Poetry in Transatlantic Translation: Circulation and Practice Across Languages

At a time when various forms of isolationism threaten to undermine global cultural relationships, this project centres on the potential of poetry and poetry translation to open up new routes of multilingual, cross-disciplinary engagement. It will focus on relationships that connect poetry in English with other languages through translation or interdisciplinary creative practice. By understanding poetry from the UK and USA in the broader contexts of Europe and the Americas, this project will simultaneously draw on and question a shared anglophone context while making new connections within and beyond it. In doing so it will explore differences of approach as well as discovering synergies; it will describe existing relationships as well as creating the potential for new contacts and collaborations. The project will be a means of promoting and strengthening a more outward-looking approach to poetry that encompasses translation as a necessary element.

Anglophone poetry is often assumed to inhabit a seamless transatlantic space, for example in a culture of 'international' literary prizes open only to works written in English rather than translations. Yet the apparent fluidity of this space is formed by the exclusions and inequalities of a colonial past, and it also masks the very real differences of cultural experience and contemporary politics between the USA and UK. By developing new lines of discussion and communication in poetry and its translation, I aim to change conceptions of this landscape as it is often viewed by poets, translators, critics and their readers.

In order to explore a multiplicity of perspectives, I will conduct part of this research through a series of interviews to be published in book form with a contextualising introduction. This will enable me to draw practitioners and academics into a dialogue that will encompass literary and practice-based discussion of poetry alongside analysis of the material, social and political contexts of poetry in circulation. The process of interviewing, as well as the resulting book, will allow for reflection on how poetry and the communities formed through it can best respond to the complexities of the current political moment. One area of investigation in the book will be international poetry festivals, which maintain a significant presence in Latin America, where they are allied with progressive politics, and have a substantial profile in Québec and in mainland Europe, but which are a minority interest in the UK and USA. In gathering a range of perspectives, I will aim to discover reasons for this difference as well as what poetry itself is understood to be in these different contexts. What structures best enable poetry to circulate? How does the reception of poetry affect choices made in translation and editing? How do advances in technology affect the need for face-to-face encounter? While social media facilitates contact and creates the illusion of connectedness, its rapidity can also create distortions. What forms of attention are drawn on in poetry and why do they matter?

The UK and USA currently face similar cultural challenges but their poetry translation and publishing communities are largely separate.In collaboration with the American translator Kate Hedeen, I will create an anthology of UK and American translators, foregrounding the work of translators as bridge-builders in their cultures and the unexpected connections they make across linguistic and political boundaries.

I will develop the themes of the project through my own practice in a collection of poems that will draw imaginatively on the space of the transatlantic from the vantage point of my home on Anglesey as well as on my reading and translation of Latin American poetry. I will also create a sound performance with the Montréal poet Oana Avasilichioaei, focusing on language and space, which will focus on translation as a live, sonic interaction.

Practitioners in poetry and translation
The interview collection and collaborative anthology will create a better understanding of the networks, structures and relationships through which poetry crosses the Atlantic, and how it is inflected by the languages that surround it. The purpose of the interviews is to reflect on existing structures and lines of connection, but also to reveal the ways in which they might change in order to be more sustainable and inclusive. The project asserts the creative relevance of translation to poetry with the aim of strengthening international communities. The question of how languages co-exist and relate to each other is particularly relevant in the bilingual context of Wales. A sound collaboration with an artist from Québec will explore such commonalities with a view to generating further interest in Québec among Welsh practitioners, given the Arts' Council's strategic interest in future exchanges.

Sharing practice with secondary education
Research will be shared with schools throughout the project. The new curriculum to be taught in Wales from 2022 onwards is presenting challenges and opportunities for teachers. Workshops with a group of teachers from secondary schools in Wales will model translation as a means of teaching poetry and developing a more international curriculum. In the new structure of Areas of Learning and Experience, English as a subject will become part of Languages, Literacy and Communication. This means that teachers from across the traditional subject divides will be starting to consider how their individual subjects connect, looking for the links and interdependences between subjects, and creating schemes of work that deepen and extend learning across traditional divides. One of the challenges will be finding a shared starting point, which is what this research will provide. Poetry in translation provides a way to explore pedagogy that allows practitioners to draw all subjects together into a learning experience, to the point where individual subjects become invisible. By combining, for example, experimental American pedagogies of creative writing with techniques drawn from the French OuLiPo, workshops with teachers will explore the creative potential of teaching poetry through translation and vice versa.

The Wider Public
Recent political events in the USA and UK have unsettled national identities and international relationships. Whatever the outcome of the current crisis in the UK, there is an urgent need to re-imagine its cultural position in relation to its component nations, the rest of Europe and the world. Through foregrounding poetry in translation, this project will engage the public in new forms of geographical imagination through live readings and performances. Rather than presenting the world through the filter of economic relationships, for example the UK and USA as past or potential partners in trade, poetry and translation create alternative networks of commonality.

Arts and Cultural Organisations
Research from this project is of immediate interest to the Arts Councils of Wales and England, and the British Council. Wales Arts International, the organisation that connects them, is looking for ways to make international engagement more sustainable and more connected to communities in Wales. I will be able to provide them with insights and information, for example by drawing comparisons with Latin America, which will enable them to achieve this. Its new strategy outlines Canada, particularly Québec, and Europe as areas in which it wishes to prioritise involvement. By applying to the Arts Council of Wales for additional funding to run a festival alongside the conference, I will be able to establish a model that may be continued in future years as a lasting legacy of the Fellowship. By putting into practice locally what I have learned about international poetry relationships, I will be able to offer a model that may be helpful elsewhere.