Left: Cover of Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence | Right: George McWhirter with Scott Griffin, Co-Founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize (Photo credit: George Pimental)
UBC School of Creative Writing professor emeritus George McWhirter recently won the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize for his English-language translation of Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, written in Spanish by Mexican poet Homero Aridjis. The Griffin Poetry Prize was founded in 2000 to encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry. The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world. It is the largest international award for poetry with a C$130,000 prize shared 60% to the translator and 40% to the original author.
“The School of Creative Writing is delighted that George has won the Griffin Poetry Prize! George was a widely loved and respected professor while at Creative Writing, and he continues to be an inspiring and encouraging mentor within the writing community. I still treasure things he taught us in poetry class when I was a student. This recognition is so well-deserved,” says Annabel Lyon, director of the School of Creative Writing.
McWhirter has a long history of translating poems for Aridjis between writing his own books. He regularly translates Aridjis’ poems to be read at conferences, published in literary magazines, and English and American newspapers. This familiarity with Aridjis’ writing made McWhirter the ideal translator when New Directions chose to publish a new book of Aridjis’ poetry.
The translation process is a collaborative effort between McWhirter and Aridjis, both lending their ideas to the finished manuscript. The project took three years to complete including discussions on what poems to include in the final book, with older and newer poems being selected. Translating poetry from Spanish to English requires McWhirter to consider his own lived experience to use the most suitable phrasing. McWhirter types up the poems in Spanish before translating to English in enface format, the correct format for a book of poetry, and reviews his final drafts with Aridjis to ensure the nuances of each poem remain accurate.
“Now regarding translating Homero, who is many poets in one with many styles. It’s a good thing that I have translated plays and written ones for radio, as well as fiction because the action in Homero’s poems ranges from a street level complaint in the voice of an ex table dancer called Lupe Velez to the insides of the Caracol, the observatory at Chichen Itza with an Aztec priest crawling out of it and over a grassy bank, then away from an old Aztec world into a new,” says McWhirter.
“Some of Homero’s poems could be word movies, others are love poems, or satires on politicians. He writes on butterflies and whales, and especially about dogs. Being a dog lover, easy for me to relate and translate.The many poets in one is a match for the many Mexicos, past and present, that he writes about.”
The judges appreciated the variety of poems selected: “The book’s enchanting variety of tones and subjects expresses a rounded human being engaged with our total experience, from the familial to the political, from bodily sensations to dream, vision, philosophic thought, and history, from hope to foreboding.”
McWhirter reflects that winning the Griffin Poetry Prize is an accomplishment achieved through years of dedication to translating poetry.
“The Griffin completes a long journey for me. It starts in 1975 when I was living with my family in Mexico, translating José Emilio Pacheco’s poetry. I picked up Homero’s Quemar las naves / Burn the Boats and I wanted to translate it, but alas, in those days, Eliot Weinberger was Homero’s translator into English. Not until 1987, after meeting him and Homero reading my translations of his poems for Where Words Like Monarchs Fly (Anvil Press), did I get my chance to be his translator. The award fulfils a long time a-rendering Homero’s poetry into English,” says McWhirter.
McWhirter received his MA from UBC in 1970, staying on to eventually become a full Professor and Head of the UBC Creative Writing Program from 1983 until 1993. He was honoured with a Killam Prize for teaching in 1998 and the first Killam Prize for Mentoring at UBC in 2004.
McWhirter’s first book of poetry, Catalan Poems, was a joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize with Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother. McWhirter was inaugurated as Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate in 2007. He has translated works by Mario Arregui, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Zaid and José Emilio Pacheco whose Selected Poems (New Directions), for which he was principal translator and editor, won the F.R. Scott Prize for Translation in 1987.
He has received multiple awards for his prolific writing that includes poetry, translation and fiction works.
