2012 Compass Translation Award

January 12, 2013, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

The second annual Compass Award contest is dedicated to the translation of poetic works of Marina Tsvetaeva. There were nearly 70 submissions from around the world, from the USA to Singapore, by entrants that included professional Tsvetaeva scholars and poets, as well as amateur fans of her poetry. Submissions ranged from 10-12 line poems to lengthy works, such as The Poem of the Mountain and The Poem of the End.

The greater the poetic quality, the less yielding are the poems to translation, regardless of whether they seem "simple" or "complex." In twentieth-century Russian poetry, one finds few poems, both long and short, that are as difficult to translate as those of Marina Tsvetaeva. Their poetic tension is just too high, and their force fields are overwhelmingly complex. And, yet... In 2012, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva would have turned 120, and we dedicate our annual contest to her. The judges are 16 remarkable poets, translators, and Slavic scholars, some of whom have spent years translating and analyzing Tsvetaeva's works.

  
The Compass contest takes place under the auspices of Cardinal Points Journal.
Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) is proud to be a partner of Cardinal Points Journal and a member of the Compass prize committee.

In 2011, the inaugural contest was dedicated to the poetry of Nikolay Gumilyov. The poet for the 2013 contest is expected to be announced on December 3, 2012.

The results of the competition:
1. Poem of the End (Поэма конца) - A. Gillespie, USA
2. The Grove (Сад) - H. Wong, Singapore
3. An Attempt at Jealousy (Попытка ревности) - L. Goldberger, Egypt and E. Serebryany, USA
4. August - Asters... (Август - астры...) - N. Moseman, USA
5. Upon a Red Steed (На красном коне) - B. Droitcour, USA
6. A window and a light... (Вот опять окно...) - I. Mazin, USA
7. From "The Trees" (Из цикла "Деревья") - S. Bogdanov, UK
8. Magdalene. 2 (Магдалина. 2) - A. Gillespie, USA

THE WINNERS:
1st Prize ("Compass" and $300) - Alyssa Gillespie, Associate professor of Russian Language and Literature; University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
The Poem of the End (Alyssa is also the 2nd place winner in Compass Award-2011, the Gumilyov contest)
2nd Prize ($150) - Brian Droitcour, Graduate Student, Department of Comparative Literature, New York University, USA
Upon a Red Steed
3rd prize ($100) - Leah Goldberger (a Russian-Arabic-English interpreter in Cairo, Egypt) and Eugene Serebryany (biology Ph.D. student in Cambridge, Massachusetts)
An Attempt at Jealosy

Compass Award Committee www.StoSvet.net/compass | compass@StoSvet.net
Photos by Roman Khidekel