Argentine Poet Diana Bellessi
to Present Bilingual Reading at Smith College

The Poetry Center at Smith College presents renowned Argentine poet Diana Bellessi at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29, in Neilson Library Browsing Room. Reading with her will be two of her North American translators, Cathy Eisenhower and Christiane Jacox Kyle.

Bellessi, who is the Latin American Studies Visiting Scholar at Smith for the month of April, received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Fundación Antorchas.

In addition to her essays and many volumes of poems, she has published two collections of contemporary North American women poets in translation. "The Twins, The Dream/Las Gemelas, El Sueño" (Arte Publico, 1996) presents Bellessi and Ursula LeGuin translating each other's poems as a means of bridging geographical distances and fostering a cross-cultural dialog. Some of the poems in this volume reflect Bellessi's experiences in the early 1970s traveling the Americas on foot.

These days, she teaches private writing workshops in Buenos Aires and travels by air to lecture and participate in literary conferences on both American continents.

In addition to the reading of Bellessi's poems in both Spanish and English, the poet and translators will discuss the translation process and invite questions from the audience.

The March 29 reading -- which is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible -- is presented in collaboration with the Latin American Studies Program and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and will be followed by a bookselling and signing.

For more information, call Jeanne West at (413) 585-3402 or Cindy Furtek at (413) 585-4891.

Contact: Marti Hobbes, mhobbes@smith.edu

March 19, 2001