Talk and Book Launch of ‘Unveiling Vazha Pshavela’ on 1 March 2019 @ Asia House
On 1 March 2018 Asia House, the BGS and the Embassy of Georgia to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will host a an evening of events inspired by the late 19th and early 20th century century Georgian poet Vazha Pshavela. This will a book launch of ‘Unveiling Vazha Pshavela’, poetry readings, talks and Georgian polyphonic singing. ‘Unveiling Vazha Pshavela’ is the most comprehensive book to date of the poet’s works in English. The publication is initiated by Georgian/British artist Andro Semeiko as part of his project investigating notions of self and motherland – through landscape, ethnography, and language of Vazha Pshavela. The poems in the book have been selected to illustrate the poet’s powerful, tragic, often Shakespearean force, as well as the development of his ideas and approach to nature, very relevant to ecological politics in the world today. They have been translated by Donald Rayfield OBE. The book includes specially commissioned works by the contemporary Georgian writer Ana Kordzaia-Samadashvili.