Professor Karen Kovacik Receives NEA Literature Translation Fellowship

IUPUI Professor Karen Kovacik View print-quality image

The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded IUPUI Professor Karen Kovacik a $12,500 NEA Literature Translation Fellowship. The fellowship will support Kovacik’s translation into English of the work of Polish poet Agnieszka Kuciak.

Kovacik is professor of English and director of creative writing in the School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She is translating a 120-page selection of Kuciak’s work, drawing from two of the Polish poet’s books and also including some previously uncollected poems.

Polish poet and critic Bronislaw Maj characterized Kuciak’s debut as one of the one most important literary events of the last decade: “Her brilliant ideas for poems, her sense of irony and humor, recall the lyrics of Wisława Szymborska. Her pithy phrasing and imagistic density bring to mind Emily Dickinson’s.”

Kovacik is one of 16 recipients of a 2012 NEA Literature Translation Fellowship. In total, the NEA will distribute $200,000 to support the translation of works into English.

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman said, “Translation not only brings great literature to wider audiences, but it also creates a broader awareness of cultures. Through these 16 fellowships, the NEA is bringing knowledge of cultures around the world, from both the past and present, to American audiences.”

Earlier this year, the Indiana Arts Commission named Professor Kovacik as the Indiana State Poet Laureate. Kovacik will serve a two-year term as poet laureate beginning January 2012.

The School of Liberal Arts is the home of the social sciences and humanities at IUPUI, a core campus of Indiana University. The school has 11 departments and more than 30 centers, institutes and programs.

Congress established The National Endowment for the Arts in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities

Source: http://newscenter.iupui.edu