16 September 2017

Stadtsprachen Magazin and SAND
Present a Reading with
Marie-Pascale Hardy and Brygida Helbig
 

What languages does Berlin write in? The PARATAXE event series showcases Berlin authors who write in everything but German. In the September 2017 edition, London-born translator Katy Derbyshire will be introducing readings by the Canadian-Berliner poet Marie-Pascale Hardy and German-Polish prose writer Brygida Helbig.

Date: Saturday, 16 September at 8pm
Location: ausland, Lychener Str. 60, Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg)
Transportation: Tram 12, M10 Raumer Str., S8/S9/S41/S42/U2 Prenzlauer Allee
Admission: €5 regular, €3 reduced

We last collaborated with Parataxe in June, co-presenting a reading with Sonia Solarte and Ian Orti.

Marie-Pascale Hardy was born in Quebec, Canada. She is an author, poet, singer and visual artist and often experiments with combining different media. After eight years in London, she recently moved to Berlin. She has been published in SAND (issue 12), Poetry London, The Delinquent, and Kumquat. Marie-Pascale Hardy is the vocalist and lyricist of the duo Paco Sala.

Brygida Helbig, born in 1963 in Szczecin, is a German-Polish author, literary and cultural scholar, and translator. In 1983, she moved to Germany and was a lecturer at Hulmboldt University in Berlin from 1994 to 2015. Currently she works as a professor at the German-Polish research institure at the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice, Poland. Helbig is the author of a monograph on Maria Komornicka, Ein Mantel aus Sternenstaub (A Stardust Overcoat, 2005). Her novel Niebko (Little Sky) was shortlisted for the NIKE award in 2014. Her story collection Enerdowce i inne ludzie (Easterners and Others) was nominated for the NIKE and GRYFIA literary awards.

Here is a snippet from Brygida’s novella Angels and Pigs in Berlin in a translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones:

In the early 1980s the Federal Republic imported several trainloads of young people from Poland, eager for adventure and prosperity. They were taken to a small place called Anrath in the Krefeld area, to be made useful to German society, which was tired of prosperity, bored with sameness and hungry for fresh impressions….

Another item in constant demand among the young Poles brought up in poverty was cameras. Homesick for the families they had left in Poland, the students squeezed onto each other’s laps and snapped away like mad. There were even some who could already afford to buy a cheap car and go roaring round the streets with a squealing gang of eight on board. This led to occasional clashes and wrangles with the local police, who addressed the Polish newcomers, and for that matter just about all foreigners, using the informal “du”, about which Alois von Wysoki, the boldest of the group and most likely of German extraction, once lodged a complaint. By doing so he aroused deep consternation among the representatives of the German state, who were not used to this sort of interaction, and often used the word “foreigner” as a form of insult. In any case, Alois usually got on the wrong side of officials. Once quizzed at the border as to whether he was carrying a weapon, he snapped “Ja”, because he was expecting to be asked about his passport, and that was how he had understood the immigration official’s question. Pulled from the car, he boldly spat in the German’s face, after which he was led away to a cell in handcuffs. Wild with rage, he kept repeating in Polish “I’ll kill him, the fool”, and called for help by saying “tłumacz, tłumacz” – the Polish word for “interpreter” – which was misinterpreted as an attempt to make himself understood in English (“too much”) – and as a criticism of the degree of repression used to deal with him. He expressed himself just as obscenely with regard to more than one German administrative employee of the “Hausmeister” type, in other words the janitor, who performed the duties assigned to him with the officiousness typical of his profession. He even taunted one of them by saying he wasn’t human, which it took the German a long time to forget.

You can read the full excerpt and a synopsis of the story here.

Katy Derbyshire (SAND issue 11) grew up in London and has lived in Berlin for the past 21 years. She translates contemporary German writers, including Inka Parei, Christa Wolf, Tilman Rammstedt, Annett Gröschner and Jo Lendle. Katy co-hosts the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show at ACUD and a monthly translation lab. She has taught translation in London, Berlin, New Delhi, New York and Norwich and judged the International DUBLIN Literary Award. Her recent translation of Clemens Meyer’s IM STEIN/BRICKS AND MORTAR was nominated for the MAN Booker International Prize.

PARATAXE (supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa) and stadtsprachen magazin jointly introduce today’s multilingual authors and literary scenes of Berlin.

July 2017

SAND Presents
Workshops with Kathleen Heil
on Translation, Movement, and Phrasing
 

Our Issue 13 contributor Kathleen Heil is a writer, translator, and dancer whose many skills eagerly intersect. We are thrilled to be presenting two weekend workshops with her this July: one on literary translation into English and another examining phrasing in both movement and writing.

Style & Translation Master Class

This two-day master class is open to literary translators at all stages of their careers, translating from any language into English, as well as those with writing or translation experience curious to know more about the art and craft of literary translation. In this master class we will explore what makes literary translation distinct from other writing practices and investigate ways to hone the components of style that make for effective literary translations including tone, rhythm, and syntax.

The weekend will culminate with an open reading in which participants can present either a short text of their own translation or a favorite excerpt in translation. Additionally, for those wishing to have a more in-depth look at their writing, there will be four slots available for manuscript consultation with Kathleen (of work in translation or one’s own fiction, nonfiction, or poetry).

When
Master class: 8 and 9 July, 3–6pm
Manuscript consultations: 8 July, 6–8pm
Open reading by workshop participants: 9 July at 8pm

Where
Location in Berlin TBA

Cost
90 euros; 130 euros with Rhythm & Phrasing workshop and payment before 1 July

Info and registration*: [email protected]
Manuscript consultation*: 50 euros for a full manuscript review in any genre with written comments and a 30-minute session to discuss the text (3–5 poems or one prose manuscript, 10 pages or less)

*space is limited; early registration encouraged

Rhythm & Phrasing: A Workshop on Composing in Movement and Text

This workshop is open to anyone wishing to compose with greater efficacy by refining phrasing in movement and written texts. By investigating rhythmic patterns in the body and on the page, we will explore how to build these structures into meaningful phrases, in order to compose with greater freedom, precision, and presence. Dance experience is not required to take part, but rather an interest in/experience with writing, movement, and/or performance.

