Starting from the In-Between – On the Politics and Poetics of Translation

This panel brings together writers and translators Ayna Steigerwald and Jonis Hartmann, organisers of the Hamburg-based reading series i’m growing fur, Frankie Jenner, Managing Editor of Translator, and writer and translator Liola Mattheis to explore different approaches to and understandings of translation. Together, they will discuss ways in which translation can become visible as a creative practice and form of authorship. What kind of agency does translation hold as a form of writing in its own right and how do translating and writing intersect as practices? How does translation take shape on stage, through readings and events, and in publications such as Translator?

The panel will be moderated by Eliana Kirkcaldy.

Jonis Hartmann is a German poet, translator, publisher, literary moderator, and co-founder of three Hamburg reading series. Throughout his work Jonis shares interest in ears, wind and the question of source. To illustrate translation has become a focus of his curational practice.

Liola Mattheis is a writer based in Berlin. Both her academic and her literary work circle around natural history, accumulation, and form change. Part of the Transletting collective, she takes an interest in experimental translation. Recently, her translations of poems from Jos Charles’s feeld collection have appeared in BELLA Triste.

Ayna Steigerwald (she/her) works as a writer, dramaturg, curator, and organiser within the independent arts scene, most recently as part of the artistic direction or jury for various interdisciplinary festivals. Alongside poetry, her work focuses on multilingualism and questions of creating spaces of solidarity, through formats for poetry and translation such as i’m growing fur and Die andere Lesung, developed as part of the project Kontext – Literatur veranstalten.

Frankie Jenner is a London-based editor and writer working at the intersection of translation, journalism and literary culture. She is Managing Editor & Culture Editor at Translator, an independent magazine publishing journalism and reportage in translation from beyond the Anglosphere. She also leads communications for Untold Narratives, a writers’ development programme working in translation from Farsi/Dari, Pashto and Arabic.

Eliana Kirkcaldy is a writer and performer based in Berlin, with a background in contemporary dance and cultural studies. She is a founding member of Berlin Review magazine and part of the poetry collective das ad hoc. Currently, Eliana is working on a publication project on the French author Colette Peignot. Most recently, her research focused on Kathy Acker and, more broadly, on language(s) and the articulation of desire as part of footnote collective together with Lotta Beckers and Johanna Ackva.

As part of her Fellowship for Curation in Literature at Künstler:innenhaus Lauenburg, Eliana developed a series of events exploring different notions of translation. The panel at HFBK takes place within this context.