Poetry Translation Centre: Cut-up poetry and zine-making workshop

the limits of my language mean the limits of my world

The opposite of a passive poetry reading, in this workshop participants will create their own poems by tearing up and reusing existing texts from the Poetry Translation Centre’s (PTC) archive of translated poems. Birthed by the Dadaists, and brought to you via William S. Burroughs, fridge magnet poetry and kidnappers’ ransom notes, the cut-up technique is the ultimate radical poetry statement. Maybe it uncovers hidden unconscious meanings and intentions, perhaps it is a joyful way to recycle old newspapers, certainly it is a fun and revealing way to encounter language.

We will be using poems from the anthology My Voice: a decade of poems from the Poetry Translation Centre as the source materials for our new poems. Each of these poems already exists in two forms, as the original text and as a translation. At the workshop, you will transform them again into new and unexpected poems.

Cutting up translated texts opens up vital questions around about the ethics of translation and invites you to consider the linguistic limitations of your world. Our one rule? Only use words you understand in your reconstructed poems.

Led by Bern Roche Farrelly, the PTC’s Participation Producer, this workshop is a hands-on way to discover poetry from beyond Europe, and begin to consider the issues around translation: Are translations simply shadows of the original poems, or whole new poems in their own right? When we translate, do we honour the original culture or steal from it? How should we use words that don’t belong to us?

The Poetry Translation Centre is the only UK organisation dedicated to translating and promoting contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America. They publish books, organise events and deliver hands-on translation workshops that are open and inclusive to all.

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Featured image: Collage made from the cover of My Voice

Host or Publisher University of the Arts London