By Emma Cranston /// Staff Writer
Last Thursday, Lewis & Clark hosted poet Victor Nuñez in the Albany-Smith auditorium. Nuñez read several of his pieces in Spanish, but offered english commentaries beside them.
Nuñez’s wife, Kate Hedeen, has worked to translate the mass of his poems into English, and anthologies such as his “With a Strange Scent of World” print her renditions on the page directly beside his own. English Professor Jerry Harp accompanied Nuñez in order to read Hedeen’s translations, but also included a few of his own translations of the poems. Harp described Nuñez’s poetry beautifully, saying, “For Victor, to be a poet is to find oneself in this naked place where it is not clear who one is, or for that matter if one even has anything resembling a stable identity, and then to bring the wispy drift of ones soul. . .into touch with the dense materiality of the world.”
Nuñez currently teaches at Kenyon College, and has published over 20 books of poetry, which have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Italian, Serbian and Swedish. The College was flattered to welcome such an esteemed poet, as Nuñez has read in over twenty countries. He currently divides his time between Gambier, Ohio and Havana, Cuba.
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