Draft:Will Stone (poet)

Will Stone (born 12 October 1966) is a poet, essayist and literary translator who divides his time between East Suffolk, Exmoor and the European continent. His first poetry collection Glaciation (Salt, 2007), won the International Glen Dimplex Award (Dublin, Ireland) for Poetry in 2008. Subsequent collections Drawing in Ash (Salt, 2011; 2nd ed. Shearsman, 2015), The Sleepwalkers (Shearsman 2016) and The Slowing Ride (Shearsman 2020) have been critically appraised. Stone's fifth collection of poems Immortal Wreckage will be published by Shearsman in May 2024. His poems have been variously translated into Dutch, French, German, Romanian and Spanish and published in a number of European journals.

As well as poetry, Stone has contributed reviews, essays, and translations to a number of literary publications including the Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, the Guardian, the Spectator, the White Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Agenda, Irish Pages, The New European , The Fortnightly Review and Poetry Review. (Stone's TLS archives can be found here.) He has also contributed essays on poetry translation to the Goethe Institute in London and has also translated articles from French and German for private art galleries such as Karsten Greve in Cologne/Paris and the historic art journal Cahiers d’Art in Paris. His essay on the acoustic guitarist Nick Drake, 'Nick Drake: Precipice of Loneliness' is included in Nick Drake: Remembered for a While edited by Gabrielle Drake (John Murray Press, 2014).

Stone has read his poetry and translations and given talks on Stefan Zweig and other writers and poets he has translated at a number of British and international literary festivals. For example, he presented Stefan Zweig, Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink, trans. Will Stone (Pushkin 2016) at The Cambridge Literary Festival in 2016 and also contributed readings to the Stefan Zweig in Europe international study day at The British Library in London on 20 March 2017. He has also launched his books of translations at the Austrian Cultural Forum and the French and Flemish embassies in London.

Translations

Stone's published translations from French and German include works by Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gérard de Nerval, Georg Simmel, Maurice Betz, Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach. His latest published translations are Nietzsche in Italy by Guy de Pourtalès (Pushkin Press, 2022) and Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach (Wakefield Press, 2022). (See also Rilke, Trakl, and Zweig sections below.)

Rilke

In April 2024 Letters around a Garden, a collection of Rilke’s letters from French will appear with Seagull Books and Pushkin will publish a first English edition of Conversations with Rilke (Rilke Vivant) by Maurice Betz, both translated by Stone. Previously Stone has translated Rilke's Poems to Night (Pushkin Press, 2020) with and Notes on the Melody of Things (Hesperus Press, 2012). In addition he translated a new edition of Maurice Betz's Rilke in Paris (Pushkin Press, 2019).

Trakl

In 2019 Stone translated the Collected Poems of Georg Trakl, Surrender to Night (Pushkin Press, 2019) and previously a Selected Poems, To the Silenced (Arc Publications, 2005).

Zweig

Stone has translated numerous works by Stefan Zweig, including Encounters and Destinies: A Farewell to Europe (Pushkin Press, 2020); Journeys (Hesperus Press, 2010; 2nd ed. Pushkin Press, 2019); Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink (Pushkin Press, 2016); Montaigne (Pushkin Press, 2016); and Nietzsche (Hesperus Press, 2013; 2nd ed. Pushkin Press, 2020). An interview with Stone on Zweig's Journeys, 'A Man Out of Time' appeared in 3:AM Magazine.

Art Criticism

Stone has published reviews of European art exhibitions in Apollo Magazine, the RA Magazine and the TLS. His essay on the Belgian painter Léon Spilliaert was included in the RA catalogue for the exhibition on the artist held in London through 2020 and was then selected to be translated into French for the follow up exhibition on the artist at Musée d’Orsay, Paris in 2021. Stone's essay 'The Dream of Others' on Spilliraert's exhibition of the same name appears in the TLS.

