Participating poets
Rikardo Arregi Diaz de Heredia, Basque Country
Karlis Verdinš, Latvia
Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Ireland
Jacek Dehnel, Poland
Brane Mozetič, Slovenia

Workshop facilitators
Alexandra Büchler, Literature Across Frontiers
Jana Putrle, Center za slovensko književnost – Center for Slovenian Literature

Location – Accommodation
The workshop will take place in a small village of Dane in Western Slovenia. Participants will be accommodated in Hotel Grahor, tel +386 5 731 20 61, fax +386 5 731 20 63.

Programme

Saturday 27 May
arrivals in Ljubljana, transfer to Dane in Western Slovenia, accommodation in hotel

Sunday 28 May
Morning – individual work, preparation of poems to be worked on and discussed
Afternoon – introductory session – each poet will introduce himself, talk about his work, place it in a context (about 20 minutes each)
Evening – impromptu readings of own work or of favourite poets

Monday 29 May
Morning – group session – discuss poems to be translated, why have you selected them?
Afternoon – work individually or with the author of poems you are translating
Evening – work or at leisure

Tuesday 30 May
Morning – group session – read and discuss rough translations, questions
Afternoon – work individually or with the author of poems you are translating
Evening – work or at leisure

Wednesday 31 May
Morning – group session – prepare a provisional list of poems fo Ljubljana reading
Afternoon - visit to Trieste
20.00 – reading in Trieste - Antico Caffé San Marco, via Battisti 18

Thursday 1 June
Morning – individual work
Afternoon – finalization of translations
Evening – dress rehearsal for Ljubljana reading

Friday 2 June
Morning - departure for Ljubljana, settle in hotel
Afternoon – sightseeing
6 p.m. Dinner
8 p.m. - reading at Festival Živa književnost / Living Literature Festival

Saturday 3 June
free time in Ljubljana and departures

The workshop is organised by Literature Across Frontiers and hosted by the Center for Slovenian Literature.

Contacts
Alexandra Büchler, LAF, www.lit-across-frontiers.org and www.transcript-review.org
mobile phone +44 7966 216522

Brane Mozetič, Centre for Slovenian Literature, www.ljudmila.org/litcenter
Mobile phone +386 40206631

PARTICIPANTS

Rikardo Arregi Diaz de Heredia (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1958) studied psychology and teaching in Salamanca and Basque Philology in Vitoria-Gasteiz. At present he teaches in secondary education. For his first book of poems, Hari Hauskorrak (Fragile threads, 1993), Arregi was awarded the Spanish´s Critics Prize. Some years later, in 1998, he was awarded the same prize for Kartografia (Cartography) which has been translated into Spanish by Gerardo Markuleta (cf., Cartografía, Bassarai, 2000). An anthology of his selected poems has been published by Susa. His work can also be found in various anthologies of Basque poetry published in Spanish, German and Galician. Various poems have appeared in Basque, Spanish and Portuguese magazines. Arregi Diaz de Heredia has contributed to different newspapers and periodicals in the Basque Country, mainly to Egunkaria and Hegats where he is a regular columist and critic. As translator, he has collaborated in the translation of Wyslawa Szymborska´s poems and in the translation of several Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Melo, Eugénio de Andrade and Jorge de Sena.

Jacek Dehnel (Gdansk, 1980). Poet, writer, translator and painter, he has a degree in Polish language and literature from Warsaw University and has published a collection of short stories Kolekcija (Collection, 1999), and two books of poems, Żywoty równoległe (2004, Parallel Lives) and Wyprawa na południe (2005, An expedition southwards). He also translates poetry - among others Osip Mandelshtam, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, George Szirtes, Mary Oliver - and lyrics - for example songs to music by Astor Piazzolla. He was awarded several literary prizes, including Nagroda Kościelskich, 2005.

