Syrian poet Kholoud Charaf joins European poets in Latvia
Syrian poet Kholoud Charaf spend time in a residency in Latvia as part of the project Literary Europe Live Plus, supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Kholoud, who was living in Poland at the time as an ICORN programme artist, took part in a poetry translation workshop with seven poets from Latvia, Croatia, Great Britain, Belgium and Poland.
Latvia is represented in the workshop by Ingmāra Balode and Oskars Orlovs who are working on translations into Latvian with Kholoud Charaf and other guest poets Goran Colakhodzic from Croatia, Elan Grug Muse from Wales Xavier Roelen from Belgium, and Tomasz Bak from Poland. The workshop is moderated by Ryan van Winkle, a Scotland-based American poet, translator and literary critic.
During the week they spent together, they translated each other’s work, and took part in the professional education programme organized by the Latvian Writers’ Union for Literary Academy participants at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia, to expose the students of different languages to their work and encourage them to take up literary translation professionally.
“The workshop is special this year because we have welcomed poets from so many countries, thus providing an opportunity for the works to be translated into Syrian, Croatian, Welsh, Belgian, Polish, Latvian and Latgalian languages. Previously it was poets from Latvia and the UK only, making sure Latvian works get their English translations before the London Book Fair. This time we were open to much wider possibilities,” explained Juta Pīrāga, coordinator of the translation grants programme at Latvian Literature.
The results of the week’s work were presented during the annual Dzeja un @dzeja poetry readings on 14th September, 17:00 PM, at the “Noass” art centre (AB dambis 2): https://www.facebook.com/events/680472949101108/
Read more about Kholoud Charaf on the ICORN Villa Deciusz page.
Read an interview with Kholoud Charaf here.
