Interview _ Bobba Cass

Bobba Cass grew up in the United States and was in the Peace Corps in Nigeria in the 1960s.

An academic whose advanced degrees were in English Literature and Cultural Studies, he has been an activist in struggles against apartheid, racism in schools, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

He organises Pinggg…K! a poetry event that meets monthly in Leicester for an evening of metrosexual open mic verse and a performance by a featured poet.

He came out in his late 40s following a police entrapment arrest.

In this interview,* Bobba Cass talks about the work he is doing.

You are often described as a literary activist. What forms does this activism take? And, how has it been received?

When I began coming out in the late 1980's and I experienced and welcomed the gentleness of other men, I began what I can only describe as 'hearing' a poetry which, in its intensity, was much more open about sensuality and sexuality than was then being published (much of this has changed today with poets being recognised for their intensity of detail, especially openly gay poets). I theorised this as metasexual verse.

After I retired from university lecturing in 2003, I got involved in open mic poetry events in Leicester. I noticed that there were no poets other than myself at that time (2006) who were speaking their sexuality. I began my performances with, Hi. I'm Bobba Cass, a gay grey poet.

I wanted to have an open mic poetry event that was personal and safe enough for those struggling with and exploring their sexuality, to be more direct. In 2011, I began Pinggg...K! which advertised itself as celebrating 'metrosexual verse' (the term, metrosexual based on Rikki Beadle-Blair's television soap, 'Metrosexuality'). Pinggg…K! is now in its seventh year and has seen a growing number of poets of all ages, genders, ethnicities, social backgrounds and mental and physical challenges, come forward and share their sexualities in monthly events, and this has in turn impacted on the wider poetry communities in Leicester.

In addition to Pinggg...K! events I have organised larger events that have brought together Leicester people from many backgrounds. I love Leicester, and am an advocate for its inclusivity. Although I set out here what I have done, there are many others who have been crucial to the growth that has taken place.

To celebrate five years of Pinggg…K! you published a limited edition book, four and twenty. How did the book come about?

Each month there had been a call and response couplet that worked humour out of the relationship of blackbird to earthworm, a humour that was free of the attitudes towards women, working people, black people, the disabled, the LGBT communities so often found at poetry events, especially those in pubs.

From the ranks of Pinggg...K! attenders (women and men, black and white, young and old, gay and straight, physically challenged and not, working class background and middle class, international and English), cartoons were produced to give visual energy to twenty of these couplets. And also four of the blackbird / earthworm genre best poems were included hence the four and twenty title of blackbird nursery rhyme fame.

four and twenty is a brief volume but encapsulates an activist energy that is evident in Leicester at its best.

I have occasional verse in other publications such as Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016), and several poems that can be seen and heard online. These internet poems I treasure because they are there as the result of other poet activists who have taken the time to record and post them in the ether.

When did you start writing?

Although I see myself mainly as a performer, especially as a poet, I have also written two novels, and they are part of a sequence which I hope one day will be published, especially in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where I grew up.

I am 78 years of age.  I began writing as a child in school, especially poetry. The greatest energy for writing came when I began coming out as a gay man in my late 40s.

My poetry, in its passion, is very sporadic and instantaneous - I am hearing phrases and responding to feelings and reflections. My novel writing is shaped by my interest in readability, something that can be enjoyed in a day for some or a week for others. The novels are no longer than 10 chapters.

I have lived in Leicester now most of my life. My poetry as performance has come about through the vitality of spoken word events in our city. My novels imagine more the audiences of my upbringing and experiences, for instance, living in Nigeria for four years in the 1960s and residing in countries different from that of my birth as well as where I grew up in Seattle. Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. Once we begin to hear ourselves, the stories we tell, as if from different paths in life and different places of disposition, we struggle to find a joy. When that joy is found it fills our hearts with wanting to share it with others.

Which authors influenced you most?

Emily Dickinson and William Shakespeare are key influences on my poetry - Dickinson because of her brevity and intensity, Shakespeare because of his sonnets. The novels of Thornton Wilder (Bridge of San Luis Ray) and Laura Ingalls Wilder (House on the Prairie sequence) are paradigmatic.

What are the biggest challenges that you face? And, how do you deal with them?

I had been longing for someone who would love me and allow me to love them for a long time - desperate for that. By chance such a person has come into my life. There is a huge challenge around this commitment. I am still growing within myself.

I was on the stage as a child and that has informed my energy around performance. I had a mental breakdown at the end of my four years in Nigeria. I came out after 20 years of marriage and raising three sons. I have been an activist around peace, environmental, race and gender issues. These experiences have been formative.

