Petr Mikeš


Petr Mikeš was a Czech poet, translator, and editor. In the 1970s and 1980s he took part in the samizdat edition Texty přátel. From 1993–1997 he was the influential editor-in-chief of the Moravian publishing house Votobia, and from 2000–2004 at the Periplum publishing house. He was a significant translator of Ezra Pound into Czech. He translated members of Pound's "circle", including Basil Bunting, T.E. Hulme, and James Joyce, and even wrote a screenplay for a biopic on the life of Ezra Pound, Solitary Volcano.

Life

Petr Mikeš was born in 1948 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, later the family moved to Olomouc, where he grew up and maintained the family home until his death. He studied library science in Brno, where he befriended poets Jaroslav Erik Frič and Jiří Kuběna and philosopher Josef Šafařík, and English and Russian at Palacký University Olomouc; he left the university, mostly for political reasons. Instead, he became the night watchman of the theatre in Olomouc-Hodolany, where he read deeply and also wrote and translated, and finished studies in library science, eventually becoming a librarian. He converted to Catholicism in 1972, which had a profound influence on his poetic work. In the 1980s he translated textbooks for Palacký University, and was the Czech correspondent for Paideuma, a journal dedicated to Pound studies published by the National Poetry Foundation. At this time some of his poems were translated into Polish by Leszek Engelking and into German by Otto František Babler, an iconic translator into Czech, whom Mikeš knew personally.
After the Velvet Revolution, he was awarded a USIS scholarship to the US in 1990, where he was a guest of the National Poetry Foundation at the University of Maine at Orono, and the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa in Ames. There he befriended the American poet Kerry Shawn Keys and met Czech poet in exile Bronislava Volková. His poetry appeared in English, translated by Kerry Shawn Keys; and officially in Polish, translated by Leszek Engelking, a close friend. In the early 1990s, he was invited to become editor-in-chief of Votobia Publishers in Olomouc, which became the largest publishing house in Moravia during his tenure. In 1994, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Maine in Orono, where he involved himself more deeply in Ezra Pound scholarship and gathered material for his anthology of New England poets, meeting many of the poets personally. He became good friends especially with Burton Hatlen, Sylvester Pollet, and Carroll F. Terrell, whose works he later translated in more breadth. His friendship with Matthew Sweney, whom he met in Orono in 1990, was strengthened at this time; Mikeš eventually invited Sweney to work for Votobia in Olomouc, and Sweney became Mikeš's 'court translator' into English. Contacts with the British Council brought him in touch with poets Richard Caddel and Stephen Watts, with whom he became friends, translating their verse in Czech. After leaving Votobia in 1998, he co-founded the publishing house Periplum, which specialised in poetry, philosophy and political science. In addition to English, he also translated from Slovak, Polish, and Russian.
He was married three times: to photographer Milena Valušková, sister of his friend and fellow poet Rostislav Valušek; to translator Iveta Mikešová, with whom he had two children, Jan and Tereza; and to the novelist and editor Alena Jakoubková.
He was a professional translator, covering fields such as science and economics. In terms of his literary translations, his contributions of English language poetry and Pound studies into Czech are major. He also translated mystery novels, and non-fiction on the atrocities of fascism.
He is known for his “quiet, thoughtful poetry”, which could probably be best described as minimalist – his translation of Basil Bunting's Briggflatts into sparse Czech is masterful – with a good dose of Catholicism, and the haiku form suited him especially well.

Works

Samizdat poetry collections

Petr Mikeš was one of the writers-editors-typists of the important Moravian samizdat edition Texty přátel. He donated his archive of Texty přátel to the samizdat library Libri prohibiti in Prague.