David Ferry, the second poet in the 2007-2008 Lamont Poetry Series, will read from his poems and translations on Wednesday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m.  The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Assembly Hall, in the Academy Building on Front Street.  A reception and book-signing will follow.

"Every translation or version of a work is an interpretation of it…
the 'true original' is always unrecoverable, even for the most
faithfully literal translation."

-David Ferry, from the notes on his translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh

Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (1999) won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize from Boston Book Review, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. In 2007 Ferry received the Golden Rose Award, given annually since 1920 by the New England Poetry Club to a poet who has done the most for the art in the previous year or in a lifetime.  He has also been recognized with major awards for his translations.  He has rendered poetry from classical Latin and from French, German, and Italian into English, sometimes translating closely from the original, sometimes adapting more freely in order to produce viable poetry in English.

David Ferry is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College and a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boston University.  He will be the second poet in the Academy Library's 2007-2008 Lamont Poetry Series. 

The Lamont Poetry Series, endowed in 1982 by Corliss Lamont, Class of 1920, continues to bring remarkable poets to Exeter and remains a testimony to Mr. Lamont, who died in 1995.

For further information, please contact Academy Librarian Jacquelyn Thomas at (603) 777-3328.