Online book launch: ABAI
Cambridge University Press and the Embassy of Kazakhstan in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
are pleased to invite you to the online launch of
ABAI
On Wednesday, 11 November
from 14.00 to 15.45 (GMT)
from 20.00 to 21.45 (Nur-Sultan time)
Cambridge University Press, in partnership with Kazakhstan’s National Bureau of Translations, is glad to present ABAI, the first complete English-language volume of works by the greatest Kazakh poet, philosopher, and enlightener Abai Kunanbaiuly.
The launch of the book takes place in the year of the 175th anniversary of the birth of Abai. The brightest representative of the 19th century Kazakh intellectual aristocracy, Abai is widely considered the founding father of Kazakh written literature. He was also a cultural reformer and thanks to his translations of the Russian and European classics acted as a vital bridge between Kazakh, Russian and European cultures.
The significance of this publication is that for the first time in history, Abai’s works were translated directly from Kazakh into English. A new generation of Kazakh into English literary translators joined their efforts with John Burnside and Sean O’Brien, both highly regarded British poets, in an attempt to produce translations that are true to the original.
The book is part of a wider project by the National Bureau of Translations to publish Abai’s works in ten languages worldwide.
Speakers
Aktoty Raimkulova
Minister of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Peter Phillips
Chief Executive
Cambridge University Press
Erlan Idrissov
Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan
in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Kate Ewart-Biggs
Director Global Network
British Council
Rauan Kenzhekhanuly
Director
National Bureau of Translations
John Burnside
Poet, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize & the Forward Poetry Prize, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature & the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Sean O’Brien
Poet and critic, winner of the Eric Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Cholmondeley Award, the Forward Poetry Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize
Master of the Ceremony
Kevin Taylor
Director of Syndicate Affairs
Cambridge University Press
***
Panellists’ brief bios
Dr Aktoty Raimkulova is Minister of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan. She graduated from the Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory with a degree in Composition and Piano, and a graduate degree in Composition. In 1990-1991, she was a lecturer at the Kazakh State Women’s Pedagogical Institute, Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 1991-1994, she was a trainee assistant at the Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 1995-2011, she was Head of the Department of Conducting, Assistant Rector, Associate Professor, Acting Professor, and Vice Rector for socio-economic organisation of the Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 2003-2007, she was Head of the Department of Composition and Orchestral Conducting, Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 2005-2007, she studied for the master’s programme in Management of the International Academy of Business. In 2007-2008, she was Head of the Composer and Art Management Department of the Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 2007-2010, she received a Doctor of Business Administration degree at the International Academy of National Economy Business under the Government of the Russian Federation. In 2013-2014, she was Vice Rector for Research and Creativity of the Kurmangazy Almaty State Conservatory. In 2014, she became Acting Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Culture and Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In 2014-2016, she was Director of the Department of Culture and Arts, Ministry of Culture and Sports. In October 2016, she was appointed Vice Minister of Culture and Sports; in June 2019, she was appointed Minister of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan.
Peter Phillips is Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press. After graduating from Oxford in Mathematics, Peter joined the consulting firm Bain & Company, where he spent seven years before moving on to the leading investment bank SG Warburg. In 1993, Mr Phillips joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as Head of Corporate Planning. He became Finance Director of BBC News in 1997, before being appointed Chief Operating Officer of that division in 2001. In 2005, he became the BBC’s Director of Business Development, and was responsible for the sale of BBC Broadcast which became Red Bee Media. In 2006, Mr Phillips moved to Ofcom, the UK’s media and communications regulator, where he was a member of the Board. In 2010, he moved to Cambridge University Press as Chief Operating Officer. In 2012 he was appointed as the Press’s Chief Executive. Peter is also a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge and a Trustee of Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust. He is Past President of the Publishers Association. He has also been a trustee of the Crafts Council, Article 19 and the John Schofield Trust, an adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, Chairman of the Sabre Trust and a director of Parliamentary Broadcasting Limited.
