Output details

The Evolution of Crow: Artist as Translator. 66 art works including etchings, digital prints, photographs and collages in response to the co-translations made by Ted Hughes (and the Hungarian speaker Janos Csokits) of the poet János Pilinszky. Resulting in: exhibition The Evolution of Crow, Emory University Atlanta 2009-2010, alongside scholarly material and archival holdings (manuscripts, letters, notebooks); The Print and the Archive, exhibition and conference, Pembroke College Cambridge, 2012; The Translated Image, exhibition and conference, Pázmány University, Budapest; and forthcoming book chapter (2014).

The co-translations made by Ted Hughes of the Hungarian poet János Pilinszky were the focus of this research, exploring parallels between the aesthetic positions of poet, translator, and artist. The research investigated the complexities of visual and textual responses to literary sources, and aimed to develop innovative methodologies for engaging with literary archives. Alongside the artist’s ‘The Dresden Archive Project’, this research aimed to further the ways in which to engage with archives as bodies of material artefacts and intellectual stimuli.

Primary archival research was conducted in the Manuscript and Rare Books Library, Emory University, Atlanta, collaborating with archivists and literary scholar Tara Bergin. This enabled interdisciplinary interaction with the archive on both material and intellectual levels. The aim was to use the physicality of fragments and annotations in order to render these into visual forms that also reflected the content of texts. The visual translation and act of interpretation was enhanced through interviews with scholars and biographers of Hughes. Field trips to Hughes’ birthplace in Yorkshire gave important insight into aspects of the poet/translator’s character, which infused the poet’s work. This primary research became integrated into the art works – rough drafts, marginalia, and the spoken word laying the ground for 66 prints and accompanying written commentaries. These were exhibited at Emory University, alongside selected items from the Ted Hughes Papers. By presenting these archival holdings alongside original art works, the collaboration forwarded new methods for textual analysis, presenting a parallel activity of visual and scholarly enquiry and demonstrating new ways to engage creatively with literary archives. Subsequently invited to be part of a multi-disciplinary team in a £500,000 AHRC funded project, The Poetics of the Archive: Creative and Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Poetry Archive - an 18 month project which commenced October 2013.