Leicester and Leicestershire look at how to raise profile of literature and literary scene

Individuals and groups that have an interest in the literary activity that takes place in Leicester and Leicestershire are meeting to look at what can be done to raise the profile of the scene locally, nationally and internationally.

The meeting is free and open to all and is taking place at the Bishop Street Methodist Church, 10a Bishop Street, on 13 December 2017, in Leicester, from 6.30pm till 9.30pm.

Speaking at the event are:

● Henderson Mullin, Chief Executive Officer, Writing East Midlands (WEM)
● James Urquhart, Relationship Manager for Literature in the Midlands, Arts Council England
● Cllr Sarah Russell, Deputy City Mayor with responsibilities for Children, Young People's Services, Leicester City Council
● Farhana Shaikh, Dahlia Publishing / Leicester Writes Short Story Prize / The Asian Writer
● Matthew Pegg, Mantle Arts / Mantle Lane Press
● Emma Lee, President, Leicester Writers Club; and
● Bobba Cass, Pinggg...k!

The event is being hosted by the Leicester Writers' Showcase, and will be chaired by Attenborough Arts Centre director, Michaela Butter MBE.

The speakers will give the view they have of the literary scene in Leicester and Leicestershire and what they think can or ought to be done to raise the profile of the scene. They will also take part in a discussion and Question and Answer session with those present.

In addition to the presentations, there will be a display of books by local writers as well.

Leicester Librarian Matthew Vaughan says, "The Leicester Writers’ Showcase started in January 2017 and hosts a literary event once a month at the Central Library on Bishop Street.

"The Showcase aims to create space for conversations between readers, writers, spoken word artists, publishers, booksellers, and venues.

"The event we are hosting at the Bishop Street Methodist Church is part of the conversation people in the city and county need to have about the literary activity that takes place here and what can be done to increase its visibility."

Events that have been held as part of the Leicester Writers’ Showcase include launch-style events; readings, talks, and Q&A sessions; as well as, the Leicester and Leicestershire Writers’ Fair that was held during Everybody’s Reading 2017 and which is going to become a regular feature of the literary scene in Leicester.

Other Showcase plans include a Local Writers' Corner featuring books by local writers and which will be hosted by the Leicester Central Library.

About the speakers

Bobba Cass is a gay grey poet born in Seattle, Washington, USA but living in Leicester / Leicestershire since 1973. He organises a monthly poetry event, Pinggg…K! which celebrates the metrosexuality of verse. He is a member of Peoples Arts Collective. He is currently working on a series of fables for children, from Gramps with Love.

Bobba Cass will read from poetry and fables that draw on his life on three continents and on his experiences as an events organiser and grandad.

Emma Lee is President of Leicester Writers' Club. Her most recent poetry collection is Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves, 2015) and Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016). Emma Lee blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com. She reviews for The High Window Journal, The Journal, London Grip and Sabotage Reviews and has been shortlisted for the Best Reviewer Saboteur Award.

Emma will share insights from the Leicester Writers' Club which meets every Thursday at Phoenix Square in the heart of Leicester's Cultural Quarter. The Club is for professional and semi-professional writers and includes novelists, poets, short story writers, non-fiction writers, children's writers and scriptwriters. Members are both widely published and award-winners. The Club provides constructive criticism on work in progress, visiting industry speakers, social events, advanced masterclasses and a writers' retreat.

Farhana Shaikh is a writer and publisher born in Leicester. She edits The Asian Writer, an online magazine championing Asian literature and runs the small press, Dahlia Publishing which publishes regional and diverse writing. Farhana hosts the popular Writers Meet Up Leicester as well as Leicester Writes Festival of New Writing. In 2017, she won Travelex & Penguin’s The Next Great Travel Writer competition and is currently part of Curve’s Cultural Leadership programme.

Drawing on her experience as a writer, editor, publisher and events organiser, Farhana will give the view she has of the literary scene in Leicester and the region and suggest what can be done to raise the profile of the scene.

Matthew Pegg is Director of Mantle Arts, a participatory arts organisation based in Coalville, Leicestershire. He is also a published writer, playwright and graphic designer. Matthew will share insights from Mantle which, since 2015, has been running Red Lighthouse, a creative writing programme focused on publishing, development opportunities for Midlands writers and community projects.