Awards and Grants

Stone has received a number of bursaries and grants in the UK and in the EU, and is regularly supported by The Royal Literary Fund in London. He has variously been awarded grants for research and travel for writing projects from The Society of Authors, the K Blundell Trust and Arts Council England. Further grants for works in translation have come from Le Centre National du Livre in Paris and the Service de la Promotion des Lettres in Brussels. He has held a number of fellowships and residencies in the UK and on the continent. The most recent was a three-month residence during autumn 2022 for literary translators offered by the Canton Valais in Raron, Switzerland. He took this opportunity to translate a number of letters written in French from the poet Rilke to Antoinette de Bonsetten, 1924-26, and to carry out research towards the introduction to the book. Over the past two decades Stone has benefited from three writer fellowships at the Hawthornden Castle Writer’s Retreat near Edinburgh in 2004, 2010 and 2012. Between 2001 and 2016 he completed seven literary translation summer residencies at the Collège Européen des Traducteurs Littéraires de Seneffe in Belgium and a further five residencies over roughly the same period at the Collège International des Traducteurs Littéraires in Arles, France. He spent a month at the Translators’ House ‘Looren’ near Zurich Switzerland in 2013/14 and was also awarded two writer residencies at the Maison d’Ecrivains Jules Roy, in Vézelay, France in 2012/2013 and the international writers house in Antwerp, Belgium in 2013/2015. In May 2024 he will take up a writer’s residence at the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island, Ireland. Stone is also the recipient of a writer’s residence in October 2024 at the Emily Harvey Foundation apartment in Venice.

Education

Will Stone received an MA in Literary Translation from University of East Anglia in 1999 and B.Ed in French from the University of the West of England (Bristol) in 1993.

Bibliography

Poetry

Drawing in Ash (Salt Publishing, 2011; 2nd ed. Shearsman Books, 2015)

Glaciation (Salt Publishing, 2007; 2nd ed. Shearsman Books, 2015)

The Sleepwalkers (Shearsman Books, 2016)

The Slowing Ride (Shearsman Books, 2020)

Translations

Gérard de Nerval, Les Chimères (Menard Press, 1999; 2nd ed. Shearsman Books, 2017)

Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems to Night (Pushkin Press, 2020)

George Rodenbach, Selected Poems (Arc Publications, 2017)

August Stramm, Tropfblut co-translated with Anthony Vivis (Taw Press, 2007)

Georg Trakl

• Surrender to Night: Collected Poems of Georg Trakl (Pushkin Press, 2019)
• To the Silenced: Selected Poems (Arc Publications, 2005)

Emile Verhaeren, Emile Verhaeren: Poems (Arc Publications, 2013)

Prose Translations

Maurice Betz, Rilke in Paris (Pushkin Press, 2019)

Guy de Pourtalès, Nietzsche in Italy (Pushkin Press, 2022)

Rainer Maria Rilke, Notes on the Melody of Things (Hesperus Press, 2012)

Georges Rodenbach, Bruges-la-Morte (Wakefield Press, 2022)

Joseph Roth, On the End of the World (Hesperus Press, 2013; 2nd ed. Pushkin Press, 2019)

Georg Simmel, The Art of the City: Rome, Florence, Venice (Pushkin Press, 2018)

Wilhelm Waiblinger, Friedrich Hölderlin’s Life Poetry and Madness (Hesperus Press, 2018)

Stefan Zweig

• Encounters and Destinies: A Farewell to Europe (Pushkin Press, 2020)
• Journeys (Hesperus Press, 2010; 2nd ed. Pushkin Press, 2019)
• Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink (Pushkin Press, 2016)
• Montaigne (Pushkin Press, 2016)
• Nietzsche (Hesperus Press, 2013; 2nd ed. Pushkin Press, 2020)

Forthcoming Titles

Conversations with Rilke by Maurice Betz (Pushkin Press, 2025)

Immortal Wreckage (Shearsman Books, 2024)

Letters Around a Garden by Rainer Maria Rilke (Seagull Books, 2024)