Vera Rich
Vera Rich (24 April 1936 – 20 December 2009) was a British poet, journalist, historian, and translator from Belarusian and Ukrainian.
Born in London, she studied at St Hilda's College of University of Oxford and Bedford College, London. In 1959, her poetry attracted the attention of the editors of John O'London's Weekly and the following year her first collection of verse, Outlines, was privately produced and received favourable reviews, selling out within six months.[1]
Her translations of the works of Taras Shevchenko, commissioned for the century of his death (1961) received excellent reviews, both in the West and in the Soviet Ukraine. For this work, Vera Rich was awarded an Honorary Diploma in Shevchenko Studies by the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.[2]
Later, influenced by Fr. Ceslaus Sipovich, she started also translating Belarusian poetry. Her first translation from Belarusian was the poem Na čužynie by Janka Kupala. Her Like Water, Like Fire published in 1971 became the world's first anthology of translations of Belarusian poetry into a western European language. Later she published The Images Swarm Free, a collection of translations of verses by prominent Belarusian authors, Aleś Harun, Maksim Bahdanovič, and Źmitrok Biadula.
Vera Rich was the founder of Manifold, "the magazine of new poetry". It was started in 1962 and appeared regularly under Vera's editorship until May 1969, when it was suspended owing to Vera's taking a job as Soviet and East European Correspondent for the scientific weekly Nature. At the time of its suspension Manifold had close on 900 subscribers, almost half of them in the USA. This initially temporary job at Nature lasted for more than 20 years. It was only in 1998 that it proved possible to relaunch Manifold. All together, 49 issues were published under Vera's editorship. It published original high-quality poetry in traditional and innovative styles, in various variants of English, and - from time to time - in major European languages, as well as translations of poetry from less-known languages.
Bibliography
- Portents and Images: A Collection of Original Verse and Translations. (London, 1963).
- Like water, like fire: Anthology of Byelorussian poetry from 1828 to the present day. (1971) ISBN 978-0-04-891041-7.
- The images swarm free: A bilingual selection of poetry. (1982) ISBN 978-0-929849-05-8.
- Image of the Jew in Russian literature: The post-Stalin period. (1984) ISBN 978-0-88125-062-6.
- Poems on Liberty. Reflections for Belarus. (2004) ISBN 0-929849-05-1
External links
- Vera Rich: translator, journalist, poet and human rights activist // The Times
- Dmytro Drozdovskyi "ВІКОНЦЕ З НАЙЧИСТІШОГО У СВІТІ СКЛА" Interview with Vera Rich
- Dmytro Drozdovskyi "Моїми найкращими підручниками були збірки поезії" Interview with Vera Rich
- Вера Рыч. Рэцэпт цуду, an interview for the newspaper Nasha Niva
- 50 гадоў творчай дзейнасьці Веры Рыч (50 years of translator work by Vera Rich)
- Беларуская Вера ў Лёндане – інтэрвію на мове анёлаў, an interview for the Belarusian service of RFE/RL
- Examples of Vera Rich's translations, often side-by-side with the Belarusian versions (bio plus other links as well)
- Dmytro Drozdovskyi "Голос правди. Перекладач Віра Річ святкує 70-річний ювілей у Києві" Interview with Vera Rich
- Nécrologe. Vera Rich... In memoria "Надзвичайний Посол України"
- Vera Rich: The most significant event in my life
Notes
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