I feel most passionate about wanting young people to have experiences in their lives that take them beyond their childhood environments so that they can sense what others lives might be like. I would like everyone to have some part of their childhood sheltered / regaled by the unconditional love of an elder close to them. For example, my grandmother lived with us when I was a child. Her love for me saw me through the most difficult moments of my early adult life when I had what was then called 'a mental breakdown'. I always hope that there will be someone like my grandmother, in everyone's life.

Do you write everyday?

The poetry is spontaneous. It happens in moments. The novels I set out to do and they are written within three to four months and then revised many times.

I am preparing to write my third novel, Nigeria! Nigeria! I was in Nigeria at the time of Biafra. I lived where the war first broke out.

This particular book will draw heavily on the letters I wrote home at the time, and will be epistolary. The underlying narrative will be an expansion of the life of a character, Donny, in the first two novels, and one of his friends.

Which are the most difficult aspects of the work you do?

With the poetry, the forms have been most various, and have required a lot of reworking in some instances. All of the poems are memorised and that by way of reworking. With the novels, the diction and dialogue have required many revisions. As with the poetry, I find hearing the writing aloud crucial.

Which aspects of the work do you enjoy most?

For the poetry, recalling particular moments that have an integrity in emotional relationships gives me a vitality and sense of achievement. For the novels realising conjunctions in the relationships of the characters that go beyond initial imaginings always seems miraculous.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer and as a literary activist?

For the poetry, my greatest of achievement has been the interaction with other writers in Leicester, and my part in bringing this about. For the novels, I hope that my persistence in working on the narratives over a long period of time in my late adult life will be regarded as a big achievement.

My greatest joy as a literary activist is the shared experience of celebration. To me this is live. It is spontaneous. It is what we can all bring to an event. It is primarily spoken. We attempt to capture it in words. And that is a great challenge. But the greater challenge is allowing ourselves to be wise in each other.

Oscar Frank is one of our spoken word community – a wonderful oral tradition poet. One afternoon as I was rushing to get a train to Nottingham, Oscar saw me near the train station. He was eating from a cob, but he had to say to me what was uppermost in his mind, “Time is longer than a rope, Bobba. Time is longer than a rope!” That night, in recollection, the meaning and this poem was in my heart. (‘Farrels’ is my word for the muscles either side of the urethra in the phallus):

for Oscar

time is longer than the rope
that farrels through our dreams
that wrinkles with a bartered hope
that lithes with peril beams

when that ourselves eventuates
to dust galactic streams
the time that was
more likely still
a carnal apple gleams

*This interview was first published in the magazine, Great Central, in March 2017

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.

Interview _ Marilyn Ricci

Marilyn Ricci is a poet, playwright and editor.

Her poetry has been published in a wide range of small press magazines and her pamphlet, Rebuilding a Number 39, was published by HappenStance Press. Her first full collection, Night Rider, is out now from SoundsWrite Press.

In this interview, Marilyn Ricci talks about her writing and about Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the work you do?

In terms of my poetry writing, I’d describe it as fulfilling and often a huge struggle. When a ‘prompt’ or idea comes to me for a poem (usually through reading other people’s poetry) I feel an excitement because I know I’ve stumbled across something which is important to me. This is the beginning of a process which is sometimes quite difficult but will end, I hope, with a poem which is meaningful both to me and to others with whom I hope to connect. That connection is the important thing.

Which are the easiest aspects of the work?

I think the easiest aspects are enjoying other people’s work, getting together with other poets and gaining inspiration from this. Poetry isn’t a solitary occupation for me.

In terms of the actual writing itself, very occasionally a poem does seem to waft my way and I more or less just write it down and then play with it until it feels right. I wish that happened more often.

With regard to the writing process, one of the most challenging aspects is cultivating patience. When something has prompted me to write, I begin by getting a few lines down. I’m listening for rhythm, wondering about form, cutting out the extraneous to make sure every word earns its place in the poem, looking for what excites me in the subject matter and looking at that from an unexpected perspective or speaking about it in a new way. I’m constantly interrogating the poem as I work on it. This can take a long time and you have to be patient and bold – start all over again if necessary.

I belong to a women’s poetry group in Leicester – SoundsWrite – and I workshop a lot of my poems there to make sure I’m asking the right questions, to help me to be patient and keep working on the poem until it feels right to me. I often refer to a poem as ‘cooked’. What I don’t want is ‘half-baked.’

Marilyn Ricci's books include the poetry pamphlet, Rebuilding a Number 39 (HappenStance Press, 2008) and the poetry collection, Night Rider (SoundsWrite Press, 2017).

Who or what has had the most influence on you?

