Creative Conversations: Laura Wittner and Juana Adcock

Translation of the Route is the first collection by award-winning Argentine poet Laura Wittner to be available in English translation. In poems that are precise, frank and finely tuned, Wittner explores the specificities of daily life – thunder at night, coffee stains, fleeting conversations and the rest – as well as parental love, life after marriage, and the reignition of the self in middle age.

For this special Creative Conversations co-hosted with The Poetry Translation Centre, Laura Wittner is joined by her translator, Glasgow-based poet Juana Adcock, for a dual-language reading from Translations of the Route, followed by a Q&A with Colin Herd.

LAURA WITTNER is an award-winning poet and translator from Argentina. Her books of poetry include El pasillo del tren (1996), Los cosacos (1998), Las últimas mudanzas (2001), La tomadora de café (2005), Lluvias (2009), Balbuceos en una misma dirección (2011), La altura (2016), Lugares donde una no está (2017) and Traducción de la ruta (2020). She has also published more than 20 books for children, most recently Cual para tal (2022), ¿Y comieron perdices? (2023) and Se pide un deseo (2023), and a work of non-fiction, Se vive y se traduce (Entropía, 2021). As a literary translator Wittner has translated books by Leonard Cohen, David Markson, M. John Harrison, Cynan Jones, Claire-Louise Bennett, Katherine Mansfield and James Schuyler, among many others.

JUANA ADCOCK is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014); Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019; Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022); and I Sugar the Bones (Out-Spoken Press, 2024). She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt received a PEN Translates award. She has also translated Lola Ancira’s The Sadness of Shadows (MTO Press, 2024).

This event is live, in-person in the university chapel. It is also watchable online. A zoom link for online attendance will be emailed to those who book a ticket.

Host or Publisher Creative Writing Admin Team