Creative Writing Workshops - Connecting Emerging Literary Artists
Since 2017 Passa Porta and deBuren have been a member of Connecting Emerging Literary Artists (CELA), a European network that supports young literary talent. In an intensive development process, 18 writers and 22 translators sharpened their skills and developed their network. Now, after an intensive development process, they will share their knowledge with a Belgian audience during the Passa Porta Festival.
Three authors will host four workshops on Friday 29th of March at Muntpunt:
10:00-12:00 | Found in Translation with Livia Franchini
Who does language belong to? Can poetry help us to communicate beyond cultural and national boundaries? Is translation an act of literature, or is literature an act of translation?
FOUND IN TRANSLATION is a hands-on, stimulating workshop that challenges the notion of a separation between creative writing and translation, bridging the gap with experimental group exercises and literary play. Poking fun at the notion of the writer as ‘solitary genius’, this course will get you writing collectively in a range of textual languages, to explore the ways in which writers, translators and readers alike can come together in language and celebrate diversity, in a world increasingly threatened by the ruthless enforcement of national borders.
[No specific language skills are required to take this course, except for a good working knowledge of English]
11:00-13:00 | Language and Music with Simone Atangana Bekono
Music is an essential part of storytelling: most cultures have a tradition of transmitting stories or writing poetry with the aid of music. Even today there is still the aspect of musicality in text: rhythm, melody, and repitition, for instance, help you remember a text, take it in, enjoy words not only as a means to information but also as something that transcends language as a tool: musicality turns language into art.
Through exercises that challenge the participants to write to different types of music, we try to experiment with this mindset while writing to music and editing texts accompanied by it.
14:00-16:00 | 'The Fifth Story' with José Gardeazabal
'The Fifth Story', after a Clarice Lispector´s short story, is a 2-hour workshop on writing and rewriting. In this exercise, participants read, interpret, discuss, write and rewrite, acquiring a taste for the process, the rhythm, and the joy of writing fiction.
These workshops are freely available, but places are limited. To book a spot, send an e-mail to alyssa.saro@passaporta.be.