David Ricks, “Poetry between Languages: Writing and Translating Poetry in English and Greek”

This hybrid panel session, held on 20 January 2025 at the British School at Athens, takes as its starting point With Signs Following (Reading: Two Rivers Press 2024) the newly published poetry collection of David Ricks (Professor Emeritus, King’s College London). The two-hour-long session was chaired by Professor Sir Roderick Beaton, Chair of the BSA Council. The speakers are: Dr Dionysis Kapsalis (former Director of the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece), whose title is ‘Not Life but speech’. Dr Kapsalis will share reflections on translating one of Ricks’s poems—and the ‘sorrows and joys’ thereof. He will pay special attention to the conjugal tension between living speech and formal verse in the translation of poetry. Professor Nasos Vayenas (University of Athens) will speak in Greek on the topic ‘Διαβάζοντας τα ποιήματα του David Ricks’. He describes his talk as ‘μια ανάλυση της ποιητικής του Ricks με βαση τη θεματική και την προσωδία των ποιημάτων του.’ Professor Athina Vogiatzoglou (University of Ioannina) will speak on the subject ‘Writing in English and Translating from Greek’. She will explore David Ricks’s poetic vision and craftsmanship through a selected reading of his poems and his creative translations. The renowned poet and translator A.E. Stallings (University of Oxford), who wrote the Afterword to With Signs Following, will share her own thoughts. The event is co-hosted by the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. It will be recorded for future use. David Ricks David Ricks is Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, King’s College London. While teaching there for three decades, he produced the anthology Modern Greek Writing (2003) and versions of a range of Greek poets, from Dionysios Solomos to Michalis Ganas, published in magazines and anthologies. He has also published poems in Poetry, the New England Review, and other American magazines. Some of these poems have now been collected in the pamphlet Shreds and Patches (Rack Press 2022) and the book With Signs Following (Two Rivers Press 2024).