Writers’ Chain: Found in Translation
Four poets from the United Kingdom will spend a week with four Indian authors exploring each other’s work through translation. Come and hear the outcome of this unique literary exchange. With Meg Bateman, Sampurna Chattarji, Matthew Hollis, Mererid Hopwood, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Sivasankari and Udaya Narayana Singh. Presented by Alexandra Büchler & Mita Kapur.
The Writers’ Chain project is funded and run by the British Council and Wales Arts International, with support in India from Siyahi, Literature Across Frontiers and the Neemrana Fort-Palace Hotel.
Participating Authors
Meg Bateman was born in Edinburgh in Scotland in 1959. She teaches at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic-medium campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands in the Isle of Skye. She has brought out three collections of poetry and has co-edited and translated three anthologies of Gaelic medieval, 17th-century and religious verse. Her collections Aotromachd/ Lightness and Soirbheas/ Fair Wind were short-listed for the Scottish Book of the Year in 1997 and 2007.
Sampurna Chattarji is an award-winning poet, fiction-writer and translator. Her books include The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray and Mulla Nasruddin (all published by Penguin/Puffin). Abol Tabol was reissued as a Puffin Classic in 2008 under the title Wordygurdyboom! Her modern retelling of the complete Panchatantra titled Three Brothers and the Flower of Gold was published in July 2008 by Scholastic. Her debut poetry collection Sight May Strike You Blind was published by the Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Letters) in 2007, and reprinted in 2008. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Scholarship to Edinburgh University in 2005 and the Highlights Foundation Scholarship to the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New York in 2006. Sampurna’s first novel Rupture is forthcoming from HarperCollins later this year.
Matthew Hollis was born in Norwich in 1971. Ground Water (Bloodaxe 2004), his first full-length collection, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Guardian First Book Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He is co-editor of 101 Poems Against War (Faber, 2003) and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2000), and in 2005-6 was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust. Matthew has taken part in the Arts Council First Lines poetry tour of the UK in 2001, and was selected by the British Council to participate in a number of writers’ and translators’ workshops, among them: Write On! (Croatia, 2004), Converging Lines (Hungary, 2004), Voices (Argentina, 2007), The New Silk Road (Bangladesh, 2008) and Converging Lines (Greece, 2008). He is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and Spread the Word and has taught creative writing in schools and universities. He lives in London where he works as Commissioning Editor, Poetry at Faber and Faber. His biography of Edward Thomas will be published by Faber in 2010.
Mererid Hopwood is a poet and novelist. She shot to fame in Wales in 2001 when she became the first woman ever to win the prestigious Chair for poetry at the National Eisteddfod. She has since won the National Crown, also for poetry, and the Eisteddfod’s Prose Medal, for her novel O Ran. She was previously awarded a first class honours degree in Spanish and German from Aberystwyth and a PhD from University College London, and continues to be in great demand as a poet, tutor and television presenter. Her other publications include a guide to writing poetry in strict Welsh metre (‘cynghanedd’) and books for young people.
Gearóid Mac Lochlainn’s work has won many awards at home and internationally and has been translated into several languages. He has been writer-in-residence at Queens University, Belfast and the University of Ulster. He was also the subject of a TG4 documentary Idir Dha Chomhairle (2007). Mac Lochlainn has worked extensively with the British Council and the Arts Council Northern Ireland. In 2007 he was also a fellow at The William Joiner Centre for the Study of War and Social Consequences at University of Massachusetts, Boston. He received the major Arts Council NI award for poetry in 2006. He has published four collections of poetry in Irish and English: Babylon Gaeilgeoir (An Clochán), Na Scéalaithe (Coiscéim), Sruth Teangacha/ Stream Of Tongues (Cló Iar Chonnachta), Rakish Paddy Blues (limited edition published by Open House Festival).
Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is a poet, writer and translator. He belongs to the Khasi tribe and writes in both Khasi and English. His short stories have been published in leading journals in India and translated into Hindi and Bengali. Nongkynrih is a Reader in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. He has a total of five publications in Khasi and three in English besides edited volumes and translated works of poetry and short stories in both Khasi and English.
Udaya Narayana Singh, is Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India and is a renowned linguist as well as a reputed poet, playwright and essayist in Maithili and Bengali. He previously set up the Centre in Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Hyderabad, and taught in the Universities at Delhi, Baroda and Surat as well. As a creative writer, he has published four collections of poems and twelve plays in Maithili (writes under the pen-name ‘Nachiketa’), as well as six books of literary essays and two volumes of poetry in Bengali, besides translating several books. His recent books include an anthology of poems – Madhyampurush Ekvachan (2005) translated and published in English (2007), Tamil (2008) and German (2009), a play – No Entry: Maa Pravisha (2008) and a collection of one-acts – Priyamvadaa aa anya ekaankii (2008).
Sivasankari is a Tamil writer and activist. Her works include more than 36 novels, 48 short novels, 150 short stories, 15 travelogues, 7 collections of articles, 13 collections of short stories, one talking book, 3 volumes of literary research, 2 volumes of anthologies, and 2 biographies. She is presently working on a project titled Knit India Through Literature. Her novels on various social issues have been filmed and serialized. Her works have been translated into many languages. She is the first writer to have narrated her story through video and audiotapes. She has also presented and anchored many talk shows. She has been honoured with Kasturi Srinivasan Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award, Rajiv Gandhi National Integration Award and Prem Chand Rastriya Sahitya Samman for her literary achievements. She has also received many awards for her commitment in the field of social work.