Brane Mozetič, (Ljubljana, 1958) is a poet, writer, translator, editor of a small press and director of the Center for Slovenian Literature. Mozetič has translated a number of French authors (Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Maalouf and contemporary poets). He has published ten collections of poems, including Zaklinjanja (Incantations, 1987) Obsedenost / Obsession, 1991, Pesmi za umrlimi sanjami (Poems for dead dreams, 1995), and three fiction books, including short texts Pasijon (Passion, 1993) and novel Angeli (Angels, 1996). He edited an anthology of homoerotic poetry of the 20th century and an anthology of homoerotic motives in Slovenian literature. His poems are translated into several languages and his selected poems recently appeared in French and Italian.
More info on www.branemozetic.com

Cathal Ó Searcaig (Donegal, 1956) He lives at the foot of Mount Errigal in County Donegal's Derryveagh Mountains, where he is known as "Gúrú na gCnoc." His many volumes of poetry include Miontraigéide Cathrach (1975), Tuirlingt (1979), Súile Shuibhne (1983), Suibhne (1987), An Bealach na Bhaile (1990), Homecoming (1993), Na Buachaillí Bána (1995) and Out in the Open (1997). His selected poems, Ag Tnúth leis an tSolas: 1975-2000, won the Irish Times' Irish language literature prize in 2001. More recently he published Caiseal na gCorr: Poems and Photographs (2002), and Seal in Neipeal (2003), an account of his travels in Nepal. His play Oíche Ghealaí, an adaptation of the Salomé story, was produced by the An Grianán theatre in Letterkenny in 2001. Selections of his work have been translated into French, Breton, Italian, German, Russian, Danish and Japanese, and have also been set to music. He won the Seán Ó Riordáin Prize for Poetry in 1994 and the Duais Bhord na Gaeilge in 1995.

Karlis Verdinš (Riga, 1979) studied Theory and History of Culture at the Academy of Culture in Riga, and is now preparing his doctoral thesis in literary theory at the Latvian University. He translates English and American poetry, notably T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson and Allen Ginsberg, and has edited several anthologies. His published collections are Ledlauži (Icebreakers, 2001) and Biezpiens ar krejumu (Curd cheese with cream, 2004) His selected poems were published in a Russian translation in 2003, and his work has been included in A Fine Line: New Poetry from Central and Eastern Europe, Arc Publications, 2004 and in a forthcoming anthology of Latvian poetry in Czech translation.

WORKSHOP FACILITATORS

Alexandra Büchler was born in Prague and lived in Greece, Australia, and, since 1989, in Great Britain. She is Director of Literature Across Frontiers, a programme of international literary exchange, based in the UK, member of the editorial board of the European Internet Review of Books and Writing, Transcript, and editor of a new international series of contemporary poetry anthologies by Arc Publications A translator of fiction, poetry, theatre plays and texts on modern art and architecture from English, Czech and Greek, she has translated over twenty-five works, including books by authors such as J. M. Coetzee, David Malouf, Jean Rhys, Janice Galloway and Rhea Galanaki into Czech. She has also edited and part-translated a number of anthologies, including This Side of Reality: Modern Czech Writing (1996), Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women (1998) and the most recent A Fine Line: New Poetry from Central and Eastern Europe, Arc Publications, 2004. She is currently editing an anthology of Czech poetry forthcoming in mid 2006.

Jana Putrle Srdić (1975) has been studying Russian language and literature and Librarianship in Ljubljana. Her first book of poems Kutine (Quinces) was published in 2003 by Center for Slovenian Literature (series Aleph) and was well received amongst critics. Together with other young poets she published two selections of poems. Her writings are regularly included in significant Slovene literary magazines as well as abroad. Her poems were translated into English, German, Italian and Serbian. Besides translating poetry, she also writes film reviews and leads literary readings and conversations. Her poems do not flirt with academic or popular poetics, they rather relate to the charms of independent low-budget art cinema: stories revealed in front of the camera without special effects, accepting those limitations for their essential aesthetics. Her last work is translation of selected poems by Robert Hass, published by Center za slovensko knjizevnost.