This item is taken from PN Review 285, Volume 52 Number 1, September - October 2025.
News & Notes
Queen Sofia again! • On 7 May 2025, Luis Alberto de Cuenca was announced as recipient of this year’s Queen Sofia Award for Iberoamerican Poetry. It was the 34th year of the award, which carries a €42,100 purse and is given to mark the collected works of a living author. The poet is said to have a ‘clear, precise style’, his gaze trained ‘critically on the literary tradition with a tone that can be characterised as ironic or melancholy’, according to the director of National Patrimony, María Dolores Menéndez. He is ‘a bridge-builder’ between ancient mythology and the modern world.
One element in the prize is publication: his work will be issued in an annotated edition by a distinguished professor of literature at the University of Salamanca: the kiss of immortality and the kiss of poetic death attuned. Such plaudits render the poet virtually marmoreal. Queen Sofia herself will present the award to the still breathing poet later in the year. When he received the news, he was especially delighted that he would receive the award at the Queen’s hand. He currently serves on the board of the National Library of Spain and of the Prado Museum and is a previous selector for the Queen Sofia Award. He has written over thirty books of poems, twenty of essays, two novels and ‘countless translations’. From 1996 to 2000 he was the director of the National Library, and Secretary of State of Culture for Spain until 2004.
Derry O’Sullivan • It was reported that the Irish-language poet Derry O’Sullivan has died in Paris. He was eighty-one. Born in west Cork, he studied Latin, Greek and Philosophy at University College Cork, became a Capuchin monk, was ordained a priest in 1969 and sent to Paris. In 1970 he resigned the priesthood, surviving as a teacher of English at the Sorbonne, the Institut Catholique de Paris and the Institut Supérieur d’Electronique de Paris. His three poetry collections in Irish were Cá bhfuil do Iúdás? (1987), Cá bhfuil Tiarna Talún l’Univers? (1994), and An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, más é do thoil é? (2009), as well as An Lá go dTáinig Siad (2005), an extended work about the Nazi takeover of Paris in 1940. His poetry was translated into French. A pamphlet of his poems translated into English appeared in 1987, and a version of his poem ‘Marbhghin 1943’ by Kaarina Hollo won the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation in 2012.
Out of Africa • Poetry magazine announced the selection of Nigerian poet Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe as a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Jerry Chiemeke reported that the fellowship was awarded in recognition of the poet’s contributions to Poetry (with a capital P), and is worth $27,000, to be applied ‘as she sees fit in the development of her craft’. She is one of five poets to receive the annual fellowships. The others include Jada Renée Allen, DeeSoul Carson, Andres Cordoba and Aris Kian.
Common Sense • In a rare victory for common sense, Publishers’ Weekly reported on 18 August that a Florida court upheld the freedom to read in ‘PRH v. Gibson’. Nathalie op de Beeck wrote: ‘In an order that sets a strong precedent for keeping books on public school library shelves, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida has upheld the freedom to read in Penguin Random House v. Gibson. Filed in August 2024’ – the case taking a full year to reach a conclusion – ‘the lawsuit challenges key provisions of Florida House Bill 1069, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023 and purports to bar “pornographic” materials and content that “depicts or describes sexual content” from school and classroom libraries.’ Florida had facilitated it so that parents could object to public school contents. ‘The challenged materials are then removed from K–12 student access, ostensibly for review and often on the basis of words and sentences taken out of context.’ The Court declared, ‘It is readily apparent to the Court that the statute fails strict scrutiny. The state’s prohibition of material that “describes sexual conduct” is overbroad and unconstitutional.’ Dan Novack, Vice President and associate general counsel at PRH, in a statement made on behalf of the plaintiff group, said: ‘The Court also struck down the State’s vague “I know it when I see it” standard, reinforcing the essential role of librarians and educators in selecting books for students’ independent reading.’ Other plaintiffs in the case include the other four Big Five publishers, Sourcebooks, the Authors Guild, five authors, and two parents of Florida students who found that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye had been pulled from shelves at their public high schools. Judge Mendoza put his decision in the context of other significant rulings around the freedom to read, among them PRH v. Robbins – a current lawsuit challenging Iowa Senate Bill 496 and the removal of hundreds of books from public schools – and the nearly twenty-year-old decision in ACLU v. Miami-Dade County, concerning Miami public schools’ censorship of a children’s series that included a travel book titled Vamos a Cuba (A Visit to Cuba).