Regarding subject matter, many of my influences come from my childhood growing up on a council estate just outside Leicester. My parents worked in local factories and I’ve written a sequence about them, “Hannah and Con At Work” – in my latest collection, Night Rider. As was very common in 1960s Leicestershire, my mum worked in the hosiery and my dad in ‘the print’. But they weren’t locals. They were incomers from the mining areas of South Wales and County Durham who were moved during the 1930s on a government scheme to get people out of the depressed areas. They brought their politics with them which greatly influenced my view of the world and so I was very aware of social class differences and the systematic inequalities that produces. This led later to an awareness of gender and ethnic inequalities too and the crazy ways people attempt to justify them and promote prejudice. I hope this is apparent in my poem ‘Framed’ which is being translated – the notion that women covering their heads with a headscarf as something unheard of in British culture is a lie. Not covering the head in public in the UK is a very recent thing and as I said in the poem: my mother always wore a headscarf when she left the house.

The list of other poets who have influenced me is very long, almost too many to name. Here are a few: John Keats, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Stevie Smith, D A Prince, Stephen Dobyns, Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, Don Patterson, Dennis O’Driscoll, Carole Bromley and many others who may only be known in the small press world.

Supportive editors of small press magazines have also been a great source of strength and encouragement over the years.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement so far?

Getting poems published in magazines I respect isn’t easy so it’s always exciting when I get an acceptance.

In terms of publications, I’m very proud of my 2008 pamphlet, Rebuilding a Number 39, published by HappenStance Press. And this year I’m equally proud of my first full-length collection, Night Rider, published by Karin Koller at Leicester-based SoundsWrite Press. It has been a delight to put together the collection and to read from it at various venues.

Another highlight would be working with Somali friends to translate a beautiful Somali poem, “I Am Somali”, into English and getting that published in Modern Poetry in Translation in 2014.

I have also edited books and written plays that have been performed all over the East Midlands which has been a great experience, but that’s another story.

Marilyn Ricci's poems have been featured in anthologies that include Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) and Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016). 

How did you get involved with Over Land, Over Sea?

I can’t remember exactly but I came across the fact that contributions were being sought for an anthology to help support refugees and asylum seekers. I thought it was a brilliant idea. And it has proved to be so.

Seeing the terrible scenes on the coast of Greece (it’s been happening for years in Sicily too) and then reading the sickeningly nasty responses from some parts of the British media made me want to counter that in some way.

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

The value of an initiative such as this is quite hard to measure. It doesn’t produce the so-called ‘hard’ evidence (usually statistical) that is now so beloved of governments, corporations and many other organisations. That ‘hard’ evidence does have value, but it isn’t the only type of evidence which shows an activity has brought, for instance, great benefit to people.

In this case, it’s a matter of ‘small acorns’ which eventually produce mighty oak trees (there’s a nice English proverb!). Putting people in touch with each other through poetry is the sort of activity which brings fulfilment and a sense of worth to people’s lives and souls. For the writers, it’s wonderful that other people will delve into your poem, pull it apart and rebuild it. For the translators, it’s an insight into another poet’s mind and re-producing the poem so that it becomes meaningful to even more people. For readers it links people together as fellow human beings who may be very different, but also share a common humanity.

Marilyn Ricci’s “Framed”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p. 114. Translated into Greek by Irena Ioannou. 

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 _ Trevor Wright

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

In this interview, Trevor Wright talks about the work he is doing.

How would you describe the writing that you do?

I'm relatively new to poetry and so far I've written about family, masculinity and its impact on others, political events in the wider world, key events from my own past with the odd comedic poke at well known public figures. If there's a theme that links many of them it's inequality which has significantly worsened in recent years and is by no means inevitable.

As a writing process, chaotic. Trying to process the endless sensory incoming of everyday life, put some shape to it, find a place within or against it. Sometimes both within one poem. Sin, death and redemption just about covers it.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

I didn't study literature after the age of 16 and only started writing a few decades later so I'm still working that out.

The Beano, Sillitoe, Robert Tressell and Michael Foot's biography of Nye Bevan then an overdue catch up on the other half of the population via Virago and the Women's Press when I worked in a collective bookshop. I like to hear poetry aloud so would credit people on the Derby / Nottingham open mic circuit who have been supportive. However, I'd say my main cultural influence has been music and the pictures and rhythms that it embeds. You won't spot the links but the likes of Patti Smith, Leadbelly, Joni Mitchell, and Niney crept into my first collection.

Phrases and rhythms from when I lived in Wales as well, 'everyone has their own bag of stones to carry' for example, and then there's the influence of observational comedy - I've always had a soft spot for Dave Allen.

How have your personal experiences influenced you're writing?

Everyone has highs and lows to reflect on so there are experiences and lessons there to be tapped. Some poems come easy, one about my daughter kicking up leaves in the park, for example ... others are buried, not always whole, in layers of clay, rubble and rock that have to be pick axed out.

Being autistic is a thread. Living with autism means you see things from the margins, rationally, not overly encumbered by emotion but can express that perception with passion. It gives an early insight, not always complete of course, into inequality and diversity.

