A two-day conference celebrating the richness and relevance of ‘minority’ languages including Romani, Gaelic, Scots, Welsh and Cornish through translation, poetry and prose, film and live music.

Programme

Friday 1 November

Bush House, Floor 2. Room 2.01 & 2.02

9:30-10:00 Tea and coffee
Welcome & Introduction (Cristina Viti and Rosa Mucignat)

10:00-13:00 Soundscapes and Activist Practices in Roma Languages and Cultures

Chair: Clive Boutle, editor of Francis Boutle Publishers
Thomas Acton
Georgia Kapalzidou
Gyula ‘Juice’ Vamosi

20 min interventions + Q&A

13:00-14:00 Sandwich lunch

14:00-17:00 Min(d)ing the Seams of the M’other Tongues

Chair: Stephen Watts
Rody Gorman
Brian Holton
Niall O’Gallagher
Tim Saunders
Gwenno

20 min interventions + Q&A

Saturday 2 November

Bush House, Floor 4, Lecture Theatre 2

From 9:30 Tea and coffee

10:00-13:00 Screening of the film Gypsy Caravan (2006)
Director Jasmine Dellal in conversation with Ohran Demirovski (timing tbc)

13:00-14:00 Sandwich lunch

From 14:00 Roma Jam Session @ Jamboree King’s Cross

Speakers

Clive Boutle has run Francis Boutle Publishers for over 25 years, specialising in lesser-used, endangered and regional European languages. These include Cornish, Scottish Gaelic, Livonian, Occitan, Romani, Faroese and Manx. He is a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh and the recipient of the Premio Ostana – Scritture in Lingua Madre.

Rosa Mucignat is Reader in Comparative Literature at King’s College London. Her broad area of expertise is the relation between literature and space in local, national and global contexts. Her research has focused on the novel in nineteenth-century Europe, the literary geography of realism, the Romantic myth of Italy, and literature in minor languages, with a special emphasis on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Friulian writings. She is co-investigator in the Radical Translations project, uncovering the circulation of theatrical pieces and novels across the Italian, French and British cultural and political contexts.

Cristina Viti is a translator and poet working with Italian, English and French. Recent translations include Pasolini’s La rabbia/Anger (Tenement Press 2022), the Selected Poems of Luigi Di Ruscio (Seagull 2023), Luca Rastello’s novel exploring the politics and spirit of the Seventies in Italy (The Rain’s Falling Up, Seagull 2022), and (with Souheila Haïmiche) Anna Gréki’s second collection (The Streets of Algiers, Smokestack Books 2020). Previous publications include the Selected Works of Dino Campana (Survivors’ Press 2006), with a full version of the Orphic Songs. Viti’s workshops with the Radical Translations project at King’s College have produced a collaborative translation of forgotten texts from the French Revolution (An Anarchist Playbook, NoUP 2023). Her Italian version of Orson Welles’ Moby Dick—Rehearsed is in production with the Teatro dell’Elfo in Milan. Her translation of Elsa Morante (The World Saved by Kids and Other Epics, Seagull 2016) was shortlisted for the John Florio Prize.

Stephen Watts was born in 1952. His father was from Stoke-on-Trent and his mother’s family from villages high in the Italian & Swiss Alps. He spent very vital time – in place of university – in northern Scotland, especially the island of North Uist, but since 1977 has lived mainly in the richly multilingual communities of the Whitechapel area of East London. Geographies & location (as also their negative theologies) are urgent to his life & his work. Recent books include Republic Of Dogs/Republic Of Birds (Test Centre, 2016; Prototype, 2020), also the subject of Huw Wahl’s 2019 experimental film, The Republics; and the major collection Journeys Across Breath (Prototype 2022). A book of his ‘Drawn Poems’ is due from Joe Hales’s Sylvia imprint. Watts is also a translator working closely with exiled poets & inter alia has co-translated Pages from the Biography of an Exile by the Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh (Arc Publications, 2014) & Syrian poet Golan Haji’s A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2017). His translation research was the subject of two recent exhibitions: ‘Swirl Of Words/Swirl Of Worlds’ at PEER Gallery, Hoxton, for which he edited a book of that title (its subtitle ‘Poems From 94 Languages Spoken Across Hackney’ describes it best), & ‘Explosion Of Words’ with the Swiss artist Hannes Schüpbach, which celebrated his 2,000-page Bibliography of Modern Poetry in English Translation at the Straühof Gallery, Zurich, & Nunnery Gallery, Bow. His own poetry has been translated into many languages, with full collections in Italian, Czech, Arabic, German & Spanish.

Thomas Acton

Jasmine Dellal

Orhan Demirovski teaches Business Plan Development and Performance Assessment at SEU and is a lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Coventry University London. He has diverse experience in developing and managing successful experiential learning programs in academia and industry.

Prior to joining academia, he worked for the United Nations on income generation projects and economic development of communities. Much of the projects and activities were aimed at poverty reduction, social inclusion, support of refugees, and other marginalised groups.

Rody Gorman was born in Dublin in 1960 and lives in Skye. He has published collections of poetry in English, Irish and Scottish Gaelic including Fax (1996), Flora From Lusitania (2005) and Zonda? Khamsin? Sharaav? Camanchaca? (2006) and Beartan Briste/Burstbrokenshroudloomdeeds (2011). His most recent collections are Cuala, Dothra (2021), Lorg Eile/Final Call (2022) and Sa Chnoc (2023). His version of Buile Shuibhne, Sweeney: an Intertonguing was published by Francis Boutle Publishers in March 2024.

Brian Holton was born in Galashiels and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham. He has published twenty books of translated poetry: he and Yang Lian won the inaugural 2021 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry Translation for Anniversary Snow (Shearsman Books, 2019), 2022 and 2023. He has also translated Yang Lian’s Venice Elegy (Edizioni Damocle, 2019), and his Narrative Poem (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). Holton’s collections of classical poems in Scots are Staunin Ma Lane (Shearsman Books 2016), Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds: Li Bai an Du Fu in Scots (Taproot Press 2022), and Aa Cled wi Clouds She Cam (Irish Pages 2023), the last two shortlisted for Scots Book of the Year 2022 and 2023.

Holton has won prizes both for his own poetry in Scots and for his translations into both Scots and English. He is a recovering academic who taught Chinese language and literature at Edinburgh, Durham, and Newcastle, and translation at Newcastle and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has lectured at universities and given readings and workshops at major literary festivals in the UK, Spain, Italy, Holland, New Zealand, China, the USA, and Canada. He lives in Melrose in the Scottish Borders.

Georgia Kalpazidou is a philologist-linguist. She works in the fields of education and social inclusion of marginalized Roma communities and she participates in actions and projects of competent bodies for social inclusion at the local and central level. She is a founding member of NGO REVMA, active since 2021 in tackling the problem of early school dropout.

Gwenno

Niall O'Gallagher is the author of three collections of poetry published by CLÀR, and of Fuaimean Gràidh / The Sounds of Love: Selected Poems (Francis Boutle, 2023). He is currently Gaelic Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Tim Saunders is a Cornish poet, living in Wales, and occasionally writing and broadcasting in Ireland.

Juice Vamosi is a Roma activist who has worked as a Romani language consultant for more than 30 years. He was a personal advisor on Roma engagement to two past presidents of the World Bank, and to Neelie Kroes, former Vice President of the European Commission. In 2010, Juice built the KaskoSan social network, the first global Roma brand with half million registered Romani speakers. BBC and Channel 4 films he produced earned millions of views. As a Romani dialects expert and as the founder of KaskoSan Roma Charity, he is voluntarily supporting East European Roma migrants in the UK.