James Sutherland-Smith UK

James Sutherland-Smith was brought up mostly abroad until his parents sent him to prep school at the age of nine. At Leeds University he was encouraged to write poetry despite reading Political Studies. He rejected an academic career and worked firstly with homeless people in London and then as an articled clerk with a firm of accountants. He qualified as a teacher and then moved into language teaching.

In 1980 he left Britain for good. He worked in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and in the autumn of 1989 took a lector's job with the British Council in the then Czechoslovakia. He arrived in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia six weeks before the Velvet Revolution and found himself playing a small role at the centre of events. He is still resident in Slovakia, and since 2002 has worked in Serbia advising both the Serbian Armed Forces and Montenegrin Armed Forces on teaching and learning English.

Viera and James Sutherland-Smith are leading translators of Slovak poetry into English. James was responsible for the first anthology of contemporary Slovak poetry translated into English, Not Waiting For Miracles in 1993 and since then he and Viera have translated the selected poems of a number of individual Slovak poets including J´n Búzassy, Ivan LaucÃk, Jozef Leikert and Milan Rúfus.

Viera teaches English and Psychology in a vocational secondary school in Slovakia and James is Project Manager for the Peacekeeping English Project advising the Armed Forces of Serbia and Montenegro.

James has published between twenty and thirty books of poetry, translation and academic work. His most recent collection of his own work is The River and the Black Cat (Shearsman Books, 2018). For his translation work he has received the Slovak Hviezdoslav Prize and the Serbian Zlatko Krasní Prize. Most recently, selections of his translations of Mária Feren?uhová’s and Ján Gavura’s Slovak poetry, and Rajko Dzakovi?’s Serbian poetry, have been published and James is working on a selection of the Serbian poet,Ivanka Radmanovi?.

As well as a first selection from the work of Mila Haugová, Scent of the Unseen, James has published selections of the Slovak poets, Juraj Briškár, Ján Buzássy, Ivan Lau?ík and Milan Rúfus among others, and of the Serbian poets, Ivana Milankov and Miodrag Pavlovi? – Milankov’s Dinner with Fish and Mirrors appeared from Arc Publications in 2013 and Pavlovi?’s Selected Poems from Salt Publications in 2014.

Two selections of his poetry have been translated into Slovak and The River and the Black Cat has recently been published in a Serbian version. Further translations of this collection will appear in other languages including Slovak.

(2020)

Website

www.jamessutherland-smith.co.uk/