Mantle also runs a writer development programme for authors interested in writing for children and young adults which includes the Wolves and Apples biannual conference on writing for children and a series of master classes on aspects of writing for the young. The next one of which is in March 2018.

In addition to that, Mantle Arts runs community projects that include playwriting projects in schools, song writing in care homes and a community audio drama about William Wordsworth’s time living in Leicestershire. Mantle Lane Press, Mantle’s publishing arm, issues a series of small books by Midlands writers, fiction anthologies and factual and historical books with a Midlands connection.

Cllr Sarah Russell is Deputy City Mayor with responsibilities for Children, Young People's Services, Leicester City Council. She has been a Councillor for 10 years and part of the City’s Executive team for the last 8 years. Throughout that time, Cllr Russell has been a passionate supporter of the Libraries Service and has taken every opportunity to promote books and reading. Despite no longer having responsibility for Library Services, Cllr Russell has continued to be the Reading Champion for the City Council and seeks to work with schools, young people and communities to promote reading (and writing) for pleasure as well as for formal means.

Henderson Mullin is Chief Executive Officer of Writing East Midlands which delivers writing-based projects and skills development opportunities across the region. Before setting up WEM in 2008, he ran Index on Censorship, a campaigning publisher which supports of freedom of expression. Henderson has worked in the arts sector for over 20 years and has sat on the Boards of several organisations including Writers and Scholars International, Free Word Centre, Human Rights House Foundation Oslo, Open Word FM, New Arts Exchange, FLUPP Literature Festival (Rio), Nottingham Literature Festival, and Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, and the mighty Loughborough Foxes Women and Girls Football Club.

Henderson will be talking about what is happening on a regional and strategic level elsewhere and how WEM might support a process of developing the profile of Leicester’s writing and writers going forward.

James Urquhart is the Relationship Manager for Literature in the Midlands for Arts Council England. After 15 years as a freelance literary critic, regularly published in a range of UK broadsheets, James joined Arts Council England in 2010. His role as Relationship Manager includes offering development and funding advice and monitoring Arts Council England investments in literature projects and organisations.

James will give the view he has of the Leicester/shire literary scene and future possibilities. He will also talk about the Arts Council’s funding programme, Grants for Arts and Culture (formerly known as Grants for the Arts), which is open to writers, artists and organisations.

About the Chair

Michaela Butter MBE has over 30 years of experience working in the arts as a curator, promoter and funder. Currently Director of Attenborough Arts Centre, the University of Leicester's arts centre, she is responsible for developing an inclusive approach to a growing public programme of performing and visual arts, with a strong emphasis on supporting emerging talent, creative learning and community engagement. She also plays a growing role in wider cultural policy at the University of Leicester and beyond.

*See also:

1. Leicester & Leicestershire: City and County of Literature, Eventbrite listing
2. Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing, University of Leicester
3. Cultural Exchanges Festival, De Montfort University Leicester (DMU)
4. Ross Bradshaw, "States of Independence", 17 March 2012 (Video)

Nottingham poet & British Sign Language translator to take part in Int. Translation Day event

Elvire Roberts, a poet and British Sign Language translator and interpreter from Nottingham will be taking part in Journeys in Translation, an event that is being held at the African Caribbean Centre in Maidstone Road, Leicester on September 30, to mark International Translation Day 2017.

The event is being held as part of Everybody's Reading, Leicester's nine-day festival of reading.

As part of the event, Elvire Roberts will translate two poems, Pam Thompson's "Dislocation" and Trevor Wright's "Yalla", from English into British Sign Language.

International Translation Day is held around the world annually on 30 September.

For the Journeys in Translation, 13 poems were selected from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge, a poetry anthology published in 2015 by Nottingham's Five Leaves Publications.

The poems have since been translated into more than 20 languages.

The poems are also being 'translated' in other ways as well. For example, one of the poems, "Yalla" has been treated to a Contemporary Music for All (CoMA East Midlands) musical conceptualisation, and, two visual artists are currently working on visual responses or illustrations to the poems.

The poems and at least one translation of each will be performed at the Journeys in Translation event in Leicester on September 30.

Posters of the poems and translations will also be on display at the event.

Elvire Roberts says,

Translating poetry from English into British Sign Language is the ultimate challenge because the two languages work differently and have a completely different structure.

