Daniel Bourne - Translations

Translations

Bourne is well regarded for his translations of contemporary Polish poetry, notably his translations of Bronislaw Maj, and of On the Crossroads of Asia and Europe and other works by Polish poet Tomasz Jastrun. This collection is praised by the Sarmatian Review which states, "Bourne strikes a careful middle ground between the rewrite and negative capability. And I think that is because he is no armchair translator, but a poet himself, who lived through the world described in Jastrun's poems. He was living in Warsaw during martial law, sneaking about to meet with various poets and writers and visual artists." Indeed, Bourne was in Poland during the Summer of 1980 and the rise of Solidarity--the shipyard strikes that soon took over the entire country and resulted in the Workers Accord being signed between Solidarity and the Polish government creating the first independent trade unions in the Eastern Bloc. He later returned to Poland for a year during the period of martial law, and then for two more years in 1985-87 on a Fulbright fellowship for the translation of younger Polish poets. In The Polish Review, of On the Crossroads of Asia and Europe, it is commented that "Many of the poems read as English originals and have little of the awkwardness seen in some translated verse."

Bourne is considered an important translator of Polish poetry during the last decade of Communism and into the post-communist era, having also translated the poetry of Jan Polkowski and Krystyna Lars as well as being the editor of the section on Polish writing for Shifting Borders, an anthology of Eastern European poetry published in 1993.