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Translation – Fall 2001 Brian Cole was born in Southampton, England in 1932 and has spent his adult life near London. After studying French and German at Oxford University he followed a career in business as a senior executive in three multi-national groups. After retirement he set up an accountancy practice, which traded until 2000, after which he started Brindin Press (see our feature)- with a website which celebrates poetry in translation – http//www.brindin.com. In 1994 his first published work was a translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Captain’s Verses, published by Anvil Press in London and reprinted four times. In 2000 Arc Publications in Todmorden, England published Anthracite, a selection of translations from the Italian of Bartolo Cattafi – this collection was awarded the accolade “Recommended Translation” by the Poetry Book Society in London. In August 2001 Brindin Press published his translations of Circe Maia under the title Yesterday a Eucalyptus, which was also chosen Recommended Translation by the Poetry Book Society, and awarded a translation prize by the British Centre for Literary Translation. Kevin J. Kinsella is a poet and translator living in Brooklyn, New York. He recently completed a translation of Osip Mandelshtam’s Tristia. Most recently his poetry and translations have appeared in Cavalcade, Boston Poet, and The Watermark. Circe Maia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1932 and has lived most of her life in the provincial town of Tacuarembo. Her career was teaching – philosophy and languages – and she has written poetry since her early days. She has translated poetry from English and Greek, and her own poems have been translated into Swedish and English. In 1997 she was the subject of a 13-page tribute in the influential Argentinian Diario de Poesia – not the first time that organ had reported on her work. In 1999 she was invited by the Norma Group to contribute to a new translation of Shakespeare – she translated “Measure for Measure”. Osip E. Mandelshtam was born in Warsaw in 1891 but brought up in St. Petersburg. He studied at Heidelberg University and the University of St. Petersburg. The first volume of his poetry, Kamen (Stone), appeared in 1913 and was followed by Tristia (1922) and Poems (1928). After writing a bitter epigram about Stalin he was arrested, escaping execution only through the intervention of Bukhanin. He was exiled to the Urals where he attempted suicide. In 1937 he was freed to return to Moscow with his wife, but in May 1938 he was rearrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor. His heart was bad and it is likely that he was suffering from a severe nervous breakdown. He died, probably on December 27, 1938, in obscure circumstances en route to the Vladivostok labor camp.