French Poetry Translation Competition 2016

French Poetry Translation Competition 2016

The results from this year's competition are announced.

This is the fourth year of the French-English Poetry Translation Competition and students were invited to translate ‘Paris nocturne’ by Tristan Corbière (1845-75). This was to coincide with the planned publication of some of Corbière's hitherto untranslated verse and prose pieces by Christopher Pilling, one of our alumni. 

The competition was judged by Christopher Pilling himself - who said he preferred parts of the students' translations to his own published version - and by Katherine Lunn-Rockcliffe, a Corbière specialist from the University of Oxford. We are very grateful to Christopher and Katherine for giving their time. They found it difficult to choose an outright winner and decided to give two first prizes and two runners-up prizes, as follows:

First prize (shared): Sarah Buckle (Level 3) and Jemima Skala (Level 1)

Runners-up: Frederick Bloomfield (YA) and Mirella Cooper (YA).

The winners will receive a copy of These Jaundiced Loves, Christopher Pilling’s translation of Corbière’s Les amours jaunes (Peterloo, 1995).