Meredith McKinney

Meredith McKinney is an award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese literature. She has translated Sei Shônagon’s classic The Pillow Book, as well as Kokoro and Kusamakura by Natsume Sôseki, and is currently an honorary associate professor at the Japan Centre, Australian National University.She is the daughter of the poet and activist Judith Wright, and the philosopher and novelist J.P. McKinney.

Interview with Meredith McKinney on translating Judith Wright

September 1994, no. 164 • 01 September 1994

Co-translating the poems of Judith Wright into Japanese has been, writes Meredith McKinney, an intense experience, heightened by her very particular relationship with Australia’s most respected poet. Anyone who has had the experience of trying to translate a poem across even a fairly low-density language barrier (say German or French into English) will have tasted the near despair of finding o ... (read more)