From 7th till 11th September, the “Latvian Literature” platform is hosting the fifth poetry translation workshop welcoming eight young poets from Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia to Riga.
The key attendees this time around are Lote Vilma Vītiņa, Krista Anna Belševica, Ēriks Naivo and Kirils Ēcis from Latvia, Triin Paja and Kristjan Haljak from Estonia, as well as Dovilė Kuzminskaitė and Aistis Žekevičius from Lithuania. Throughout the week, the group will be attending workshops run by poet and translator Ivars Šteinbergs.
Being in the room with the author when translating their poems allows the translator to discuss and solve translation problems quickly and effectively. The aim of the organizers this year is to invite younger poets to encourage them to get involved in the translation of poetry. “For the young poets, this workshop is a great experience which will result in new texts created in the languages of our neighbouring countries. The workshop initially was intended as part of the “Poetry Translation Forum” at the Punctum Magazine festival this May. Since the organizers of the festival had chosen to focus on authors from the Baltic states, we also selected poets from Lithuania and Estonia for the workshop. Due to the pandemic, all public events in May were canceled, therefore we moved the poetry translation workshop to autumn and included the public reading of the translated poems in the Poetry Days 2020 programme,” explained “Latvian Literature” representative Juta Pīrāga.
Everyone is welcome to attend the closing performance on 11th September, at 18:00 PM, in the Floating Art Gallery NOASS (AB Dambis 2) where the poets will be reading the texts created during the workshop week. The event is free, open to the public, and is part of the Poetry Days 2020 programme. The “Latvian Literature” team expresses immense gratitude to the Rainis and Aspazija House-Museum for their support.