I draw on a range of experiences, from working with snippets that pop up in a writing workshop, media reports from around the world, looking up from a table at an open mic night to see a lonely bloke staggering across Nottingham's Slab Square dressed as Batman. If it pops up, I'll have it!

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

Surviving my early open mic and crit group experiences relatively intact has got to be high on the list as has being a Reds fan yet getting a poem accepted for the Welcome to Leicester anthology.

My first collection, Outsider Heart, was published by Big White Shed last November and I never thought that being asked to do that would happen within three years of starting to write. But I'd say, the biggest achievement has been connecting and working with others. Simple things like chatting to someone at an open mic night because a poem spoke to them or the types of creative collaboration central to Journeys in Translation. That can be difficult for someone with autism and against the grain of your instincts and learned experience. Most of us mask and mimic behaviours to damp down the anxieties of 'doing social' or just avoid it altogether.

Writing and performing has enabled me to contribute on my terms, which I'd never really done before. Better late than never!

Trevor Wright's debut poetry collection, Outsider Heart was published by Nottingham's Big White Shed in November 2016 .

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I had followed the Poets in Solidarity Facebook group and worked up a couple of refugee related poems when the call out for submissions for Over Land, Over Sea was made. I sent in three and one, "Yalla", was accepted for publication in the book. It was later one of the 13 poems chosen for Journeys in Translation.

On the principle of once you're in it, you're in it, I set out to see what translations I could get done. So far, it's been translated into Welsh, Italian, Farsi and British Sign Language with an experimental music version due in May.

We are testing out dual readings of the BSL version and then Farsi version at the Nottingham Poetry Festival next week.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

Going back to the original poem, having clear images to work from helped ... 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 and I centred the poem on one person who was in transit and had lost all but one of their family.

Being a parent helped position it. That all came together unusually quickly, providing a core structure.

For Journeys in Translation, its others who do the hard work. Individuals volunteered to translate "Yalla" without too much arm-twisting. People got enthused by the project and the values behind it.

Trevor Wright's poems have been featured in the anthologies, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) and Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016).

Which were the most challenging?

For the original poem, translating the images into a poem that had noted the suffering without pity. I also wanted to mark the resilience and hope that carried people on - a hope and resilience that I have to say, in hindsight, I don't think we've honoured.

I was still working on the poem after it was accepted so when the proofs came through for checking I agonised about a middle connecting line and only got the revised version in a few hours before the deadline.

For Journeys in Translation, the challenge was being asked questions about what I had mistakenly thought was a finished poem by the translators. Different languages didn't have the words or phrases that I used, for example, or some required gender-specific words when I'd deliberately left the gender of the subject of "Yalla" open.

With the BSL version, it was having to cast aside elements that had worked in the poem to enable the BSL signer to translate phrases into expressions. Each time I had to return to my original images and enter into a new dialogue to answer the question, "What exactly are you trying to say?"

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.

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

That's the hardest of these questions!

Over Land, Over Sea raised money for refugee charities and profiled a wider range of responses to the refugee 'crisis' than were available to us in the media. So Journeys in Translation has prolonged the shelf-life and spirit of the original anthology, brought people together, provided a sense of connection, contribution and collaboration. There's value in that alone.

Journeys in Translation also gives those Over Land, Over Sea poems extra reach, pushing them out to new communities, and is doing so in different forms, morphing in reaction to new circumstances so mirroring the struggles of people across generations. How much value that adds is probably best decided by others.

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 _ Penny Jones

Penny Jones is a writer from Leicestershire.

She has been published by Fox Spirit Books, Factor Fiction Press, Five Leaves Publications, and Dahlia Publishing. Among other writers' conventions and conferences, she attends the monthly meet up of Leicester Writes.

In this interview, Penny Jones talks about her writing, Over Land, Over Sea and Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the writing that you do?

I'm new to writing, so at the moment I write anything and everything. I find writing really hard, but find procrastinating really easy, so writing in different styles and genres means that I can try and fool my brain when it is telling me to give up.

I have recently finished the first draft of a novel, and throughout the process all I wanted to do was write the short story I had been commissioned to write; then when I was writing that, all I wanted to do was write the screenplay for the course I was attending, and now I'm doing that all I want to do is go back to re-writing the novel.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

I read for pleasure, and admire writers who manage to take big issues and make them accessible through fiction.

I don't tend to stick to one style of literature and enjoy finding new writers, so each year I take up a different reading challenge; for example one year I made my way through the alphabet, another year all the authors had to be from different countries.

