For National Poetry Day (October 4th) 2018, The PoetTrio Experiment, in collaboration with the Institute of Modern Languages Research, organised and curated a Translation Summit in London University’s Senate House. It started with a public workshop on collaborative poetry translation, following the PoetTrio model. Then, poets, translators, speakers from cultural institutions, publishers and other stake-holders came together to reflect on best practice, and brainstormed how to take poetry in translation forwards in the next few years.
PoetTrio Collaborative translation workshops
Two parallel workshops, with: British poets Sean O’Brien and WN Herbert; Dutch poets Elma van Haren and Hélène Gelèns; and Language advisors Willem Groenewegen and Francis Jones
Panel: Innovators
Speakers discuss the innovative projects, approaches and programming they are involved with.
Jen Calleja, British Library
Theodora Danek, English PEN
Kate Griffin & Peggy Hughes, National Writing Centre
Charlotte Ryland, Stephen Spender Trust
Jennifer Higgins, Queen’s College Oxford
Panel: Translation after Brexit
As Britain struggles with the new isolationism, translation emerges as a key cultural tool. Our newly endangered relationship with Europe is a crucible for paradigms of world neighbourliness, from soft diplomacy to cultural industry.
Aušrinė Žilinskienė, Lithuanian Cultural Institute
Petra Freimund, Austrian Cultural Forum
Gabriela Mocan, Romanian Cultural Institute
Inga Bodnarjuka-Mrazauskas, International Writers and Translators House, Latvia
Fiona Sampson, PoetTrio Project
Panel: From Page to Stage
Poetry translation relies on the vision of publishers and cultural institutions. But all literary publishers today must increasingly on going beyond the page, from radical event programming to inventive digital publishing.
Clare Pollard, Modern Poetry in Translation
Erika Hesketh, Poetry Translation Centre
Bill Swainson, freelance editor and literary consultant
Tony Frazer, Shearsman
Tony Ward, Arc
Diana Manole, Trent University & McMaster University and poet
Reading
South Korean poet Choi Jeongrye
Romanian-Canadian poet Diana Manole
Poets from the PoetTrio project; Fiona Sampson, Sean O’Brien, W.N. Herbert, Hélène Gelèns, Elma van Haren, and Willem Groenewegen reading the work of Menno Wigman.
The Summit was curated by:
Fiona Sampson, University of Roehampton, and Rebecca May Johnson, Newcastle University
The Poettrio Experiment 