THE OBVIOUS ANALOGY IS WITH MUSIC: LYN HEJINIAN ACROSS TONGUES

It is quite unbearable to weather these times without my life's teachers—to be the teacher, as I wrote for Jacket2 after she died. But celebrating Lyn's birthday in the plural languages of this planet will be a beautiful way of celebrating her this Saturday and of marking her place at the secret core of a book whose corrections I will finish over the next hour. I get to read from My Life alongside the Swedish: how lucky, how lucky to have had her as model and friend, how lucky to have her voice and her writings still careening til the end in this devastated head.

To celebrate the 84th birthday of the late poet Lyn Hejinian, we will gather online next Saturday to read her work in different languages. Translators from Argentina, China, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain and Sweden will read selections from their versions of Hejinian’s poetry. American poets will read the original English texts. This is a rare chance to hear an ‘other’ Hejinian—familiar and estranged, near and distant—spoken in tongues. A poet whose circles of correspondences resonate around the globe, she remains with us—‘a friend of clouds’.

17 May 2025, 9 am PDT / 18:00 CET / 19:00 Moscow

Live on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/_Kpome24lUw?feature=share