I want my writing to be as well rounded and diverse as possible, and so I want as wide an influence of subjects and authors as possible.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I very much put myself into each and every character I write about, especially my flaws. I like my characters to be well rounded, so I look at my experiences and use those to try and see how I would react to a situation. Also, my background as a psychiatric nurse helps as I can utilise the skills and knowledge that I use as a nurse, to empathetically see how my characters are feeling and how they would react; the protagonist in my novel is a young boy, so his reaction to events will be drastically different to my own.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

My most significant achievement so far was my first commissioned piece, which was for a charity zine called Do Something by Factor Fiction Press. The first time you are asked to contribute to something, rather than sending in to an open submission, feels amazing.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I felt very strongly about supporting Syrian refugees, so when I saw a post on Facebook, where they were looking for poems for a charity anthology I knew that I had to at least send them something, even though I hadn't written any poetry since my school days.

My poem "What's in a name?" was accepted for the anthology Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge by Five Leaves Publications, and following on from that one of the editors, Emma Lee, asked if it could be included in a project to bring the message to as many people as possible through translation.

Penny Jones' poem, "What's in a Name?", on the pavement at the Leicester Against War / Leicester for Peace vigil that, since December 2015, is held every Friday at the Clock Tower in Leicester in solidarity with people everywhere who are bearing the brunt of war and those who are seeking refuge.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

The easiest aspects of the work, was the idea for the poem. I can only really write poetry if I already have an idea in mind, and for this project it was already clear in my mind, that I wanted to look at humanising refugees.

I had seen and heard many people using the terms refugee and immigrant interchangeably, and it angered me that not only did people not understand the difference between someone who was a refugee and someone who was an immigrant; but also that these people who were dying had become faceless and nameless. So I wanted my poem to show that these were people, they were someone's son, daughter, brother, or sister.

Which were the most challenging?

The most challenging aspect of "What's in a name?" was that although the letter "E" is the most common letter used in England, it is the least common in Syria. This is a major issue when you are writing an acrostic using the word refugee, so finding three Syrian names that began with "E" was really difficult; especially as I wanted to use the name's meaning as the crutch for each line of the poem.

It took hours to find three Syrian names that began with "E", and I only then managed it because some Arabic names that are spelt with an "I" have alternative spellings that start with "E". "What's in a name" took about 10 hours to write, but 9 hours was just trying to find those three names.

Penny Jones' poem, "What's in a Name?", Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.5. Translated into Bengali by Rinita Banerjee‎.

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

The value to initiatives like Journeys in Translation, is that you can get the message out to as many people as possible.

Language is a barrier that we all face, but if we can share our stories and our beliefs it can be a barrier we can peep over, shake hands, and discuss our differences, rather than remain hidden behind.

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 _ Ursula Kapferer

Ursula Kapferer was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1989 and currently lives in Freiburg (Germany). She studied German and English to become a teacher and is currently writing her PhD thesis on German-English poetry translation. She is also presently writing an article about translating the German poet Christian Morgenstern forthcoming in the traductology series ECHO.

In this interview, Ursula Kapferer talks about writing, poetry and poetry in translation.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I write poetry in German and English and translate poetry in both directions.

Currently, I am working on my PhD thesis about poetry translation, where I combine poetry translation practice and theoretical work.

I have always been fascinated with sound and rhythm which greatly influences both my writing and research interests and I am also interested in the different advantages and challenges when translating both from German to English and vice versa.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

The two greatest influences on my writing are my family and the poets I admire.

Some of my earliest memories are my father carrying me around in the kitchen, while reciting Latin poetry. I remember being fascinated with the enchanting rhythms and sounds, even though I did not understand a word. Poetry was always part of our everyday life during my childhood: My grandfather recorded ballads for me and my parents used to read to me and each other while going on holiday. I think these childhood experiences shaped my love for poetry and especially for sound and rhythm.

My own writing has always been greatly influenced by the poets I was reading at a time. Leafing through my older poems, I can see the different poets who influenced me at the time shining through. It has always been easier for me to get a feel for a poem than finding my own voice. This is probably also why I started translating poetry.

Are there other ways in which your personal experiences have influenced your writing?

Poetry for me is closely connected to emotion. I would even say the two are inseparable in my experience. Strong feelings often bring poems to mind and also have resulted in several of my poems. Also, I still have great difficulties translating poetry which I do not have an emotional connection with.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

The encouraging feedback of my private and professional environment is especially significant to me, for instance that I was invited to read one of my poetry translations at the T & R (Theories and Realities in Translation and wRiting) conference in Naples (Italy) in 2016.

Another significant achievement for me is that I managed to obtain two scholarships (first the “Landesgraduiertenförderung” and then the “Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes Promotionsstipendium”) for my PhD project (which includes my translations as well as theoretical work on translation I mentioned above).

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

Especially since my work as a German as a Second Language teacher for Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Freiburg (Germany), refugee experience and integration have become personal matters for me. I think that poetry is able to play a significant role in the integration process which begins with mutual understanding, I believe. So, when I heard about the project via an email bulletin from EACLALS (The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), I started translating “but one country” by Rod Duncan the same day.