It was a delight to be able to talk to the Over Land, Over Sea poets Pam Thompson and Trevor Wright, check my understanding with them, and ask about intended effects.

With Pam’s poem, I knew immediately how the handshapes would work, that repetition and rhythm were particularly important, as well as keeping the vocabulary true to the original. With Trevor’s poem I needed to hear about the pictures he saw in his mind’s eye so that I could re-create them in British Sign Language's inherent filmic mode.

Elvire Roberts and Trevor Wright at the Quiet Riot disability Poetry event that was held on 21 April 2017 as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival which was also the first outing of the British Sign Language translation of "Yalla".

Project coordinator, Ambrose Musiyiwa says,

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversation around themes of home, belonging and refuge. It encourages speakers, learners and teachers of other languages to translate or encourage others to translate as many of the 13 poems as possible and to share the translations and reflections on the translations through blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, on social media, and elsewhere.

The initiative also encourages people, as individuals or communities, to organise related events in their localities. The events could be translation workshops or sessions at which the 13 poems and translations are read and discussed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge was edited by Kathy Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

So far, the anthology has raised about £3,000 for the three charities.

Five Leaves Publications director, Ross Bradshaw says,

In 2015, towards the end of summer, a group of East Midlands writers started discussing the refugee crisis.

The outcome was Over Land, Over Sea, which brings together poems and short fiction from 80 writers from around the world all of whom, through the anthology, respond to people who are seeking refuge, the journeys they are making and how they are being received in Europe and in countries like Britain.

Some of the contributors to the anthology are well-known or are at the start of their career. Some are refugees or from other migrant families, others have campaigned or raised funds for refugees in the past.

Journeys in Translation builds on Over Land, Over Sea and, like the anthology on which it is based, encourages people to look closely at language and images and the effect these have on how we treat people who are looking for refuge. It is good to see there are people in villages, towns and cities in Britain and around the world simultaneously working on the translations.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. 

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Derby poet to take part in Leicester International Translation Day celebration

Derby poet, Trevor Wright will be taking part in Journeys in Translation, an event that takes place at the African Caribbean Centre in Maidstone Road, Leicester, LE2 0UA, on 30 September from 7pm onwards, to mark International Translation Day 2017.

The event is being held as part of Everybody's Reading, Leicester's annual nine-day festival of reading.

For Journeys in Translation, 13 poems were selected from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge, a poetry anthology published in 2015 by Nottingham's Five Leaves Publications. The poems were then translated into over 20 other languages.

The poems and at least one translation of each will be performed at the Journeys in Translation event in Leicester on September 30.

Posters of the poems and translations will also be on display at the event.

As part of event, Trevor Wright will be reading his poem, "Yalla", accompanied by British Sign Language interpreter and translator, Elvire Roberts.

Trevor Wright says,

I centred “Yalla" on one person who was in transit and had lost all but one of their family.

The poem came to me when I was on holiday watching kids playing in small plastic boats from the beach and walked back into the holiday let to see, on TV, people in large and precarious plastic boats on the Mediterranean. Stories about people losing whole families began to filter through.

With "Yalla", I also wanted to mark the resilience and hope that carried people on, a hope and resilience that, I have to say, we don't honour enough.

Trevor Wright works part-time in social care and is co-director of InSight, a community interest company that provides autism awareness training. His first poetry collection, Outsider Heart, was published by Nottingham's Big White Shed in November 2016.

Trevor Wright and Elvire Roberts at the Quiet Riot disability Poetry event that was held on 21 April 2017 as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival which was also the first outing of the British Sign Language translation of "Yalla".

Project coordinator, Ambrose Musiyiwa says,

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversation around themes of home, belonging and refuge.

It encourages speakers, learners and teachers of other languages to translate or encourage others to translate as many of the 13 poems as possible and to share the translations and reflections on the translations through blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, on social media, and elsewhere.

The initiative also encourages people, as individuals or communities, to organise related events in their localities. The events could be translation workshops or sessions at which the 13 poems and translations are read and discussed.

Over Land, Over Sea was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

So far, the anthology has raised about £3,000 for the three charities.

Trevor Wright's poem, "Yalla", Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p. 94. Translated into Farsi by Mina Minnai.

