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Christian Hawkey

クリスチャン・ホーキー

Christian Hawkey

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1969 （Hackensack, New Jersey）
Nationality
American
Languages
English
Residence History
Brooklyn, New York → Hackensack, New Jersey → Amherst, Massachusetts

Career

Occupations
poet, translator, editor, activist, educator
Active Years
1995-
Affiliations
Pratt Institute (Brooklyn), Office of Recuperative Strategies (co-founder)

Education

University of Massachusetts Amherst
Country: United States
Completed graduate work; founded and edited the first ten issues of the poetry journal jubilat.

Awards

Kate Tufts Discovery Award
2006
Organization: Kate Tufts Foundation
Result: 受賞
Creative Capital Innovative Literature Award
2006
Organization: Creative Capital
Result: 受賞
DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship
2008
Organization: DAAD Berlin
Result: 受賞
Picador Guest Professorship
2010
Organization: University of Leipzig (Institute for American Studies)
Result: 受賞

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

Sift

2021 poetry

A poetry collection exploring linguistic fragmentation, historical memory, and the intersection of the domestic with political violence. Uses visual layout and backwards English to foreground linguistic instability.

languagememorycolonialitydomestic life

Sonne from Ort

2012 poetry / translation / collaboration

A collaborative book with Uljana Wolf that examines interactions between English and German and the problematics of translation in an experimental poetic form.

translationbilingualismsound and meaning

Ventrakl

2010 poetry / translation-poetry

An experimental book that works with Georg Trakl's poetry to foreground the problems and ghostliness of translation, making translation itself the central concern.

translation issuesspectralityhistory

Citizen Of

2007 poetry

A collection of poems reflecting on nationality, residence, and the boundaries of identity.

identitynationalityborders

The Book of Funnels

2004 poetry

An early collection marked by experimental use of sound and image in poetry.

soundimageryexperimentation

Bibliography

  • Sift (2021)
  • Sonne from Ort (with Uljana Wolf, 2012)
  • Ventrakl (2010)
  • Citizen Of (2007)
  • The Book of Funnels (2004)
  • Several chapbooks (Sonette mit elisabethanischem Maulwurf, Petitions for an Alien Relative, Ulf, HourHour, etc.)

Translations by Author

  • Ilse Aichinger, Bad Words: Selected Short Prose (co-translator, 2018)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
fragmented expression and experimental formsattention to the materiality of language through sonic and visual arrangementmeta approaches that make translation itself a subject
Recurring Motifs
translationruptures in languageintersection of domestic life and historyspectrality/absence

Legacy

A contemporary poet-translator who probes language and translation experimentally. Through founding a poetry journal and teaching and collaborative research projects, he has influenced younger poets and translation practice.

Quotes

  • In Ventrakl Hawkey makes the problems of translation the central concern, admitting the ghost-like, haunted nature of translation.
    Source: Johannes Göransson (review) (2012)

Trivia

  • Founded and edited the first ten issues of the poetry journal jubilat.
  • Co-founded the Office of Recuperative Strategies (OoRS) with Rachel Levitsky in 2012.
  • Associate professor at Pratt Institute.
  • Work has been translated into German, Slovene, French, Swedish, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.
  • Selected to judge the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2012.