Rod Duncan's poem, "but one country, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015), on the pavement at the Leicester Against War / Leicester for Peace vigil that is held every Friday at the Clock Tower in Leicester in solidarity with people bearing the brunt of war and those seeking refuge.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

The easiest step to me always is the first one, the reading, listening and then beginning the literal surface translation before dealing with formal and other constraints. Surprisingly, also, problem solving can sometimes be easy if I do not try too hard.

If I do not find a solution straight away, I found that getting up, going for a short walk or even only to the fridge often clears my mind so that when I return to the desk, sometimes there is a solution – seemingly out of nowhere.

Which were the most challenging?

I love challenges of poetic form. In the case of Rod Duncan’s “but one country”, such a challenge was the shape of the poem in the form of a globe and the syntactic challenges in ensuring that the poem can be read in both directions, the two halves making contradictory statements.

I find it fascinating that it is often especially poems that pose (formal) challenges, such as this one, where I like my solutions best in the end. Straight forward, literal solutions usually do not work in such cases and force me to “go deeper into” the poem and come up with creative solutions.

This experience also influenced my interest in the constraint and creativity I work on in my dissertation project.

Ursula Kapferer's translation into German of “but one country”, a poem by Rod Duncan which is one of the poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being translated from English into other languages as part of Journeys in Translation.

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

I think the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation is - to use a poetry metaphor - that its form mirrors its content: The poems taken from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge express solidarity with refugees and can be described as transcending barriers between cultures and individuals on the level of content.

Journeys in Translation takes this one step further: It does not only overcome the monolingual barrier, but its open form (translation workshops and the use of social media like Facebook) enables a broadness and diversity that could not be achieved in conventional translation projects. The use of Facebook and the translation of the poems into many languages also make the poems accessible to a widespread audience and might be a valuable part of bringing the refugee experience closer to a larger number of people.

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 _ Lydia Towsey

Lydia Towsey is a poet and a performer. Her previous commissions include: Freedom Showcase (Literature Network); Spoken Word All Stars Tour (Poet in the City); Beyond Words, U.K. tour of South African poets (Apples and Snakes); and, Three the Hard Way UK tour, alongside Jean ‘Binta' Breeze and Alison Dunne in 2014 and Jean Binta Breeze and Shruti Chauhan in 2015.

Poet, Performer and Spoken Word Artist, Lydia Towsey.

A Decibel commissioned artist, in 2008 Lydia Towsey was one of 50 international artists in residence at Stratford Theatre Royal.

Previously shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, she has spoken and performed everywhere ... from London’s 100 Club, Roundhouse and the House of Lords, to ... Plymouth University’s Zombie Symposium.

Her work has been featured in publications that include the magazines: The London Magazine, Hearing Voices and Magma Magazine; and the anthologies, Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Raving Beauties, Bloodaxe, 2016), Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015), Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016) and within Candlestick Press’ 10 Poems about ... series.

Lydia is currently UK touring the stage show of her collection, The Venus Papers (Burning Eye Books, 2015) produced by Renaissance One, supported by Arts Council England.

In addition to her practice as a poet/performer, Lydia works as a producer, specialising in literature, health, women and excluded communities and works as part-time Arts in Health Coordinator for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. She plays the ukulele, keeps a cat and is the chair/co-ordinator and rotational compere of WORD! - the longest running spoken word night in the Midlands, nominated as ‘Best Regular Spoken Word Night’ in the 2017, national Saboteur Awards.

In this interview, Lydia Towsey talks about the work she is doing.

How would you describe your writing?

My creative writing focuses on poetry and developing work for the page and performance.

I'm particularly interested in narratives surrounding gender, politics, woman and culture - from popular culture to counter culture and the other… to ethnicity and notions of national identity. I enjoy using humour, satire, wordplay, the fantastical and both visual and performance based techniques and approaches to explore these areas.

Who or what has had the most influence on you as a writer?

Who - undoubtedly, Jean Binta Breeze - who I was lucky enough to meet at an early point in my writing career and fall truly, madly, deeply in friendship and fan-girldom with. I was in my mid-20s and experiencing challenging personal circumstances. Jean taught me to look outside of myself and combine the personal with the public. I think of poems of hers like “Ordinary Mawning” pegging out the washing, while America bombs the middle east… now, with new resonance, of course.

Who, also - Scott Bridgwood, my life partner, figurative painter and key creative collaborator. Our work frequently crosses over, and has done so most recently in The Venus Papers. In this, I’ve developed my research in collaboration with Scott, drawing on his knowledge of figurative art and incorporating my work as a life model (within our relationship) to write around these and other experiences/areas of knowledge. He’s always the first person to hear a new poem and the closest thing to a Witch Doctor I’ve found.

