Philip Mosley reads from his translation of François Jacqmin’s poems with classical guitar punctuations by Jason Smeltzer.
Philip Mosley, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn State Worthington Scranton, will perform a reading of his translations of the poems of François Jacqmin on Thursday, February 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Heritage Room of Weinberg Library.
Dr. Mosley’s translation of The Book of the Snow, a volume of 112 ten-line poems by Jacqmin, has just been published in a bilingual edition by Arc in the UK in its “Visible Poets” series. Jacqmin, who died in 1992, is considered to be one of the foremost Belgian francophone poets of the last fifty years. His poetry is elemental, philosophical, and witty. He was also associated with Phantomas, an iconoclastic neo-surrealist group of artists and writers. Dr. Mosley’s reading will be accompanied by classical guitar punctuations by Jason Smeltzer.
Dr. Mosley is an Associate Editor of Comparative Literature Studies and a member of the Board of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, having been involved with the Council since 1996 as a Commonwealth Speaker, a Read About It! book discussion group leader, and an outside evaluator. As well as his PHC activities, he has been prominent in the cultural life of northeastern Pennsylvania, organizing and participating in a number of film festivals and literary events, and serving on museum and film boards. Philips book publications include Ingmar Bergman: The Cinema as Mistress (1982); Georges Rodenbach: Critical Essays (1996); Split Screen: Belgian Cinema and Cultural Identity (2001); and Anthracite! An Anthology of Pennsylvania Coal Region Plays (2006). His latest book, The Cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne: Responsible Realism, is forthcoming from Wallflower Press in London. Additionally, he has translated a number of Belgian authors from French to English including Guy Vaes (October Long Sunday, 1997), Georges Rodenbach (Bruges-la-Morte, 2007), Maurice Maeterlinck (The Intelligence of Flowers, 2008), and Francois Jacqmin (The Book of the Snow, 2010). He was awarded the 2008 Literary Translation Prize by the French Community of Belgium in recognition of his contribution to the dissemination of Belgian francophone literature. A native of England who immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1988, Philip holds a B.A .in English from the University of Leeds, an M.A. in European Literature and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, both from the University of East Anglia. In 2000 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Toulouse, France, and in 2003-04 was Fulbright Visiting Professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
Sheli (second from left) represented the U as part of the Northeast Chapter Jeopardy team at the annual PaLA conference