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Where does language meet the body? Or must it remain a near miss? Can our physical form come into contact with the world of ideas without distorting language the mediator? Erotic poetry since at least Sappho has implied that language crumbles the closer it approaches the real. And does same-sex desire only make the poet’s language more different? How can translation, then, stay true both to the violent displacements that have haunted queer speech throughout history and to its defense of identity? Is there a place for queer grief in translation? Sokolov’s talk will focus on borderline cases in Russian and Western literature where queer lyric begins to resonate with “louche” translation: Vyacheslav Ivanov and Sappho, Jack Spicer and Lorca. In the poetry reading to follow, Sokolov will also share his own work alongside his translations from one queer idiom and culture into another and reflect on the queerness of translingual writing and self-translation at a time when LGBTQ+ voices are yet again under attack both in Russia and in the U.S. Ivan Sokolov is a poet and translator from Russia—and, more recently, from the San Francisco Bay Area. Author of five books of poetry, he now writes across Russian and English. Sokolov’s Russian translations include works by Gertrude Stein, Paul Celan, Joe Brainard and Ron Silliman. He also translates the Ukrainian–Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko into English. Sokolov studied at UC Berkeley and now teaches at Reed College.