Multilingual Creative Writing as Hospitable Practice

4th November 2021, 4-6pm

 a Round Table with

Prof. Sara Greaves, Aix-Marseille Université

Lou Sarabadzic, Writer and Translator

Dr Luc Dall’Armellina, CY Cergy Paris Université

Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger, University of St Andrews

© Paul Stringer (www.paulstringer.co.uk)

 

Writing in a foreign language, a language which is not one’s so-called ‘native’ language, has become a widely disseminated practice. Through processes of mobility and migration, many authors have contributed to crafting and expressing what Steven G. Kellman coins the ‘translingual imagination’. How might multilingual creative writing operate as a hospitable space within which to explore plural identities? What role can writing workshops play in welcoming multilingual experience? This round table will bring together four creative writing scholars and practitioners with experience and expertise in plurilingual writing practices. They will reflect on multilingual writing as a way to generate innovative creative practices – whether it be through self-translation, collaborative writing, digital bilingual tools or plurilingual performances – and to create hospitable spaces, which acknowledge plurality – and therefore singularity.

Inhospitable Language(s) and the Plurilingual ‘Skin-Voice’, by Sara Greaves

Prof. Sara Greaves is an Associate Professor at Aix-Marseille University and a member of the LERMA research centre. She is head of the ECMA Master’s degree (Cultural Studies on the English-Speaking World). Her research interests are 20th and 21st century poetry, translation studies and creative writing. She has published widely in these fields and in 2016 published a book on the English poet James Fenton, Côté guerre côté jardin : excursions dans la poésie de James Fenton, Presses Universitaires de Provence, including translations of a selection of his poems, a critical essay and a translator’s postface. Forthcoming is a collective work, Language Learning and the Mother Tongue: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, co-edited by Sara Greaves (translator and editor) & Monique De Mattia-Viviès (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2022.

On being a guest, by Lou Sarabadzic

Lou Sarabadzic is a French author based in Warwickshire, in England. She writes in – and sometimes translates from – French and English. Lou has published 5 books in French, and her poems, in French and/or English have appeared in several journals and anthologies.
Her most recent work includes an ephemeral poetic experience using Augmented Reality. In June 2021, she created two booklets, one in French (Mémoires augmentées) and one in English (Augmented Memories), each of which could only be read one day at a time, over 12 days, in July 2021, by scanning the first page with an Augmented Reality app. This project questioned notions such as time, (self-)translation, and immersive storytelling in a digital world.

https://www.lousarabadzic.com/

La communauté sensible des écriture / lecture / traduction / interprétation entre les langues, by Luc Dall’Armellina

Luc Dall’Armellina is a writer, designer of digital devices and lecturer in arts & information and communication sciences, member of EMA Laboratory [Cergy-Pontoise University], associated member of Paragraphe Laboratory [ Paris 8 University ]. He has been teaching hypermedia design at the Valence School of Fine Arts since 1999 and contemporary art and technology at the university of technology of Compiègne (2008-2011).Since 1997, his e-writing feeds on literature, interface design, critical analysis of digital technologies, questioning present narrative forms in search of new spaces and terms of exchanges.His doctoral dissertation, entitled “Fields of sign, from design hypermedia to an ecology of the screen” [ University of Paris 8, 2003 ] has expanded into a study on Net-Art [CNRS – 2005-2007].His practices, from teaching to writing experimentations to research, clearly show a deliberate option for considering the links between art, technology and philosophy under a general perspective in places where we are both ignorant and knowledgeable.

Welcoming False Friends, by Elise Hugueny-Léger

Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at St Andrews. She has published extensively on Annie Ernaux, autofiction and constructions of authorship. Her more recent projects emerge from her interest in creative writing practices and workshops and include work on second-language creative writing and the involvement of authors in writing workshops in France.