Translating Italy. Notes On Irish Poets Reading Italian Poetry

During the last few years, literary translation has become a relevant part of some Irish writers’ activity. Such poets as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Eamon Grennan, Desmond O’Grady, among others, sometimes seemed to have been more concerned about translating than about writing. Translation has offered itself as an occasion for literary experimentation, re–writing as well as for learning and discussing about other worlds. A sociocultural perspective — entailing the notion of “cultural identity” — has here been applied to a linguistic analysis of such texts in translation.Chiara Sciarrino is a secondary school teacher of English. She holds a MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama (UCD). She was assigned a position of assistant of Italian by the Department of Education in two secondary schools of Dublin where she has worked for one year. She started a PhD at TCD and later completed it at IULM University (Milan) where she now works as a researcher (“assegnista”). Her areas of study are contemporary Anglo-Irish literature and drama, travel literature, image and translation studies. Her Un’Italia fuori dall’Italia. Immagini di cultura italiana nella letteratura anglo–irlandese contemporanea (Aracne, 2005) explores the different modes and forms in which interactions between Irish writing and Italian culture have occurred during the last fifty years.