Erlan Idrissov is Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Born on the 28 April 1959 in the Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan, Ambassador Idrissov graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1981 and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in 1992. Representing Kazakhstan as Ambassador to the United Kingdom since 2017, Ambassador Idrissov has twice been Kazakhstan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and served for five years as the country’s Ambassador to the United States in 2007-2012. Ambassador Idrissov authored numerous articles on Kazakhstan's foreign policy and multilateral diplomacy. He speaks English, French, Urdu and Hindi.
Kate Ewart-Biggs leads the British Council’s Global Network and provides strategic leadership to the British Council’s overseas network of offices around the world. She is responsible for representing the British Council’s work and offices overseas on the senior leadership team and ensures that the organisation has a connected network. Ms Ewart-Biggs is also responsible for managing strategic relationships with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and other Whitehall partners with a geopolitical focus. Prior to her current role, Ms Ewart-Biggs was the Regional Head at the British Council covering the Middle East and North Africa, Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia regions. Ms Ewart-Biggs also ran the British Council operations in Uganda and Tanzania and has worked in Egypt and in Central and Eastern Europe. Before joining the British Council, she worked for organisations working on behalf of Street Children in South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and Eastern Europe. Ms Ewart-Biggs is passionate about giving young people, whatever their circumstances, the opportunity to engage actively in their communities.
Professor John Burnside is a poet and writer. A former writer-in-residence at the University of Dundee, he is now Professor of English at the University of St Andrews. He has published 16 poetry collections and 16 prose books, authored TV series and radio plays. His first collection of poems, The Hoop, was published in 1988; it, and the follow-up Common Knowledge, won Scottish Arts Council Book Awards. In 2012, his collection Black Cat Bone won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. He won many other prizes and awards including Scottish Arts Council Book Awards (1991, 1995), The Society of Authors’ Encore Prize (2000), Whitbread Poetry Prize (2000), Creative Scotland Award (2001), Cholmondley Award (2008), O. Henry Award (2009), Prix Madeleine Zepter (France, 2009), Petrarca Preis for Poetry (Germany, 2011) and Corine International Literature Prize (Germany, 2011). His work appears in translation in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Croatia, Brazil and Argentina. John Burnside is also a member of the judging panel for The Man Booker Prize, (2015), The Costa Prize, The T.S. Eliot Prize and The Forward Prize. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Professor Sean O’Brien is a British poet, critic, playwright, anthologist, broadcaster, novelist, and editor. His prizes include the Eric Gregory Award (1979), the Somerset Maugham Award (1984), the Cholmondeley Award (1988), the Forward Poetry Prize (1995, 2001 and 2007) and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2007). He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and John Burnside) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same collection of poems (The Drowned Book). He grew up in Hull, and was educated at Hymers College and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the Newcastle University. He has written for the Guardian, The Independent and the Times Literary Supplement. Radio work includes versions of Zamyatin’s We, Greene’s The Ministry of Fear and a Radio 4 documentary on Ted Lewis, the author of Get Carter. In 2017 has Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of Comparative European Literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford.
Rauan Kenzhekhanuly is Director of the National Bureau of Translations (NBT) of Kazakhstan, and CEO of the Bilim Media Group (BMG). He graduated from the Almaty State University in 2001 and in 2004 earned his MBA at the Academy of National Economy (Moscow). In 2010-2011 was a fellow at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs at Harvard University, where also taught the Kazakh language. Known as social entrepreneur, politician, journalist and diplomat currently he manages several educational projects focused on eLearning technologies. BMG is the biggest provider of eLearning services in Central Asia with over 7,000 schools subscribed to its BilimLand platform. NBT is one of the largest public foundations in Kazakhstan focused on translation of university level textbooks and non-fiction literature from foreign languages into Kazakh. NBT translates and distributes Kazakh literature in ten of the world’s major languages.
Kevin Taylor is Director of Syndicate Affairs and a Board Director of Cambridge University Press, where he has worked for thirty-six years, including ten years as Literature Editor. He has written extensively on aspects of publishing and intellectual property/copyright and is the author of a bestselling historical guidebook to Cambridge.