How does the work of a recent Scottish-Jewish poet (Jacobs) relate to that of a Yiddish poet (Nevadovska), born in Bialystok, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1928? Guest speaker Merle Lyn Bachman will present her investigations into the work and worlds of these two very different writers, who are connected by the wandering and multiplicity that mark their poems, as well as the sharp bite of diaspora. Translation creates another connection, as both poets engaged in translating (from Hebrew and from English), and Bachman herself is translating selections from Nevadovska’s Yiddish poems.

Merle Bachman is a poet, a Yiddishist, and an Associate Professor English at Spalding University, where she also directs the undergraduate Creative Writing program. She is one of the National Yiddish Book Center’s Translation Fellows for 2015. Her publications include the scholarly work, Recovering ‘Yiddishland’: Threshold Moments in American Literature (Syracuse UP 2008) and several collections of poetry, including Blood Party, forthcoming from Shearsman Books later this year. Her current projects include translating the selected poems of Rosa Nevadovska, as well as researching the diaspora poetics of Scottish-Jewish poet, A. C. Jacobs.