ILFU Workshop 1: Translation as Creative Inspiration

by Iris Bosma

On 24 November 2023, the first “Translingual Creative Writing” workshop, organized through the NWO-Veni project “Poetry in the Age of Global English” in collaboration with International Literature Festival Utrecht, took place. This workshop is part of a series of four public workshops across the academic year, in which guest writers read from their work and enter into a conversation with a university researcher. Then they present a writing exercise derived from their own practice.

The workshop was held in the International Literature Festival Utrecht office, located behind the Dom Church. It lasted around two hours, which included the time participants spent responding to the writing assignment and sharing their work. The workshop was held in English, but participants were encouraged to write in different languages, or even to use multiple languages in one work.

This workshop, titled “Translation as Creative Inspiration,” was led by poet and translator Dong Li. He is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, French and German. He has completed English translations for several works originally written in Chinese, including The Gleaner Song by Song Lin (2021) and The Wild Great Wall by Zhu Zhu (2018). He was born in China and studied at Deep Springs College and Brown University in the U.S. He currently lives in Leipzig, Germany.

Approximately 21 participants joined the workshop, filling all of the chairs around the large square table arrangement ILFU set up for us. The workshop began with Mia You (the Utrecht University researcher in this instance) introducing Dong Li, poet and translator.

After telling the participants more about himself, his translation and creative writing work, Li read from his recent collection, The Orange Tree, a beautiful long poem about family and family history. The use of compound words is central to the poem’s form. The Orange Tree starts with a list of invented compound words, which then all come back throughout the poem, sometimes literally but oftentimes implicitly or figuratively. These compound words are derived from the German compound word structure. In an interview with Lit Hub Li says: “The pressure of leaving out the space between words led to a fresh look at them, both individually and collectively, gaining a new compressed velocity that was more conducive to reflection. These lists of compound words could be seen as condensed signposts that contained their own mystery or translations of poetry back into words that first brought the material into a meaningful and musical order.” Li’s use of compound words adds various new dimensions to the literary work that can be taken and turned into a writing exercise, which leads to the next part of the workshop.

We were given time to work on a writing exercise after discussing Li’s poetics as a group. The writing time lasted for about half an hour. The idea was simple. Make two poems: one list poem, comprised of compound words, and one sentence poem, an elaboration of the compound words (or the words set into a scene). The list poem could come before the sentence poem and serve as a guide. However, participants could choose to mix up the order, depending on their own creative process. Some participants ended up writing the list poem in one language, and the sentence poem in another.

Volunteers were asked to share their work if they were comfortable, and after a hesitant start many people were eager to read their work out loud. Since the group was very international, it was not uncommon for these poems to be written in a variety of languages. It was interesting to hear these different languages, and how these poems that you could not really understand word-by-word were still able to move you. As a student of English literature, I don’t encounter a lot of poetry that is not in English (or in my native language, Dutch). This experience was quite eye-opening. It was also interesting to see people develop their own take on the assignment, and especially to see them get creative with various languages.

Despite the group almost being too large for the space (which was already upgraded due to the larger-than-expected attendance), the ambiance was calm and open. While working individually on our exercise, we sat in a large square, drinking coffee and tea provided by ILFU, and the air was quiet and comfortable.

It was wonderful to hear from Li  what his creative process is like, and the assignment helped me to look at poetry in a different way. Making two poems – a list and a sentence poem – gives more perspective around what you want to write, and it provides focus and clarity to the writing process.

One of the participants, Anna Maria Popo, also commented on the multilingual aspect as being eye-opening. She was very positive about the assignment and the overall content of the workshop, as “techniques were provided, along with an exercise and enough writing time.” She also commented that it was nice that everyone read and wrote in their own language, including the guest writer.

All in all, the workshop seemed to succeed in pushing the participants out of their comfort zones – in more ways than one. It encouraged participants to use a new writing process, in the form of the two poems, but also to write multilingually. While sharing their poems, some international participants commented on how they didn’t write in their native (non-English) language very often. The same goes for me: this workshop was the first time in a long while where I touched my native language in the form of creative writing again, and there is something captivating about intertwining your own native language with another language such as English.