Another big influence - around 10 years ago undertaking and completing an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, specialising in poetry and screenwriting. In doing so I was able to develop formal craft, technique and writing processes, which I’ve drawn and built on ever since.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I began training as a visual artist, initially undertaking a Degree in Critical Fine Art Practice at Brighton University. Though ultimately not a path I pursued, I think I take quite a visual approach to my writing, from the arrangement of text, to style and content. In the case of The Venus Papers, the writing has been at least in part ekphrastic, directly responding to a painting.

Writing about Venus, I’ve also drawn on other backgrounds, specifically the past experience of anorexia, from my late teens through to my early 20s - with this naturally making me interested in such issues as mental health, body image, the media and cultural/societal pressures to conform.

Writing about Venus - as ‘everywoman’ but also ultimate traveller, I’ve also been motivated by my cultural background. Like many people in the UK, I come from a family of immigrants, on my father’s side mostly Hungarian Jewish, though my Great Great Grandfather was Mexican, his wife American - and there are people from/of other places and cultures too, my mother's Welsh. At the same time I'm English and a descendent of the British Empire and therefore implicated in a story of colonialism and post-colonialism. Given all that, a lot of my writing is interested in this question of cultural and national identity, its historical resonance and unfolding contemporary narratives - including Brexit and the current European refugee crisis.

I often write about my own experiences, so everything from being a being a zombie fan (long story), becoming a mother, working part-time for the NHS and keeping a cat - have made it into my work.

I'm currently working on a new collection exploring Englishness and so far, featuring all of the above. Later this year I'll be poet in residence for Literary Leicester and Arriva Buses - thinking about my dad's former occupation as a bus driver, so again working with personal material, but linking it to a broader context.

Lydia Towsey's The Venus Papers (Burning Eye Books, 2015) takes, as it's starting point, Botticelli's 15th Century painting, 'Birth of Venus' where Venus is depicted arriving on a shell at a Cypriot beach, and goes on to imagine Venus transported to the 21st century.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

Developing and touring my first full length collection, The Venus Papers, published by Burning Eyes Books (September 2015) and funded by Arts Council England. I first began writing Venus material, six or seven years ago, so the body of work has had a long gestation period and evolved a lot to take in many influences, personal writing breakthroughs, ideas and experiences. Seeing all that come to fruition has been enormously satisfying.

As a whole, The Venus Papers is about how we look - at ourselves, each other and the world - and how others influence the way we do so … from marketing and the media, to representations of women, the (fe)male gaze and the political machine.

The title sequence takes Botticelli’s infamous 15th century painting, "Birth of Venus", depicting Venus, Roman Goddess of love and beauty arriving on a Cypriot beach. It then relocates her to a UK beach in the 21st century and asks what might happen if she were to arrive here, now. So, there are poems like “Venus Walks into a Bar” … “Venus gets a job as a Glamour Model” … “Venus in Primark” … “Venus at Customs” and so on …

Botticelli’s Venus was the first recorded example of a female nude painted and exhibited life size and in many ways the medieval blueprint for every cover girl to come. Against this background and through the eyes and perspective of someone arriving as an outsider, naked and vulnerable, both show and book engage with society, politics, culture and identity ... re-framing familiar contemporary situations to try and look anew.

The tour is produced by Renaissance One and continuing until the end of 2017, with our next dates taking in Wiseword Festival, Canterbury; The Royal Albert Hall and JW3, London; Lancaster Literature Festival, and more.

WORD! - the poetry and spoken word night you chair and compere with fellow committee members, Tim Sayers, Pam Thompson and Richard Byrt - has just been shortlisted in the 2017 Saboteur Awards as the UKs "Best Regular Spoken Word Night".

Tell us about WORD!, its place within the local literature scene and how you feel about the nomination.

WORD! is the longest running spoken word night in the Midlands - est. circa 2001 by Apples & Snakes, and delivered independently by a voluntary committee/organisation since 2008. The night is formed of an open mic, plus booked act(s) and takes place at The Y Theatre, Leicester on the first Tuesday of every month, compered by members of the committee, Pam Thompson, Tim Sayers, Richard Byrt and I.

We take a diverse approach and programme across gender, age, cultural background and style.

Over the last year we’ve presented powerful local voices like Toby Campion, Shruti Chauhan and John Gallas, alongside artists from outside the city - including Mark Pajak, Malika Booker, Jean Binta Breeze MBE and Rosie Garland.

We’ve also programmed exciting local collectives - from a Writing East Midlands literature project, with refugee writers at City of Sanctuary - to a showcase from Project LALU, a group of female ukulele players, writing bilingually and committed to cultural cohesion and wellbeing.

