Vera Rich: Difference between revisions

Her translations of the works of [[Taras Shevchenko]], commissioned for the century of his death (1961), received excellentfavourable reviews, both in the West and in the Soviet Ukraine. For this work, Rich was awarded an Honorary Diploma in Shevchenko Studies by the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.<ref name=Portents />

Later, influenced by Fr [[Ceslaus Sipovich]], she started also translating Belarusian poetry. Her first translation from Belarusian was the poem "Na čužynie" by [[Janka Kupala]]. Her novel ''[[Like Water, Like Fire]]'', published in 1971, became the world's first anthology of translations of Belarusian poetry into a western European language. Later she published ''The Images Swarm Free'', a collection of translations of verses by prominent Belarusian authors, including [[Alés Harun]], [[Maksim Bahdanovič]] and [[Źmitrok Biadula]]. Rich inspired a number of other British people such as [[Alan Flowers|Dr Alan Flowers]] to become involved in promotion of Belarusian culture.<ref>{{Cite web|title=People {{!}} Anglo-Belarusian Society|url=https://absociety.org.uk/people/|access-date=2021-05-25|language=en-US}}</ref>

Rich was the founder of ''Manifold'', "the magazine of new poetry". It was started in 1962 and appeared regularly under her editorship until May 1969, when it was suspended owing to her taking a job as Soviet and East European Correspondent for the scientific weekly ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]''. At the time of its suspension ''Manifold'' had close on 900 subscribers, almost half of them in the USA. This initially temporary job at ''Nature'' lasted for more than 20 years. It was only in 1998 that it proved possible to relaunch ''Manifold''. All together, 49 issues were published under Rich's editorship. It published original high-quality poetry in traditional and innovative styles, in various variants of English, and – from time to time – in major European languages, as well as translations of poetry from less-known languages.