Big Lit Day in Gatehouse of Fleet

I've just been to Big Lit Day.  

It was great!  Full marks to The Bakehouse and D&G Arts Festival.  The poetry pamphlet market was friendly and full of marvellous finds, and eventually I had to stop myself buying things.  Although HappenStance were most helpfully selling pamphlets for £1 on the day, thus tempting you to buy lots.  Leonard McDermid was there with Marigold Press, with which I am much taken.  Everyone should buy 'Ten Sad Songs'. Subtlety incarnate, and a thing of beauty too.  I also succumbed to a beautiful pamphlet from Controlled Explosion Press called 'The Ruin of Poltalloch' by Graham Fulton.
Out on the street folk were happily arrested by John Hudson's installation SHED by the public gardens.  It felt very real, very poignant.
Then I went to hear Katrina Porteous read her new work 'Horse'.  It was inspired by the 3000 year old Uffington Horse in Oxfordshire.  Woven into the poem are threads connecting the nearby hill where St. George slew the dragon, and also Weyland's Smithy on the Ridgeway.  The work is intrinsically connected to a soundtrack created by Peter Zinoviev, which is based on the metallic, roaring physicality of a Cornish chain ferry.  The combination sound and voice and poem was absolutely mesmerising.  Katrina was marvellous, making the reading a drama, completely engrossing.  
Picture my disappointment then, it has not yet been published!  Publish it someone - complete with CD! I drove home, remembering too little, but with fire, chalk, hammer and hill still in the bloodstream.

Workshop with Donald Adamson at The Bakehouse

I'm more than happy to suggest folk might like to go along to this workshop from Donald Adamson.  It's at the lovely Bakehouse in Gatehouse of Fleet on Sunday 25 September.  It promises to be a really interesting and fresh look at the art of poetry in translation. 
I'm going to feed it into my weekend round Wigtown Book Festival and Doors Open Days, on the principle (just invented) that good things come in threes.

Workshop: What makes a good translation?

Facilitated by Donald Adamson

The Bakehouse, 44 High Street, Gatehouse of Fleet DG7 2HP

Sunday September 25^th 10.30am  – 1.30pm

Followed by a light lunch and discussion.

Cost £8.00

This workshop is for everyone – poet or otherwise – with an interest in poetry in translation. You are invited to bring translated poems that you have enjoyed and say why they appeal to you. (It will be helpful if you have some copies to pass round.) What do they ‘preserve’ of the original? What has been the translator’s strategy?

If time allows we’ll look at some translations from 20th century poets (Rilke, Vallejo) and from earlier periods (Ronsard, Horace, Catullus), with translations by Robert Bly, Ezra Pound, Yeats, etc.

Donald is a poet and translator, who taught Creative Writing and Translation Studies in Finnish Universities until his recent retirement. A rare opportunity lively discussion with an expert in his field.

Reviews of some of Donald’s translations:

‘This record should come with a "parental advisory" sticker, for the venom - musically and lyrically - scarcely lets up throughout. Folk music as cultural terrorism, anyone? (Times Review of  Värttinä album)

‘...the sound is decidedly dark...The lyrics (don’t miss reading the translations – they’re freaky!) are also pitch black, (“my loathing drips blood, my pain slashes, curses, drenches with pus”) ... like toe-tapping dirges sung by the ship’s band on the boat to hell...’  Stanford University Review of Värttinä album)

Another opportunity for writers and Writer’s across the Region to meet and engage with each other in the warm and supportive atmosphere of the Bakehouse

BOOKING: Tel 01557 814175 or bookings@thebakehouse.info or chryssalt@chryssalt.com