Our open mic is generally busy and attracts both established and emerging voices from near and far. We aim to create a democratic and safe space, where a range of voices can play together, from the acclaimed, to the emerging and/or previously voiceless.

For many years the only spoken word night in Leicester, in more recent years it’s been exciting and energising to see the emergence of many other local literature projects - from our sister nights, Pinnng…K! (particularly open to LGBTQ+ audiences) and Moonshine Wordjam (led by WORD! and Bootleg Jazz and particularly focused on women and diverse artists) - to a range of other initiatives, connected and unconnected to us. In all cases, our work now also involves the voluntary distribution of a regular newsletter, praising, promoting and further supporting such other activity.

WORD! is the longest running spoken word night in the Midlands and has been shortlisted in the 2017 Saboteur Awards as the UKs "Best Regular Spoken Word Night".

What effect would winning the Sabotage Review “Best Regular Spoken Word Event” have on WORD!?

Winning the accolade of ‘Best Regular Spoken Word Event’ in the UK, would of course be a dream. It would really help in our current endeavour to secure public funding - and in doing so substantially grow our work and make it possible for us to reach even more people. If nothing else, being nominated has greatly impressed our cats/mothers/significant others - and provoked us to Instagram!

We find ourselves on a brilliantly inspiring shortlist - so can only hope to follow in our football team’s footsteps, be fearless and ‘do a Leicester’.

If we win, we’ll ask Gary Lineker to present the next WORD! … in his boxer shorts.

If people would like to, they can vote for us, and across other categories, here. Voting closes at midnight on April 30th.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

I was working on “Three the Hard Way - Part Two” - a show with Jean Binta Breeze and Shruti Chauhan, touring the UK in 2015 and exploring women, our three generations and continents of origin.

In the light of the ongoing and distressing European refugee crisis, we set ourselves and audiences the question “Who’s your neighbour?” - reflecting on such themes as multicultural Britain, globalisation, inter-dependence and migration. In a country built on both transatlantic slavery – and the free movement of Europeans into the New World – how should we define our responsibilities, where should we draw our borders and who should be entitled to what? We invited people from across the country to respond with poems, uploading recordings or links to text, via twitter.

At the same time and in response to the same situation, the call-out came via CivicLeicester for Poems for People, an anthology designed and planned to gather poems and micro-fictions in solidarity with the refugees - then (and still) receiving so little welcome in Europe and specifically of course, the UK.

Jean, Shruti and I were keen to share the call-out alongside our own, raise awareness and contribute to challenging the hostile political and media discourse growing up around the subject.

In addition to sharing the call, we invited project instigator, Ambrose Musiyiwa and co-editor, Kathleen Bell, to share their own poems in solidarity and speak about the book at our first tour date, Upstairs at the Western, in Leicester.

I went on to submit and have two poems placed in Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) the anthology that came out of the initiative, and have been keenly following the Journeys in Translation stage of the initiative's genesis.

As part of Journeys in Translation, my piece, "Come In" has been translated into six languages so far and I’ve seen it chalked onto the pavements of Leicester as part of one of CivicLeicester’s many activist happenings. I feel very proud to be connected to the project and grateful for its existence.

Lydia Towsey's "Come In" is one of the 13 poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being translated into other languages as part of Journeys in Translation. So far, the poem has been translated into six languages.

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put into the project?

Unusually for me, I found it relatively easy to write the poems. I wrote both of those featured in Over Land, Over Sea, around the time our government announced it would shelter only 4,000 of the most severely affected refugees - a minuscule number comparative to need, resources at our disposal and offers made by fellow European countries. My feelings were so strong and the issues so specific that I was able to work quickly.

Post Brexit, the rise of racist attacks, and our government’s new announcement, that it will now take only 350 child refugees - the hardest thing is to not give in to despair and feel powerless. I deal with such fears by continuing to write and speak positively around the subject, donate what I can to charities supporting refugees, engage with activism and exercise my voting rights to effect the change I want to see.

Lydia Towsey's poem, "Come In", on the pavement at the Leicester Against War / Leicester for Peace vigil that, since December 2015, is held every Friday at the Clock Tower in Leicester in solidarity with people from everywhere who are bearing the brunt of war and those who are seeking refuge.

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

Journeys in Translation is exciting and dynamic as both a political and an artistic endeavour. The poems and micro-fictions are in response to migration, a politically resonant and urgent subject - but then the words and poems are themselves migrating across language borders, and then migrating between stage and page - then onto the internet, pavements, placards and beyond. The project has great value in its reach, artistry, innovation and activism.

In translating poems over multiple languages and involving even more people, as translators and audience (in conventional and unconventional settings) it has the ambition and power to bring people together and unite diverse groups and communities - something that is of evident value and importance, and particularly so now.

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.