Research seminar: 'Talking Transformations: poetry, art, and translational migrations'

Details

• 4.30pm-6.00pm, Thursday 22 March 2018
• Charles Wilson Belvoir Park Annexe (second floor, Charles Wilson Building), University of Leicester
• Contact: Dr Anna Milsom
• Speaker: Dr Manuela Perteghella

About the event

Our inter-artistic, multilingual project TalkingTransformations: Home on the Move explores notions of ‘home’ and identity – challenged and reshaped by unprecedented migration – through film, art and poetry translation.

The project looks at the impact of migration on notions of home by commissioning and sending poetry about aspects of one’s own ‘home’ into a linguistic and artistic ‘migration’, where poems are translated into different languages and into film art.

Poetry and artwork has travelled to and from the countries most important to EU migration into and out of the UK: Poland and Romania, and France and Spain. In Britain, poet Deryn Rees-Jones created the poem about ‘home’ from material collected from workshops in Hereford and London. Rafał Gawin wrote the Polish poem, based on material collected at a workshop in Lodz. At the same time, these linguistic poems have been translated into short films too, by international artists.

The project generates cross-linguistic and cross-media migration routes for both literary and visual artwork and their culturally and linguistically diverse practitioners and will culminate in two public exhibitions in the UK in 2018:

1. The Poetry Library, Southbank, London (June-August 2018)
2. Ledbury Poetry Festival (July 2018)

After a short talk, participants will be able to take part in a re-translation workshop of Rafał Gawin’s poem [The home. A Structure on Trial] via the art-films generated on the way. This process of intersemiotic translation will allow them to explore the artistic possibilities of translation, to experiment with polylingualism in their own writings, and to actively contribute to the artistic project.

Biography

Dr Manuela Perteghella is a translation theorist, curator, translator and independent researcher. She has published research in the field of literary and theatre translation, promoting the theory of translation as creative practice (Translation and Creativity, Continuum 2006; One Poem in Search of a Translator, Peter Lang 2008; Staging and Performing Translation, Palgrave 2011). She has taught translation at UK universities, and worked for theatre companies, including the Gate Theatre, London and the National Theatre, London. Manuela blogs on The Creative Literary Studio on the art of 'text-making' and is the co-curator of TransARTation!, a touring and virtual exhibition of inter-art translation, with poem-objects, performance art, multimedia installations and site specific work.