Crossing the Bridge
Poetry Translation Residency
VISION
This 3 day immersive poetry translation residency is aimed at establishing a long term collaborative process to produce good quality translations of some of the most powerful poets of Bengal from the last three decades of the twenty first century.
MISSION
This residency will have four translator participants working on four contemporary Bengali poets. The participants will be selected through application and review of their portfolio of translation works. We plan to translate 5-10 poems of each selected poet in the three day period and expect the collaboration to continue further, eventually producing a volume worth of translated poems for each poet.
RESIDENCY OUTLINE (What to expect)
Application process closed
Duration: 3 days, 17, 18, 19 & 20th August 2023
Venue: Purnendu Patri Shilpogram, Dhandali Village, Uluberia
Residency Distinguished Mentor: Sudeep Sen
Residency Associate Mentor: Bishnupriya Chowdhuri
Residency features:
- Focused writing time and safe space for the writer / translators to work on their projects. Ideally, each translator will be assigned one poet to work with. During the residency, a minimum of 5 poems should be translated / attempted for most effective translation.
- Opportunity to work under the mentorship of two of the subcontinent’s well known poet and translators.
- Book contract with The Antonym Collections
- Evening reading circles
- Global reading session
- Creative-poetic explorations such as
- Exploring poetry through many forms and Media— An exercise into multidisciplinary transformations of poetic forms
- Free access to residency resources
APPLICATION
- Fill out the google-form available on our website. (Application process closed) Remember to attach all required documents (in docx or Pdf format)
- Participants can choose and submit a translation of 2-3 poems of any one of the four chosen poets and a cover letter explaining why they wish to be a part of this residency.
- Accepted participants will be liable to pay the living expense of the residency of amount INR 10000 per person
- Each application will be considered for full or partial scholarship which will cover the cost of residency.
- Ranu Chakraborty Memorial Scholarship and Manju Bhattacharya Memorial Scholarship available for deserving candidates
BOOK AND WORK CONTRACT
- Upon acceptance, the residency participants will have to sign a book and an anthology contract with The Antonym Collections.
The translator will work on a full-length book manuscript for the poet S/he chooses to work during the residency.
(More specification on the contract will follow)
DEADLINES
Apply before : 30th June, 2023
Acceptance notification goes out: 15th July
Confirmation/ Payment: 31st July
LIST OF POETS
- Joydeb Bosu
- Chaitali Chattopadhyay
- Mridul Dasgupta
- Ramchandra Pramanik
For any queries, please reach out to us at kolkatapoetryconfluence@gmail.com or theantonymmag@gmail.com
Residency Distinguished Mentor – Sudeep Sen
Sudeep Sen [www.sudeepsen.org] is widely recognised as a major new generation voice in world literature and ‘one of the finest English-language poets in the international literary scene’ (BBC Radio), ‘fascinated not just by language but the possibilities of language’ (Scotland on Sunday). He received a Pleiades Honour (at the Struga Poetry Festival, Macedonia) for having made “a significant contribution to contemporary world poetry”. His prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A. K. Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation (Pippa Rann, 2021-22 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize winner), and Red (Nirox Foundation, 2023). He has edited influential anthologies, including: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), World English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi), and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize), and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. Sen’s works have been translated into over 25 languages. His words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Financial Times, Herald, Poetry Review, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, PBS, CNN IBN, NDTV, AIR & Doordarshan. Sen’s newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language for a New Century (Norton), Leela: An Erotic Play of Verse and Art (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell), and Name me a Word (Yale). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS, editor of Atlas, and currently on a fellowship as a writer-in-residence at the Nirox Foundation (South Africa). His professional photography is represented by ArtMbassy, Rome [http://www.artmbassy.com/artists.html]. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.” Sen is the first Asian honored to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.
Bishnupriya Chowdhuri ( b.1986)is a Bengali bilingual literary translator and writer from Hooghly, West Bengal. She currently heads the editorial team for The Antonym Collections. She translates experimental and lyrical prose from Bengali to English. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida, an MA in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. She has two edited anthologies so far to her credit. Her writings and translations have been placed in literary journals in India and abroad.
She is currently working on translating the stories by Nasreen Jahan