The underground avant-garde • In November, World Poetry will release new translations from Arabic and Greek. Samer Abu Hawwash’s Ruins and Other Poems ‘stand upon ancient and modern ruins, engaging with the archetypal Arabic qasida and its echoes in the present, set against a backdrop of exile, displacement, and genocide. Abu Hawwash rearranges the elements of poetry in the Arabic tradition – the site of the ruin, the journey, and the return home – in search of closure or consolation.’ The poems are translated from Arabic by Huda J. Fakhreddine. Also projected is Phoebe Giannisi’s Homerica. She is described as ‘one of Greece’s foremost poetic voices’, and the book will appear in ‘a revised second edition, offering a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis’. Karen Van Dyck calls her verse ‘a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde’. Ann Carson says this is ‘an unusually excellent translation’ by Brian Sneeden, with a preface by Eleni Sikelianos.
Happy Birthday! • It is twenty years since the Poetry Archive, that enormous resource of recorded poetry (in the poet’s own voice) and a key legacy of Andrew Motion’s Poet Laureateship, went online. One of its most impressive recent developments has been ‘The Poetry of South Asia’, described as a ‘living and evolving digital and audio-visual collection [which] explores the breadth, influence and poetic lineage of South Asia’.
Beetle Mania • The millennium-old Pannonhalma Archabbey, founded in 996, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a Benedictine monastery that contains Hungary’s oldest library. It is among Hungary’s oldest cultural assets. At present a quarter of its 400,000 book collection is threatened by a plague of drugstore or bread beetles that could prove fatal to it. Restorers are trying to remove the affected books from their primeval shelves, crating them up and disinfecting them. The beetles like dried foods including flour, grains and spices. They also like the adhesives used in binding books, and antique adhesives are especially tasty to them. ‘This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time’, said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, chief restorer on the project. The intensity of the infestation is unprecedented. The beetles revealed their presence in the proliferation of dust they created. Then the holes in the spines were discovered. The abbey, four years older than the Hungarian Empire, survived the Ottoman invasion and all the other historical incursions. The beetles might prove its nemesis though no expense is being spared in defeating them. The crated books are put in hermetically sealed plastic sacks. Oxygen is removed and after a few weeks it is hoped that the foes will have suffocated. Then the books will be hoovered clean and reshelved or restored. Even though the potential disaster is happening in Hungary, it’s suggested that the culprit behind the beetles is climate change.
One element in the prize is publication: his work will be issued in an annotated edition by a distinguished professor of literature at the University of Salamanca: the kiss of immortality and the kiss of poetic death attuned. Such plaudits render the poet virtually marmoreal. Queen Sofia herself will present the award to the still breathing poet later in the year. When he received the news, he was especially delighted that he would receive the award at the Queen’s hand. He currently serves on the board of the National Library of Spain and of the Prado Museum and is a previous selector for the Queen Sofia Award. He has written over thirty books of poems, twenty of essays, two novels and ‘countless translations’. From 1996 to 2000 he was the director of the National Library, and Secretary of State of Culture for Spain until 2004.
Derry O’Sullivan • It was reported that the Irish-language poet Derry O’Sullivan has died in Paris. He was eighty-one. Born in west Cork, he studied Latin, Greek and Philosophy at University College Cork, became a Capuchin monk, was ordained a priest in 1969 and sent to Paris. In 1970 he resigned the priesthood, surviving as a teacher of English at the Sorbonne, the Institut Catholique de Paris and the Institut Supérieur d’Electronique de Paris. His three poetry collections in Irish were Cá bhfuil do Iúdás? (1987), Cá bhfuil Tiarna Talún l’Univers? (1994), and An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, más é do thoil é? (2009), as well as An Lá go dTáinig Siad (2005), an extended work about the Nazi takeover of Paris in 1940. His poetry was translated into French. A pamphlet of his poems translated into English appeared in 1987, and a version of his poem ‘Marbhghin 1943’ by Kaarina Hollo won the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation in 2012.
Out of Africa • Poetry magazine announced the selection of Nigerian poet Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe as a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Jerry Chiemeke reported that the fellowship was awarded in recognition of the poet’s contributions to Poetry (with a capital P), and is worth $27,000, to be applied ‘as she sees fit in the development of her craft’. She is one of five poets to receive the annual fellowships. The others include Jada Renée Allen, DeeSoul Carson, Andres Cordoba and Aris Kian.
