Speaking in Tongues: Bilingual Poetry

In this podcast guest interviewer and multi-lingual writer and translator Jessica Johannesson Gaitán talks to 3 bilingual poets about what it means to have more than one mother tongue, feeling guilty or not about writing in big languages, translating one’s own poetry and much more! Featuring: Juana Adcock is a poet and translator working in English and Spanish. Her work has appeared in publications such as Magma Poetry, Gutter, Glasgow Review of Books,Asymptote and Words Without Borders. Her first book, Manca, explores the anatomy of violence in Mexico and was named by Reforma‘s distinguished critic Sergio González Rodríguez as one of the best poetry books published in 2014. Ioannis Kalkounos was born in Greece. He works at the Edinburgh City Libraries. In 2012 he read two short stories at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (Story Shop). His first collection of poems, dakryma, was published in 2011 (Athens, Dromon Publications). Agnes Török is a spoken word performer, poetry workshop leader, poetry event organiser and Loud Poet. She is the winner of multiple Poetry Slams in three different countries and two different languages. Török has been featured as a TED speaker, on The Today Programme and BBC Radio Scotland. At 2014’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she was a BBC Poetry Slam finalist and her collaborative spoken word show with the Loud Poets received several five-star reviews. Her one-woman spoken word show ‘Sorry I Don’t Speak Culture’ was awarded Best International Spoken Word Show at the Edinburgh Fringe (PBH). Török is premiering her newest project ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It – Take This Survey’, a one-woman show about the science of happiness, at the Edinburgh Fringe on the 16th – 24th of august. The show is an expansion of her TED talk on studying happiness. Jessica Johannesson Gaitán grew up in Sweden and Colombia and currently lives in Bath. Her poems and stories have appeared in Gutter and The Stinging Fly among other publications. She writes about translations at therookeryinthebookery.org Many thanks to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.

You can listen to Speaking in Tongues: Bilingual Poetry online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Speaking in Tongues: Bilingual Poetry is an episode from Scottish Poetry Library Podcast by Scottish Poetry Library.

This episode is 36:24 long.

This episode was published on Aug 27, 2015.

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