When: 22 and 23 July 2017, 3–6 pm
Where: K77 studios, Kastanienallee 77 Berlin
Cost: 60 euros; 130 euros with Style & Translation workshop and payment before 1 July
Info and registration: [email protected]

space is limited; early registration encouraged

About Kathleen

Kathleen Heil is a writer, translator, and dancer. Her translations, poems, stories, and essays appear in the New Yorker, Two Lines, Penguin Random House, Fence, and many other publications. She holds a Master’s degree in Creación Literaria from the Escuela Contemporánea de Humanidades in Madrid as well as an MFA in Creative Writing & Translation from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, where she also taught literary translation, creative writing, and dance. A former member of Dance Arizona Repertory Theater and Rumblepeg Dance Theater, Heil has worked with various artists in the U.S. and Europe and performed her own choreography in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Madrid, and elsewhere. A 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Literary Translation Fellow, she lives and works in Berlin. More at kathleenheil.net.

8 June 2017

Stadtsprachen Magazin and SAND
Bring You Parataxe Presentation

What languages does Berlin write in? The PARATAXE event series showcases Berlin authors who write in languages other than German in discussions, lectures, and translations.

The June 2017 event presented Sonia Solarte (Colombia/Berlin) and our Issue 10 alum Ian Orti (Canada/Berlin) with texts translated into German especially for the occasion by Christiane Quandt and Joey Bahlsen. Stadtsprachen’s director Martin Jankowski also discussed SAND with Jake Schneider, our Editor in Chief.

Sonia Solarte was born in Cali, Colombia, where she worked as a teacher, psychotherapist, voice actress, and cultural appointee. She has lived in Berlin since 1988. From 1991 until 2013, she worked as coordinator of the S.U.S.I. Intercultural Women’s Center in Berlin. Since 1992, Sonia Solarte has been singing in the Orquesta Burundanga, which came to be known as the first all-women salsa band of Berlin. In 2009, she founded the “Trio Sol Arte.” Sonia Solarte has participated in various literature and poetry festivals. Her poems have been published in numerous national and international anthologies, literary magazines, and journals in several Latin American and European countries.

Ian Orti (featured in SAND Issue 10) was born in Canada to Ecuadorian and Irish parents. He is the author of the award-winning books The Olive and the Dawn, and L (and things come apart), as well as his most recent story collection Royal Mountain City Fugue. His short stories and poetry have been published in journals across North America and Europe and his first book was published in French with Les Editions Allusifs. Orti was featured in the Big Small documentary series for the Pop Montreal music festival by Australian director Tim Kelly and is a former columnist for McSweeneys in the US and Matrix Magazine in Canada. He has lived in Berlin since 2011, where he is now working on his next novel.

PARATAXE (supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa) and stadtsprachen magazin jointly introduce today’s multilingual authors and literary scenes of Berlin.

November 2016

The “As If” of Poetry
Workshop and Exhibition

As part of the Stadtsprachen literature festival, which celebrated writers by Berliners in all languages besides German, SAND and The Reader co-presented a workshop and exhibition at Savvy Contemporary exploring poetry, sound, and the collective experience of creating meaning. 

Workshop: The “As If” of Poetry

Is the poem an artifact? Is technology a poetic medium?

This day-long workshop served as the platform for poets and all kinds of sound enthusiasts to come together and reason around the issues concerning the discursive and material intersections of poetry and technology.

As part of the Stadtsprachen Literaturfestival, participants of all backgrounds and levels of experience were invited to join a group of selected artists in creating and conceptualizing texts and sonic devices.

During the first part of the workshop, Donna Stonecipher helped participants to familiarize themselves with alternative translation techniques that use sound, memory, and one’s own relation to space as the tools to “translate” a poem and the potential for the translation of texts within a single language. Finally, all participants got to write their own homophonic poems and translations.

The second part of the workshop – led by the sound poets and performers of Rudolf Kollektiv – focused on taking these poems and translating them again into pure sound. To do this, participants learned to build a range of simple sonic devices; contact microphones, optical theremins, and amplifiers. These devices were used to intervene (and interfere were) the texts created.

In the process of doing so, the workshop asked: is sound the medium of what resides outside the world of “meaning”?

The material resulting from this day-long workshop was presented in the exhibition “sound and cerement//technologies of decay,” which took place on 4 November at SAVVY Contemporary.

Co-organized by Stadtsprachen Literaturfestival, SAND Journal, and The Reader Berlin.

Exhibition: Sound and Cerement

“In that in-between zone, when surfacing from sleep but not yet fully awake, images can get condensed into words that seem entirely made up of sounds or silences”
—Severo Sarduy, Firefly, 1991

Curator

Valentina Ramona de Jesús

Invited Artists

Marie-Pascale Hardy
Alan Mills
Jane Flett
Sarnath Banerjee
Göksu Kunak
Klaas von Karlos
Kenny Fries
Martin Gubbins
John Peck
MoreBlackThenGod

Opening Schedule

8pm – Reading words out loud: John Peck
8:30pm – Audiovisual performance by Klaas von Karlos
10:00pm – The sounds of poetry by Martin Gubbins
12:00am – Sonic Intervention by MoreBlackthenGod

A project by SAND Journal and The Reader Berlin in partnership with Africavenir and SAVVY Contemporary

More details and photographs on the Stadtsprachen website.