INTERNATIONAL POETRY TRANSLATION & WRITING WORKSHOP

The International Creative Writing and Translation Workshop is an annual workshop organized in various places in Greece by Dr. Vassilis Manoussakis, University instructor, translator and writer, Socrates Kabouropoulos, Senior Officer at the National Book Centre of Greece and poet, and Edward Smallfield and Valerie Coulton, poets and translators.

The first meeting took place in Delphi in 2010 and the second meeting is taking place in August 2011 in Lefkes, Paros, Greece.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together Anglophone and Greek poets and translators in order to exchange views and ideas about poetry and translation and translate their poetry. Each participant brings his/her own published or unpublished poetry or even their work in progress and shares and discusses it with the other participants. The uniqueness of this workshop is that the poet is sitting side by side with the translator and they translate each other’s poetry together, discussing it, and sometimes thinking of ways of improving it.
The daily programme includes poetry translation from 10 am to 2 pm and then poetry readings and presentations of 2 or 3 poets in the evenings. Each presentation follows a discussion about poetics and translation techniques and ideas and it is open to the public.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the whole workshop takes place at the House of Literature (former Xenia hotel) which is sponsored by EKEMEL (European Centre for Literary Translation – www.ekemel.gr) and more specifically the 2011 workshop was organized with the generous help of the Hellenic American Union (www.hau.gr).