#  Everything Indicates: A Poetry Reading with Czech poet Petr Hruška and translator Jonathan Bolton 

 



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####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 28, 2025** 

 05:30PM - 07:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Barker Center, Thompson Room**  



 

 



 

## [RETHINKING TRANSLATION](/rethinking-translation)

## SPEAKERS: Petr Hruška, University of Ostrava; Jonathan Bolton, Harvard University

Czech poet Petr Hruška will join us for a conversation with Jonathan Bolton, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, who has edited and translated a selection from Hruška’s work, Everything Indicates (Blue Diode Press, 2023). They will read a selection of Hruška’s poems in Czech and English, discuss specific translation problems and choices, and talk about their close collaboration on the English translations of Hruška’s poems.

### About the Speakers

**Petr Hruška** (b. 1964) is a poet and literary historian who lives in Ostrava, Czech Republic. With its social problems and environmental devastation, this industrial city, located above enormous reserves of black coal, has played a major role in Hruška’s poetics. His collections include *Obývací nepokoje* (*Restless Living Rooms*, 1995), *Měsíce* (*Months*, 1998), *Vždycky se ty dveře zavíraly* (*The Door Always Used to Swing Shut*, 2002), *Auta vjíždějí do lodí* (*The Cars Drive into the Ships*, 2007), *Nevlastní* (*Stepson*, 2017), and *Nikde není řečeno* (*It Doesn’t Say Anywhere*, 2019); his poetry has won a number of state and international awards, including the Czech State Award for Literature in recognition of his collection *Darmata* (*To No Travail*, 2012), and the Magnesia Litera, the most prestigious annual literary award in the Czech Republic, for his newest collection, *Spatřil jsem svou tvář* (*I Caught Sight of My Face*, 2022), an extended meditation on Magellan’s voyage around the world. He writes screenplays, publishes a literary magazine, co-organizes literary events and festivals, and participates in civic initiatives for environmental causes and the preservation of cultural monuments in his region. Hruška also writes short stories, columns, and essays, many of which are collected in *Cave-In* (2020). Hruška works at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, specializing in poetry from the twentieth century to the present, and is the author of scholarly articles and books on Czech poetry.

**Jonathan Bolton** is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard. His translations of Czech prose and poetry have appeared in Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction, Modern Poetry in Translation, Circumference, and elsewhere. Last year he edited and translated *Everything Indicates* (Blue Diode Publishing, 2024), a selection of about sixty poems by Petr Hruška, one of the Czech Republic’s leading contemporary poets. Jonathan has been translating Hruška for over twenty years, and he selected the poems for this edition in consultation with Hruška, drawing on collections spanning his career.

*Co-sponsored by the Slavic Department.*



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Seminar ](/event-type/seminar)
- [ Rethinking Translation ](/seminars/rethinking-translation)
 
 

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