The National Translation Award is given annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. The NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
Pierre Alferi, who recently passed away, was a major figure in contemporary French experimental poetry. A scholar of medieval literature, Alferi’s work is deeply informed by Postmodern critical theory as well as the lyrical traditions of both English and French poetry. The short fractured lyrics of And the Street capture the velocity and intensity of contemporary life, which somehow slowing time and attention to the smaller and often ignored moments that make up quotidian lives. The son of a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, Alferi’s work in And the Street marries the deep inner life with the phenomena of the material world.