Common Sense • In a rare victory for common sense, Publishers’ Weekly reported on 18 August that a Florida court upheld the freedom to read in ‘PRH v. Gibson’. Nathalie op de Beeck wrote: ‘In an order that sets a strong precedent for keeping books on public school library shelves, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida has upheld the freedom to read in Penguin Random House v. Gibson. Filed in August 2024’ – the case taking a full year to reach a conclusion – ‘the lawsuit challenges key provisions of Florida House Bill 1069, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023 and purports to bar “pornographic” materials and content that “depicts or describes sexual content” from school and classroom libraries.’ Florida had facilitated it so that parents could object to public school contents. ‘The challenged materials are then removed from K–12 student access, ostensibly for review and often on the basis of words and sentences taken out of context.’ The Court declared, ‘It is readily apparent to the Court that the statute fails strict scrutiny. The state’s prohibition of material that “describes sexual conduct” is overbroad and unconstitutional.’ Dan Novack, Vice President and associate general counsel at PRH, in a statement made on behalf of the plaintiff group, said: ‘The Court also struck down the State’s vague “I know it when I see it” standard, reinforcing the essential role of librarians and educators in selecting books for students’ independent reading.’ Other plaintiffs in the case include the other four Big Five publishers, Sourcebooks, the Authors Guild, five authors, and two parents of Florida students who found that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye had been pulled from shelves at their public high schools. Judge Mendoza put his decision in the context of other significant rulings around the freedom to read, among them PRH v. Robbins – a current lawsuit challenging Iowa Senate Bill 496 and the removal of hundreds of books from public schools – and the nearly twenty-year-old decision in ACLU v. Miami-Dade County, concerning Miami public schools’ censorship of a children’s series that included a travel book titled Vamos a Cuba (A Visit to Cuba).
The underground avant-garde • In November, World Poetry will release new translations from Arabic and Greek. Samer Abu Hawwash’s Ruins and Other Poems ‘stand upon ancient and modern ruins, engaging with the archetypal Arabic qasida and its echoes in the present, set against a backdrop of exile, displacement, and genocide. Abu Hawwash rearranges the elements of poetry in the Arabic tradition – the site of the ruin, the journey, and the return home – in search of closure or consolation.’ The poems are translated from Arabic by Huda J. Fakhreddine. Also projected is Phoebe Giannisi’s Homerica. She is described as ‘one of Greece’s foremost poetic voices’, and the book will appear in ‘a revised second edition, offering a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis’. Karen Van Dyck calls her verse ‘a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde’. Ann Carson says this is ‘an unusually excellent translation’ by Brian Sneeden, with a preface by Eleni Sikelianos.
Happy Birthday! • It is twenty years since the Poetry Archive, that enormous resource of recorded poetry (in the poet’s own voice) and a key legacy of Andrew Motion’s Poet Laureateship, went online. One of its most impressive recent developments has been ‘The Poetry of South Asia’, described as a ‘living and evolving digital and audio-visual collection [which] explores the breadth, influence and poetic lineage of South Asia’.
Beetle Mania • The millennium-old Pannonhalma Archabbey, founded in 996, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a Benedictine monastery that contains Hungary’s oldest library. It is among Hungary’s oldest cultural assets. At present a quarter of its 400,000 book collection is threatened by a plague of drugstore or bread beetles that could prove fatal to it. Restorers are trying to remove the affected books from their primeval shelves, crating them up and disinfecting them. The beetles like dried foods including flour, grains and spices. They also like the adhesives used in binding books, and antique adhesives are especially tasty to them. ‘This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time’, said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, chief restorer on the project. The intensity of the infestation is unprecedented. The beetles revealed their presence in the proliferation of dust they created. Then the holes in the spines were discovered. The abbey, four years older than the Hungarian Empire, survived the Ottoman invasion and all the other historical incursions. The beetles might prove its nemesis though no expense is being spared in defeating them. The crated books are put in hermetically sealed plastic sacks. Oxygen is removed and after a few weeks it is hoped that the foes will have suffocated. Then the books will be hoovered clean and reshelved or restored. Even though the potential disaster is happening in Hungary, it’s suggested that the culprit behind the beetles is climate change.
This item is taken from PN Review 285, Volume 52 Number 1, September - October 2025.