Five Leaves Publications director, Ross Bradshaw says,

In 2015, towards the end of summer, a group of East Midlands writers started discussing the refugee crisis. The outcome was Over Land, Over Sea, which brings together poems and short fiction from 80 writers from around the world all of whom, through the anthology, respond to people who are seeking refuge, the journeys they are making and how they are being received in Europe and in countries like Britain.

Some of the contributors to the anthology are well-known or are at the start of their career. Some are refugees or from other migrant families, others have campaigned or raised funds for refugees in the past.

Journeys in Translation builds on Over Land, Over Sea and, like the anthology on which it is based, encourages people to look closely at language and images and the effect these have on how we treat people who are looking for refuge.

It is good to see there are people in villages, towns and cities in Britain and around the world simultaneously working on the translations.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. 

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Dania Schüürmann

Dania Schüürmann, born in Münster, Germany, studied Social and Cultural Anthropology (BA) at VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies (MA) at Free University Berlin, Germany.

She completed her PhD in Brazilian literature in 2012. Since 2016 she works as an author and literary translator from Portuguese and Dutch in Berlin.

In this interview, Dania talks about project management, literature and Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the work that you do? What drew you to it? How did you start?

Since 2016 only I am working as a freelance translator and author.

After having completed my PhD in literature, I have been working in the area of project management for some years, but somehow I couldn’t get rid of literature. I kept on reading a lot and one day began writing myself, which somehow changed things.

When you are dealing with literature as an academic, you are also passionate about it, but looking at it from an analytical perspective only. I simply never dared to write myself and when I began with it, it was a revelation – it was very hard to produce something I liked, it still is, I am still actually always totally unsatisfied and have never published anything until today, but it makes me happy.

Translating literature makes part of this new productive relationship with literature and is equally hard and equally satisfying. But I am still a total beginner in translating and writing – I am currently working on my first literary translation for real.

What would you say are the most challenging aspects of the work you are doing?

The most challenging aspects – well, there are so many! I suppose that persistent self-doubts are one of those aspects ... difficult sometimes to deal with. You try very much to do your best, but it’s solitary work that normally also takes quite a long time, so that means you are struggling yourself with the words and the text and no one can really help you.

I really like an essay of the German philosopher and literary scholar (and translator) Walter Benjamin who talks about the Aufgabe des Übersetzers. Aufgabe means task, but the word also refers to the verb aufgeben and that is to give up. As a translator you have to make so many decisions with every sentence, you have to be decisive, but to be good, you also have to be aware of all the pitfalls and difficulties and sometimes you also have to give up and let go to really be able to create something new, the new text, the translated one. So, there are quite some difficulties and challenges in translating as in writing as well, but still it’s a very rewarding work.

Dania Schüürmann's translation into German of “What’s in a Name”, a poem by Penny Jones, from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.5.

What would you say are some of the things that connect the various aspects of the work that you are doing?

Translating and writing are both about language. Also, I am teaching German classes in Berlin – another language-related issue. Language would be the material I am working with in all the aspects of my work.

I think that perhaps I am very fascinated by the relationship between form and content, i.e. texts in which the form cannot be separated from the content really. And that’s an enormous challenge for the writer as for the translator.

Which writers influenced you most?

I am very much into Portuguese and Brazilian literature, so I suppose writers as Clarice Lispector, João Guimarães Rosa and also the more unknown Hilda Hilst have influenced me a lot.

In poetry, I like Rilke a lot, somehow, poems I prefer to read in German, my mother tongue. But generally I read a lot and cannot always define how writers have influenced me.

I suppose I am fascinated by how writers as Lispector or Rosa have created their very own language and literary style ... form and content are intricately interwoven and that’s what I deeply admire.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail talking about the project. Since I was also involved in a project of encounters between German people here in Berlin and refugees from all over the world, I was immediately interested. As a translator I thought I could make a contribution.

Most challenging certainly was the fact that I am normally not translating from English and I suppose that some of the poets also have different mother tongues. That’s a challenge and very intriguing at the same time.

What I really liked is that whilst translating a poem you really have to make it your own; it’s a way of intense reading and listening to the other writer that wrote it. It’s an act of communication, a very focused one, without haste. Exactly in that way we should also talk to each other more often, I think.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

The value of an initiative like Journeys in Translation is exactly this – by the exercise of translation you listen carefully and intensely to the Other. That’s what I think our society should be more like, a community of listeners. The Other has so much to tell and perhaps, by listening very well, you might became another, too.

