Brockway Prize for Jan H. Mysjkin & Pierre Gallissaires
The Brockway Prize for poetry translators has been awarded to the French translators Jan H. Mysjkin and Pierre Gallissaires. Together they translated the work of many Dutch poets. The jury was particularly impressed by their translation of the poems of Gerrit Kouwenaar (in Une odeur de plumes brûlées, published by Comp’Act, Chambéry 2003) and Paul van Ostaijen (in Le Dada pour cochons, Textuel, Paris 2003).
Brockway Prize
The Brockway Prize was set up by the Nederlands Literair Productie- en Vertalingenfonds (NLPVF) to honour the work of translators of Dutch poetry into another language. The biennial prize, named after the poet and translator James Brockway, comprises a sum of 5,000 euro. Each edition of the prize will be oriented to a different language area. French was the target language of this year’s edition. The jury, consisted of Bertrand Abraham, translator, Jan Pieter van der Sterre, translator, and Peter Bergsma, translator and director of the Amsterdam Translators’ House.
James Brockway
The poet and translator James Brockway died on 15 December 2000. His translations allowed readers of English access to the poetry of Rutger Kopland, Hans Lodeizen, M. Vasalis, Gerrit Achterberg, and many other Dutch-language poets. In 1966 he received the Martinus Nijhoff Prize for his achievements as a translator, and in 1997 he was knighted for the same reason. Brockway left half of his legacy to the NLPVF, and this is now used to stimulate the translation of Dutch poetry.