Friday 11 November, 6pm
100 Poems, by Umberto Saba
Event celebrating the publication of the first English translation in the UK of a selection of one hundred poems by Umberto Saba, translated and edited by Patrick Worsnip, with a foreword by Angela Leighton
Umberto Saba (1883-1957)is one of the towering figures of Twentieth-Century Italian poetry, jointly with Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti. His Canzoniere (first published in 1921, but subsequently re-edited and expanded until its final edition of 1956) was much loved and embraced by younger poets, such as Vittorio Sereni, Giorgio Caproni, Franco Fortini, and Amelia Rosselli – and yet, it is still today rarely frequented by Italian readers, and, what’s more important for us today, virtually unknown to British readers. This is being redressed at last, by the volume Umberto Saba, 100 Poems, Edited and translated by Patrick Worsnip with a foreword by Angela Leighton, published by Carcanet earlier this year.
The event will start with a round-table discussion of the legacy, and relevance of Saba’s poetry today, chaired by Olmo Calzolari (Keble College), followed by the presentation of the volume, which then will be followed by a poetry reading in Italian and English. The Panel will include : Patrick Worsnip, translator of the volume, the poet and translator Jamie McKendrick, and Ela Tandello, Student Emerita of Christ Church, Oxford.
Free admission, book HERE
Umberto Saba (1883–1957) is one of the great Italian poets of the twentieth century, as closely associated with his native city Trieste as Joyce is with Dublin. He received a sparse education but was writing distinctive poetry before he was twenty, ignoring the modernist groups which dominated the day. He came at personal themes in unexpected ways, using an unapologetically contemporary idiom. He acquired an antiquarian bookshop which prospered for a time, but his Jewish background placed him at risk with the rise of Fascism. When the Germans took northern Italy in 1943, he and his family went into hiding in Florence where they escaped detection until the Allied liberation. National fame came late in his life. 100 Poems is the most extensive selection of his work so far published in Great Britain. He emerges as one of the great European writers of his time. The book features writing from every period of his writing life. Patrick Worsnip’s translations honour the poet’s use of traditional Italian forms while using appropriately colloquial diction. This edition includes a preface by Angela Leighton, literary critic, poet and translator from Italian. An afterword and explanatory notes from Worsnip contextualise Saba’s life and clarify references in his poems.
Patrick Worsnip was born in Gloucester in 1948 and read Classics and Modern Languages at Merton College, Oxford. He worked for more than 40 years as a correspondent for Reuters news agency, with postings in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, and covering stories ranging from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the wars in the Gulf. Since retirement in 2012, he has devoted himself to translation, mainly of poetry. His version of the complete Poems of Propertius (Carcanet Press, 2018) won a Poetry Book Society recommendation. He lives in Cambridge.
The Italian Cultural Institute will not admit anyone showing covid-19 symptoms such as a continuous cough, a cold and a temperature. You are strongly invited to wear face covering during events, maintain social distancing and use wall-unit sanitizers, as a matter of courtesy to the clinically vulnerable. We keep windows open whenever possible to ensure ventilation and thoroughly clean our rooms before and after each event. Thank you for your co-operation. We reserve the right not to admit any late comers.