Miriam McIlfatrick

wandering & weaving with words; drawn to roots & seeds, the unseen & the overlooked; translating & writing poetry. belong between. often astray.

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

O Muses, O high Genius, help my brain!" --- The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (trans. Ciaran Carson, Granta 2002)

My muse-motto as I write up my research on creativity in translating poetry.

(I had to repost to correct a misquote, sorry. Only one Genius, sorry for that too!)

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

Sebaldian

[space75gr @space75gr]

English Landscapes... On My Way Back Home

[Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts]

I met the legendary translator Linda Asher after the FAF Awards Ceremony-- she held my hand for a long time, it felt like a transmission. She told me translation is a "magical experience" that no one who isn't a translator can know. Very grateful to have met her.

[Journal of Art in Society @artinsociety]

From 1881 onwards, when van Gogh was making a serious start on becoming an artist, and before he “discovered” colour, he moved constantly, assiduously chronicling the neighbourhoods where he lived ~ Parsonage Garden / Sien’s Mother’s House / Carpenters’ Yard & Laundry

[kazu ‘‘Tsurezure Photo Journal‘’ @kazu75392264]

As I was photographing a rusty tank, two crows suddenly flew in unexpectedly.

[Asymptote Journal @asymptotejrnl]

For this week’s #TranslationTuesday, we present a selection of poems by Juhan Viiding (tr. Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov).

A literary giant in his home country of Estonia, Viiding writes with a striking blend of irony, melancholy, and formal precision:
https://t.co/YlV2o1giBM

[Martin Potter @PotterVillamil]

Piranesi Edinburgh

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

lõosilm - [lark's eye] - forget-me-not
tallinn, 17.05.2026

[pauline suett barbieri @SuettPauline]

From 'The Shirley Valentine Syndrome'.....psb #poetry

[LeoDaVinciWave @LeoDaVinciWave]

An abandoned Victorian-style greenhouse, Italy.

[David Lloyd Dusenbury @DusenburyDavid]

Zhao Wuji, “Country Church”, 1950.

@ChristiesInc

#chinese #art

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

@amycutler1985 you're in for a treat! Wish I could be there, but am Tallinn-bound for the duration.

[Ardra Manasi @ArdraManasi]

~Day 33~

"To My Own Poem" by Wisława Szymborska

[translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh & Stanisław Barańczak]

#PoemADay2026_AM

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

@RCrawford67322 I love Rexy's presence on here!

[Richard Morris @ahistoryinart]

Four years before John Constable painted this in 1821, John Keats was writing about 'Negative Capability: 'when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.' This is what negative capability looks like in paint.

[The Irish Border @BorderIrish]

If anyone is still out there, an interview with the person who, apparently, was my puppeteer

[Miriam McIlfatrick @MMcilfatrick]

o, when the vista is tortoise-shell & motley

[Richard Morris @ahistoryinart]

If you get a chance, go to see the brilliant 'Stanley Spencer in Suffolk,' exhibition at Gainsborough House in Sudbury, the show finishes 29th March. This is 'Southwold,' (1937) a favourite resort of Spencer's first wife Hilda Carline.

[Medieval Military Medicine @MedMilMedicine]

A wooden prop in the margins, used to ‘support’ the text that overruns the end of the line - 15th century, Birgitta of Sweden, British Library, Harley MS 612, f. 50r