James Hadley is Trinity’s Ussher Assistant Professor in Literary Translation at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translations where he directs the award-winning MPhil in Literary Translation. A GAP IN THE CLOUDS A Gap in the Clouds is a new translation combining scholarly research by Dr James Hadley on the language, history and culture of medieval Japan - with author Nell Regan’s poetic mastery, allowing each poem to be appreciated in its own right in English. The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (Ogura’s 100 poems by 100 poets) is one of Japan’s most important poetry collections. Compiled around 1235, its poems date from as early as the 800s. They are Tanka - related to, but a little longer than Haiku. The poets include emperors and empresses, courtiers and high priests, ladies-in-waiting and soldier-calligraphers. Each one is a mental snapshot of a scene, filled with symbolism, layers of meaning, and emotional undercurrents, making the poems both universal and highly specific to the time and culture in which they were written. The poems have been translated many times before, but in most cases, the aim was to transmit the meaning of the poems, rather than to craft poems in English. This new translation attempts to do both. It renders each poem as an English poem in its own right, but it also incorporates as much of a glimpse of the Medieval Japanese way of life as possible. All this means that A Gap in the Clouds is far more than just a fascinating historical document. It is a window onto the lives of poets living hundreds of years ago, as well as a collection of poems that continues to speak directly to the human experience today. Click to purchase the book Click to learn more about TCLCT
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