Earlier this spring I attended StAnza, one of Scotland’s major international poetry festivals. After an early flight from Stockholm to Edinburgh, I boarded a bus taking me to the east coast of Scotland. The bus made its way through twisty and narrow roads, overlooking green hills on one side, while the other faced long, golden sand dunes and black rocks coated in seaweed. Two hours later, I arrived at the city of St. Andrews, or as the Scots say it, Saunt Aundraes, the home of the festival.
Dispatches
Dispatch from Scotland’s International Poetry Festival
Editor-at-large Jasmine Heydari tackles Welsh poetry, language and war, and a Haggis breakfast in her dispatch from StAnza
Untranslating Children’s Nonsense Poems
"The Bengali literary mafia would say: 'This is untranslatable.'"
When Indian author Sampurna Chatterji was growing up, she lived between several languages. Her father taught English, while her mother taught Bengali. In Chatterji’s own schooling, the instructional language was English, but she also learned Hindi and Sanskrit.
“All this creates a sort of strange cacophony in the head,” Chatterji said at a professional seminar at this year’s Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, held from April 30 to May 5.
But this “cacophony” also creates wonderful opportunities for linguistic connections. As she developed as a writer, Chatterji decided not to write in Bengali. “The burden of being Bengali was too much for me,” she said. Her teenage rebellion was not to go off and smoke, but to write in English. READ MORE…
From the Front Lines of AWP: A Dispatch
Managing editor Tara FitzGerald on meeting the Asymptote community at this year's AWP!
I’d been warned (in jest) about the rain, but the first day of AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) in Seattle dawned bright and clear, and the weather stayed that way throughout my stay. Not that it would have mattered anyway, because my home away from home was the Asymptote table at the AWP book fair, which was safely tucked away inside the Washington State Convention Center. Thousands of writers had gathered at this convention center to hobnob, talk craft, and attend panels during three days of intense book-related activities. From my vantage point at our table, I had the chance to meet around 250 AWP-ers—some of them Asymptote contributors, some editors from other journals, some already our fans, and others simply curious about the journal and what we do here. It was also exciting to hear that at least a handful of them found out about us because they had attended a panel where we were mentioned as the go-to place for international literature.
Cuban Literature, Translation, and Baseball with Leonardo Padura
"What I say here in Brooklyn is exactly what I say in Havana.”
As the diplomatic stand-off between the United States and Cuba reaches its fifty-fifth year, an anxious audience packed into 61 Local in Brooklyn, New York to hear from Cuban writer Leonard Padura and his translator, Anna Kushner.
Online translation journal Words Without Borders gathered Padura, Kushner, and writer-editor Jonathan Blitzer to discuss the recently released Padura novel The Man Who Loved Dogs (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux 2013), translated by Kushner. The evening included a reading by Padura in the original Spanish, followed by Kushner reading the same passage in English. READ MORE…
My l’esprit de l’escalier and Croatian literature abroad
"Should I be firm and show attitude, or rather go with the soft, constructive approach? I chose the second, and I made a grave mistake."
January and February marked a celebration of the third anniversary of a valuable international volunteer project: a journal dedicated to literary translation going under the unexpectedly mathematical name of Asymptote. Literary evenings and panels were organized in London, New York, Boston and Zagreb on this occasion (the birthday party lasts throughout April as well, venturing to Philadelphia, Shanghai, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Sydney). READ MORE…
How well do you know your neighbor?
"The linguistic closeness is a false cognate for cultural closeness. And for that, we can't blame the translators."
My chair is uncomfortable, I don’t understand Danish, and it smells like someone in my general vicinity had kippers for dinner. I’m at the Oslo Central Library’s panel discussion on “What is good Scandinavian literature?,” and it isn’t going well. READ MORE…
Asymptote’s 3rd Anniversary Celebrations in March and April (Plus: our New Events Page, with Multimedia!)
Check out highlights from our past celebrations in London and New York, and don't miss our upcoming events!
We’re thrilled to announce that Asymptote’s globetrotting third anniversary party, which kicked off in London and New York in January, will continue across five continents over the next month—watch our brand-new video trailer below for a taste, and don’t forget to RSVP at our Shanghai (March 29), Philadelphia (March 29), Berlin (April 3), and Sydney (April 11) Facebook Event pages, already live.
In case you can’t make it, don’t fret: we’ve launched a new Events page, where you can find photos, podcasts, videos, and dispatches of all the events we’ve ever organized, as well as an up-to-date pulse for all upcoming events!
Asymptote’s Third Anniversary in Boston: a Recap
“The past is a foreign country. There is no native position from which a poem can be understood.”