Dania Schüürmann's translation into German of “Dislocation”, a poem by Pam Thompson, from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.120.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Dominique Cox

Dominique Cox is a pediatrician who loves to read. She lives and works in Argentina and freelances as a Spanish / English medical translator.

In this interview, Dominique talks about medicine, poetry and Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the work that you do?

I work as a Paediatrician, focused primarily on high-risk populations in Argentina, immersed in the socio-political context that this entails. Alongside clinical work, with a co-worker, we developed TRA-Doctor, a firm specializing in translations within the medical field.

In spite of always being an avid reader, it was only through my experience as a doctor that I fully discovered the value of words. I realized that words could dramatically change the meaning and the impact of whatever it was I might be trying to convey, as well as my patients´ reactions. Sometimes language was the only barrier to be broken to ensure treatment adherence, reassure distraught parents or bring comfort to a suffering child.

Who or what has had the most influence on you especially as a reader, a writer and a translator? 

People, our humanness, have always fascinated me. Books have been the means by which I was allowed, from as far as I can remember, to enter the lives of people from different times, geographical locations, religions, etc. With a simple turning of a page I could find myself immersed in someone’s life, thoughts and experiences. I read whatever book I came across, undiscriminating.

To my understanding, books and an open-minded family upbringing have been the tools that enabled me to develop an ability to step out of my own reality into someone else’s without a second thought. A skill I have found essential as a physician.

Carol Leeming’s “Song for Guests”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.92. Translated into Spanish by Dominique Cox.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I was invited to participate in this project by Laura Chalar, a very passionate Uruguayan lawyer, writer, translator and mother, who also happens to be family. We have always shared our passion for books, and in many ways she has been a link to the literary life that sometimes seems forgotten in the midst of work and motherhood.

Up until now, I had never attempted translations outside the medical field, so in a sense this has been my most significant challenge, having stepped out of my comfort zone.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project? And, which were the most challenging?

I was not sure I was up for the challenge. In spite of being truly motivated, I had never attempted to translate poetry before, and my medical translation plus reader experience somehow seemed lacking. I wanted to be as faithful as possible to the original versions, whilst adapting to the Spanish grammatical structure. The effort to do so was fully rewarding.

As a reader I felt it was easy to empathise with what was being conveyed by each poem, and thereafter immerse myself in the writer’s mind-set, speculating about their particular choice of words.

Kathleen Bell’s “Waiting”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.62. Translated into Spanish by Dominique Cox.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

There is great value in the power of words as a means to break barriers, yet language is sometimes the only hurdle. This initiative exponentially multiplies each poem's effect by means of translation, broadening their possibility to reach out to as many people as possible.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Elvire Roberts

Elvire Roberts was born in Yorkshire, spent her early childhood in Zambia and now lives in Nottingham.

She studied Chinese at the University of Cambridge, later pursuing her passion for language to train as a British Sign Language (BSL)/ English Interpreter. She has taught interpreting, and now works primarily in forensic, mental health, academic and arts settings at a senior level. She also assesses and audits interpreting services.

Elvire has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She writes poetry and short stories and her poetry has been shortlisted and placed in national competitions. Elvire is actively involved in the local poetry community in Nottingham (UNESCO City of Literature) and regularly performs her work.

In this interview, Elvire Roberts talks about British Sign Language, Journeys in Translation, and poetry.

How would you describe the work that you do?

As an interpreter, I see my work extending in two parallel planes: the creative act of replicating a person’s utterance with all its emotional and contextual meaning, alongside the socio-political act of empowering and facilitating communication.

The deaf people I meet, whether as tutors, colleagues, clients or friends, have a lifetime’s experience of being silenced, of their language being disrespected and their requests for access to communication being seen as ‘difficult’ and costly. From my own life experiences as a woman, I believe whole-heartedly in enabling others to speak their truth, whether I agree with what they say or not.

When you are interpreting, what would you say you are doing?

Interpreting is immediate and in the moment; it may not convey 100% of the content, but often holds more of the perlocutionary force and intonation of the original than a translation does.

I usually interpret simultaneously, so as the person speaks or signs, I am just a few seconds behind them. This enables me to channel more of the person’s character and attitude, as expressed in their intonation and body language.

A complete interpretation requires a degree of performance in order to fully ‘be’ that person in the other language.

