Tenzin Dickie on Her Experiences at Latse
Tenzin Dickie is a writer and literary translator living in NYC. Her writings and translations have appeared in Tibetan Review, Indian Literature, Cultural Anthropology, The Washington Post online, Words Without Borders and Modern Poetry in Translation. She is an editor of the Tibetan Political Review and English editor of Tibet Web Digest. She works at the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation as an editor of Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopaedia of Tibet, Inner Asia and the Himalayan Region. She was a 2014-2015 fellow of the American Literary Translators’ Association. She holds an MFA from Columbia University where she was a Hertog fellow and a BA from Harvard University.
RS: What are some of things that drew you to Latse library?
TD: As a Tibetan writer and literary translator the library is a fantastic resource for me. In the West we really don’t have much access to new literature being published in Tibet and China and Latse is the pretty much the only place we can see the latest literary journals and short story compilations. I was particularly drawn by the variety of programming and classes offered at the library and the opportunity to work with a writer and scholar like Pema Bhum. A few years ago a small group of us attended a short course where we studied the poetry of 6th Dalai Lama, it was a fantastic experience and I don’t think there’s anywhere else where such a course is offered. Just last year Sonam Tsomo, a Tibetan poet based in New York, and a few students from Columbia attended another class with Pema Bhum on the history of Modern Tibetan Literature.
RS: What kind of role does Latse play in the Tibetan community in New York?
TD: The community in New York is primarily based in Jackson Heights, Queens, unfortunately Latse is a little bit far from where most of the diaspora are based but nonetheless a lot of us make the effort to go to events at Latse as their program really is one of a kind. Latse gives the Tibetans in New York to see and engage with the cultural production of Tibetans inside Tibet. Unfortunately, I don’t think enough people take advantage of the facilities and resources at the library. Gen Pema Bhum is probably one of the best resources for anyone interested in Tibetan literature!
RS: Not everybody is a writer and translator though!
TD: Ha ha. But there’s so much more to the library than that.
RS: Aside from the literature classes what are some of the public events you’ve enjoyed the most at the library?
TD: Well there’ve been quite a lot of good ones. Let me think. Firstly, I really enjoyed some of the contemporary art exhibitions. They put the work of an exile artist like Tenzing Rigdol with the contemporary artists in Lhasa from the Gedun Choephel Artists Guild. Seeing their work side by is brilliant and having so many people in New York exposed to the new forms of Tibetan art is great.
An event I was involved in personally was when Latse hosted the Gyalwang Karmapa, head of the Kagyu school for a poetry reading in the library. The library invited several Tibetan poets to read their work to the Karmapa. Tsering Kyi from Voice of America was there. I had the honour of one of my English works translated into Tibetan and read out to him. The Karmapa is actually quite the poet himself. He contributed a reading too!
RS: Thank you for sharing your experiences. What have you been working on lately?
TD: Translation. A lot of it! I have recently submitted the manuscript for an anthology of contemporary Tibetan Literature in translation that I have compiled and edited. Look out for the finished product in the near future.