In honor of our third anniversary, Asymptote’s Boston crew hosted “Translation in the Academy,” a conversation about the intersection of the growth of “translation studies” programs in universities and the praxis of professional translators. The panel was convened by our own contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac (along with plenty of help from Nina Beguš, Daniel Goulden, and Alex Sham!).
On the academic, translation-in-theory side of the ring: Karen Thornber, professor and current chair of Harvard University’s Department of Comparative Literature, and Edwin Gentzler, Director of the Translation Center at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Representing translation in practice: Lloyd Schwartz, poet, active translator of Portuguese, and English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and Vivek Narayanan, poet and translator of Tamil. The panel was held at the Outpost 186 artspace in Cambridge, and true to Asymptote form, it was a room full of translators: of Japanese, of German, of Hebrew, and of Spanish, to name only a few of the languages represented in the diverse audience.
Asymptote at AWP
If you're going to AWP, drop by and say hi. Pssst...if you are a past contributor, we've got a surprise for you!
Attention literature lovers: the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is holding its Annual Conference and Bookfair this year in Seattle, Washington, and your favorite literature journal Asymptote will make its first AWP appearance!
Dispatch from Jaipur Literature Festival
A look back on the "Woodstock, Live 8, and Ibiza" of world literature
The Jaipur Literature Festival, which just hosted its tenth edition, has been called “the Woodstock, Live 8 and Ibiza of world literature, with an ambience that can best be described as James Joyce meets Monsoon Wedding.” In 2013, over a quarter of a million footfalls were recorded, with 2014 promising even higher numbers. Travelling to the JLF this year (my third festival visit) from Kathmandu on a work-related trip, I attended days two, three and four. The full programme, over the course of five days, featured over 200 sessions in six venues. This year’s poor weather may have dampened things (quite literally) thanks to chilly thunderstorms throughout north-western India on day five and cold temperatures and fog on the other days—but the uncomfortably large crowds continued to congregate, turning the Diggi Palace grounds into something akin to Tokyo’s Shinjuku train station during rush hour.
DISPATCH: NCell Nepal Literature Festival 2013, Part 2
Asymptote reports on the English sessions at the festival
Though there were more sessions in Nepali than English ones, internationally known writers still made the trip from India (Shobhaa De, Ravinder Singh, Prajwal Parajuly, Prakash Iyer, Abhay K, and Annie Zaidi), Bangladesh (Farah Ghuznavi), and the UK (Ned Beauman) to discuss their work and the work of their peers.
The first English-language session was the launch of the second volume of La.lit, a Kathmandu-based literary journal, begun in 2012. While the first volume included English and Nepali-language fiction, essays, reviews, poetry, interviews and graphic features from Nepal and around the world, the current issue focuses exclusively on writing in English from Nepal. Editor Rabi Thapa (author of the short story collection Nothing to Declare, 2011) stated that when establishing La.lit, one of the rationales for including both English-language and international writing was that he was uncertain that they could gather enough quality Nepali writing. This new volume demonstrates that a platform such as La.lit is necessary for the promotion of a growing body of fiction from Nepal, and fills a niche for local and international readers. Acknowledging Thapa’s efforts as well as the energy of the conference, Prajwal Parajuly said, “This is a very, very exciting time for literature in Nepal.”
Editor’s Note: Ever wonder what’s happening literature-wise in Kathmandu? Wonder no more, our editors in Nepal are here to fill you in, and it turns out, there’s no lack of corruption and infighting… This is part 1 of a 2-part dispatch.
The 2013 NCell Nepal Literature Festival started inauspiciously for us, as they say in this part of the world. Arriving at the Nepal Academy in central Kathmandu ten minutes early on the first day, Ross asked in Nepali where the opening ceremony was being held, and we were ushered upstairs into a packed auditorium, where there was a man already speaking. Strange, I thought, as we were early, and things do not generally start on time in Nepal. We clambered into some seats in the middle of a row. Ross began listening to the speaker. “He’s not talking about literature,” he informs me. “He’s talking about the truth.” It dawns on us that we might not be in the right place, so we hope things will wrap up soon and move on to the event we came for. Ross continues to listen. “Oh no, we’re in a Christian convention!” We clamber back out sheepishly, avoiding eye contact. Some better signage from the organisers of the literature festival would’ve been welcome!
“Next stop… Ban Josip Jelačić Square”.
I stepped out of the number 17 tram—overcrowded as usual—into what would prove one of the most enjoyable and illuminating Friday mornings I have had in a long while. I made my way toward my destination past the square’s two most familiar inhabitants—the statue of Ban Jelačić on horseback, and the ubiquitous Golden Mummy, a living statue street performer who has become a true symbol of Zagreb’s main square.