And when you are translating a text?

When I translate, I can take time to get inside the text. Translating feels like a luxury, as when I am working as an interpreter I have to search for meaning instantaneously and reproduce natural-looking or sounding language on the spot.

Translating poetry is the ultimate challenge, particularly when working between two languages which occupy different modalities – BSL is a visual-spatial language with a completely different structure from English. Facial expression and body movement are essential parts of its grammar. Rhyming in BSL poetry is seen in repetition or mirroring of space, handshapes, eyegaze, or simply the way a hand is turned.

As a translator-poet, I can have two different approaches to translating a text – a faithful version that replicates as closely as possible the poet’s original intended meaning and rhythms, or a freer version that incorporates my personal response and understanding of the text.

I’ve been intrigued to see the variety of approaches in the Journeys in Translation texts, some of them much looser translations than others.

Elvire Roberts and Trevor Wright at the Quiet Riot disability Poetry event that was held on 21 April 2017 as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival which was also the first outing of the British Sign Language translation of "Yalla".

How have your own experiences informed the approach you've taken with Journeys in Translation?

Many years ago, I translated Tang Dynasty poetry and had to guess at an 8th Century Chinese scholar’s vision of the world. So it was a delight to be able to talk to the Over Land, Over Sea poets Pam Thompson and Trevor Wright, check my understanding with them and ask about intended effects.

With Pam’s poem, I knew immediately how the handshapes would work, that repetition and rhythm were particularly important, as well as keeping the vocabulary true to the original. However, with Trevor I needed to hear from him about the pictures he saw in his mind’s eye so that I could re-create them in BSL’s inherent filmic mode.

An additional challenge with translating into BSL is that it has no written form. There are complex methods of linguistic coding to represent the language for research purposes, but these would not be accessible to non-linguists. Accordingly, I had to write notes of my translation, then memorise these before signing the final version to camera. A final translated text in BSL is always on film rather than on paper. You can see the translations for "Dislocation" and "Yalla" on YouTube.

In your opinion, what effect does your being a non-native BSL user have on your rendition of the Journeys in Translation poems? 

I’m not entirely satisfied with my translations due to the fact that BSL is my second language: the filmed BSL translation is rendered with the articulation of a non-native BSL user. In my experience, native BSL users have both more pronounced and varied facial expressions, with a more sophisticated use of eyegaze.

To see poetry created and performed by Deaf BSL poets, you can look on the YouTube channel signmetaphor: Paul Scott’s "Tree" is one of my favourites.

What effect do the various roles you play have on each other?

Interestingly, my role as an interpreter has been one of the obstacles in my transition to being a writer. As an interpreter, my aim is to be impartial, to talk only about issues of communication, and not to give my personal views on the matter in hand.

As a writer, I express my views, use autobiographical elements, allow my own self to form and originate the text. This is testing enough as a woman in any role, where we are still encouraged to be ‘angels’, to put the needs and voices of other people first.

I have, however, benefitted enormously from being multi-lingual and from having learned British Sign Language and Mandarin Chinese, languages which are so very different in form and culture from British English. They stretch my brain to alternative connections and ways of creating meaning, giving me a wider range of lenses on the world.

I wonder if perhaps the acts of attention and interrogation that I bring to translation are also those same acts which I bring to forming a poem.

I also believe that there is interaction between the visual-spatial nature of BSL, my interest in art, and my delight in how space is used in poetry. I remember having a eureka moment when I first picked up The Ground Aslant: an anthology of radical landscape poetry, edited by Harriet Tarlo, where white space is a much-flexed muscle of the poem’s environment. This is something that I am exploring in my own poetry and I have just been introduced to the work of Caroline Bergvall, whose playful and linguistically experimental poetry works across other art forms, addressing difficult issues such as migrancy and disappearance.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

I often meet people who are surprised that there isn’t just one signed language, that each country has its own and that within that national signed language there are regional dialects.

From my perspective as a poet, as an interpreter working with disenfranchised communities, and as a feminist, the Journeys in Translation project encapsulates the value of diversity, a value not expressed in economics but in the opening of our minds to the experiences and perspectives of others. At the same time, it speaks of compassion and of sameness, and of the importance of communicating that across barriers. The richness of being human is our obdurate creativity and individuality, and in that we are all the same.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.