Translating Poetry: Between Authenticity and Creativity

This roundtable will consist of writer-translators who work and live within both French and English. The panelists will discuss how their individual approaches confront bilingualism, intermedial translation, and the question of authenticity. Can we say that the original poem and its translation are authentic in different ways? We will examine the process of co-translation and what means to work collectively through languages and gender. What happens during the process of receiving and interacting with a text, or in the experience with a text, and what happens in the shift from reader to translator? Where is the line of authenticity in mother tongue, original written language, and translation?