March 2010

Slovenian Writer Spends Residency in Wales

Slovenian writer Barbara Pogacnik arrives in Wales on St David’s Day 2010 at the start of a month-long residency.

Her visit has been organised through the HALMA network which Translators’ House Wales joined in 2009.

Barbara Pogacnik will stay at the Tŷ Newydd National Writers’ Centre in Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd.

She will also talk about her work at a public event to be led in Borth near Aberystwyth on Tuesday 9 March 2010.

Born in 1973, Pogacnik graduated in Romance linguistics and literature from Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and completed her MA at the Sorbonne in Paris.

She is a translator, essayist, literary critic and poet and held a post in the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Ljubljana (2002-2004).

Her first poetry collection, Poplave (Inundations) was published in 2007 by the important Slovenian publisher, Mladinska knjiga. Her second poetry book V mno~ici izgubljeni papir (Sheets of Paper Lost in the Crowd) was published in 2008 – selected poems have been translated into several languages.

Her poems were published in most of the central literary reviews in Slovenia (e.g. Literatura, Nova Revija) and abroad (e.g. the Finnish Writers` Association magazine Kirjailija; the literary translation journal Metamorphoses of Amherst, Northampton, USA; Profemina and Knji~evni list magazines in Belgrade and in the Hungarian Pannon Tükör literary review).

Barbara Pogacnik edited and translated into French an anthology of three Slovenian women poets The Voice in the Body (2005) and worked as co-editor on a number of Litterae slovenicae series volumes (2004-2006). She is on the editorial board of the literary magazine Literatura. She also assumes the role of the program manager of the International Poetry Translating Festival Poets Translating Poets - Sinji krog.

Her translations into Slovenian include authors such as Maurice Blanchot, Oscar V. de L. MiBosz, Paul Ricoeur, Roland Barthes or Jacques Lacan as well as selected authors from contemporary Belgian and Canadian poetry.

February 2010

Welsh residency for German writer

Translators’ House Wales welcomed a German writer to Tŷ Newydd National Writers’ Centre in February 2010.

Mareike Krügel spent a month  in Wales and during her writing residency, she worked on translating some of her work with Welsh writer Mererid Puw Davies who also speaks fluent German.

Born in Kiel in 1977, Krügel studied at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig.

Her first novel Die Witwe, der Lehrer, das Meer (The Widow, the Teacher, the Ocean) was published in 2003.

Krügel’s second novel Die Tochter meines Vaters (My father’r daughter) won the City of Hamburg’s most promising young author award and in 2006, she picked up the prestigious Friedrich-Hebbel-Prize.

Married with one child, she now lives and writes in the town of Ulsnis in northern Germany.

Picture: Mareike Krügel, © Peter Peitsch

November/December 2009

Translation Workshop for Indian Translators

Work has begun on publishing three volumes on literature from Wales in three of India’s languages following a 5-day translation workshop held at Ty Newydd at the end of 2009.  

The books are due to appear in Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil in 2011 and will feature a selection of the best contemporary prose and poetry from Wales.   

Led by Sioned Puw Rowlands, Director of Wales Literature Exchange, and Alexandra Büchler, Director of Literature Across Frontiers (LAF), the workshop focussed on translating literature from Wales for the Indian market.

During the five-day course, writers from Wales worked alongside Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil translators.

“This was the first workshop of its kind to be run by Translators’ House Wales and working with three different cultures and three languages in addition to Welsh and English was quite a challenge. However, there was excellent co-operation across the groups and it was an extremely valuable experience for the participants from both India and Wales,” said Sioned Puw Rowlands.

“The translators have since returned to India and during 2010, they will be working on a three publications in Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil which will provide an introduction to literature from Wales aimed at an Indian audience and which will give Welsh writers a new platform for their work.”

The project was supported by LAF, the British Council, Wales Arts International and Academi.

November 2009

Translators' House Wales welcomed its first author in residence in November 2009.

The Danish poet Morten Søkilde spent a month in Wales, residing at Tŷ Newydd. During this period he worked on translations of his work into English with the poet John Barnie.

Søkilde has a special interest in the relationship between literature and visual art.

In 2009 an epic poem was published as part of the series of ten books by ten poets by Knuth Beckers Håndtryk press.

Søkilde has also worked in media. In 2007 and 2008 he was one of the presenters and guests on the live cultural show DEN 11.TIME, DR2. He lives in Copenhagen.