Literature Translation Masterclasses, Bucharest University

With my Student Group

The full programme and plenty of candid shots are available on Facebook at the Lidia Vianu’s Students Translate page.

Posing Poets: Peter Phillips, Caroline Carver, Anne Stewart, me, Dorothy Yamamoto

Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu, Director of MTTLC

On a drizzly spring day I’m looking ahead to next week in Bucharest teaching Literature Translation Masterclasses at The University of Bucharest.

I’ve been involved with the translation programme there since 2009 when I worked on polishing the English translations for some of the poems in the anthology “It Might Take Me Years” [Mi-ar trebui un sir de ani]. Then I worked on some of Dan Verona’s poems for the online publication of his selected poems in English, published in 2011 by Contemporary Literature Press. http://editura.mttlc.ro/

Three of my more recent poems, translated by Ana Maria Tone, were broadcast on Romanian Cultural Radio in 2015.

This will be my first visit to Romania. As I prepare to teach translation workshops I’m reminded of the lovely experience of Raincheck Renewed being translated into Romanian by Patricia Neculae, then a student at the MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text (MTTLC) at the University of Bucharest. Not being able to speak a word of Romanian, I was no help, of course.

Here’s the link to the translation: http://revista.mttlc.ro/116/index.html

[If you are fluent in Romanian, do email and tell me how it reads/sounds in your language.]

I’ll post details in a day or so about the new English-Romanian anthology of work by the visiting delegates (that’s me and my fellow writers) and the launch events planned for our week in Bucharest.

But first, my thanks to all these institutions and people for making our visit possible:

Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu, Director, MTTLC and Contemporary Literature Press
Anne Stewart, http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/poetrypro.html
National Museum of Romanian Literature, https://mnlr.ro/
University of Bucharest, http://en.unibuc.ro/
Romanian Cultural Institute, http://www.icr-london.co.uk/; http://www.icr.ro/
British Council In Romania, https://www.britishcouncil.ro/en

Theme this year: Freedom

Breaking News: Women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to drive in 2018.

Here’s a poem I published back in 2013 that referenced this struggle, among other things.

Faucet

A woman
may buy a tool-kit and know how to use it
may change the washer, adjust the stopcock
swap the ball bearings
fix the leaky spigot with a spanner.

A woman may suggest to Nature
that for the next millennia
men become pregnant
a facetious fractious suggestion;
the woman knows her pleas
are just venting, as ineffectual
as hammering water.

A woman may not drive in Saudi Arabia
may not bike unless in a ladies’ only park
may not be seen in public without a male protector.
A woman must also be fertile
dribbling out male heirs;
she may spout songs in private
and dance in full Dior, smeared with make up
for her mirror and other ladies to see.

A village panchayat in Punjab declares
that mobile phones given to girls
leads them to pre-marital sex;
boys can have cell phones and call for help
when they’re in trouble, but females,
young things, must take it on the chin,
remaining on the drip-drip of advancement.

A woman there thinks: what if instead of aborting
female foetuses, the nozzle was turned off
as if by a spell, a sorcery; no babies were born
to the women of this village, then the new elders
all men, would die out without replacement
and further afield too the taps would be fixed just so
by the women who knew how.

(After ‘Woman’ by Arun Kolatkar)

First published: ‘Feminist Times’ | November 2013

The many permutations of love from girl-crushes to gigolos, spanning Manchester to Mumbai.

Get Your Free Download This Weekend: September 16 and 17.  

Kindle Edition
(available in the UK, US, India, and worldwide)

The Whole Kahani’s anthology was published one year ago in June 2016.

Love Across A Broken Map has had great reviews, some of them wonderfully detailed, and the ‘The Whole Kahani’ collective has been invited to read and hold workshops at several literary festivals.

To celebrate one year of success, Dahlia Publishing has now released an eBook edition.

If you haven’t yet read this “engaging volume that eschews stereotypical stories about the experience of the South Asian diaspora in Britain”* then now is the time to download it.

Love Across A Broken Map is available for free downloads this month:
on September 16 and 17, 2017.

Write to me with your comments on the book, it’s always good to hear your views.

More on The Whole Kahani here: http://www.thewholekahani.com/

Reviews of the anthology:
The Short Story
Byte The Book
Bookmuse
Desi Lekh
The Book Review India
Confluence Magazine

Read a Group Interview with members of The Whole Kahani at:
http://theasianwriter.co.uk/2016/05/love-across-a-broken-map/

*from James Holden’s review in The Short Story