On Jamie McKendrick and Erminia Passannanti's foreign connection
(Jamie McKendrick and Erminia Passannanti, Salerno, 1986) On Jamie McKendrick and Erminia Passannanti's foreign connection I In the wide field of contemporary European letters, few dialogues are as fertile and suggestive as the one that emerges—across language, culture, and time—between British poet and translator Jamie McKendrick and Italian poet, translator, and scholar Erminia Passannanti. Though shaped by different poetic temperaments and intellectual lineages, both writers find common ground in their commitment to poetic inquiry, cultural mediation, and the philosophical depth of translation. McKendrick and Passannanti met in Salerno, Italy, where McKendrick was a language assistant at the University of Salerno and she was an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures. They had a long-term relationship and both, though separately, settled in Oxford in the late 1990s. The two poets offer distinct yet complementary modes of poetic practice. McKendr...