3RD MAY | 10.30-6.30 | SAGE GATESHEAD
NORTHERN ROCK FOUNDATION HALL | NEWCASTLE | £25 | £20
Join us for an exhilarating day at the second annual Northern Poetry Symposium at Sage Gateshead! The Northern Poetry Symposium was founded last year to bring together literary organisations, poets, readers, students, the general public and all poetry fans in a state of the nation summit to discuss the future of poetry. This year it's bigger than ever and we've taken on the festival theme of Crossings exploring Poetry in Translation, world poetry and exiled voices with our partners NCLA and the PoetTrio Experiment, an innovative new translation language project at Newcastle University. In the current age of political turbulence – the vote for Brexit, the presidency of Donald Trump, the refugee crisis and the rise of censorship – poetry in translation is more relevant than ever! We’ll be crossing the globe with a wealth of world class poets, thinkers and translators, exploring the power of poetry, innovative new translation processes and putting poetry in translation firmly back on the map!
11.00
PANEL: POETRY AS COLLABORATION
Our first panel offers a unique insight into the collaborative process of translating poetry from leading translators and researchers of Dutch, Austrian, Swedish and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian poetry. Led by the PoetTrio Experiment Co-Investigator and poet W.N. Herbert, joined by poets and translators Karen Leeder, Carolyn Forché, Lars Gustaf Andersson and Francis Jones.
12.15
DUTCH POETRIO SHOWCASE
A rare UK reading by leading Dutch PoetTrio Poets Elma van Haren and Hélène Gelèns, alongside award winning poets W.N. Herbert, Fiona Sampson and Sean O’Brien, with a tribute to the Dutch poet Menno Wigman.
2pm
CROSSING THE DIVIDE: POETRY AND VOICES OF EXILE
PBS Recommendation and Forward Prize shortlisted poet Karen McCarthy Woolf chairs a dynamic discussion on the role of poetry in the age of migration featuring the Forward shortlisted exiled Ugandan poet Nick Makoha, the Ukrainian-born poet Ilya Kaminsky, and Carolyn Forché, editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-century Poetry of Witness (1993). How important is poetry in translation in voicing migrant experience and highlighting the recent refugee crises? How can we combat threats to freedom of speech today and what more can be done to make migrant voices heard?
3.15
INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUES:
PUTTING POETRY IN TRANSLATION ON THE MAP
Former Modern Poetry in Translation editor and Winchester Poetry Festival Co- Director Sasha Dugdale explores innovative ways to raise the profile of poetry in translation with the founder and editor of Bloodaxe Books, Neil Astley, poet and translator, Fiona Sampson, PBS Director, Sophie O’Neill, and the first-ever British Library Translator in Residence, Jen Calleja. How can we publish more poetry in translation and give it a more prominent place at book festivals, in the media and on the national curriculum?
4.30
ALTERNATING CURRENTS: SOUNDSCAPE LAUNCH
Join us for the unveiling of an exciting new soundscape by Composer Martin Heslop! This immersive poetic piece was commissioned by PoetTrio in response to their collaborative poetry translation experiment workshops. Imagined as an intercepted cross-border broadcast, Alternating Currents explores the intersection of language, code and music in radical new ways!
5.15
THE SYMPOSIUM SHOWCASE & DRINKS RECEPTION
Chaired by the PBS Choice and T S Eliot Prize-winning poet Sinéad Morrissey, the symposium concludes with a free drinks reception and showcase readings which cross the globe with Forward shortlisted Ugandan poet Nick Makoha and Swedish poet Lars Gustaf Andersson and his translator Carolyn Forché. We'll also be raising a glass to toast the launch of the PBS Summer Bulletin with a rare UK reading from our PBS Summer Translation Choice, Austrian poet Evelyn Schlag, translated by Karen Leeder.
Tickets cost £25 (including a free glass of wine at the evening showcase) or £20 concessions. Book your ticket here.