland's fine translation'.

Author Biography

Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. She has published four collections of poetry in Georgian: Shokoladi (Chocolate, 2008), Konspecturi Mitologia (Resumé of Mythology, 2009), Alhlokhedvis Traektoria (Trajectory of the Short-Sighted, 2012) and Chrdilis Amoch'ra (Cutting the Shadow, 2015). Her poetry has received prestigious awards, including first prize in the 2008 Tsero (Crane Award) and the Saba Prize for the best first collection in 2009. Her chapbook, Beginning to Speak, was published in 2018 by the Poetry Translation Centre, and Why I No Longer Write Poems, the first full-length Georgian-English selection of her poetry, is published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre in 2022, both titles translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Jean Sprackland. She lives in Tblisi with her son.