About
This grant will fund King's College London PhD student and translator Harriet Cook to do an internship with internationally-renowned poet Caroline Bergvall, to create a "Language Station" that will support Caroline's development of her performances Ragadawn and Sonic Atlas. "Language Stations" are Caroline's public-facing discussions with and recordings of poets/writers/translators of “minoritarian” languages in Europe that she regularly conducts as part of her research towards her performances.
A performance of
Ragadawn on the Isle of Skye was
separately funded by the Small Grants scheme last year. At the heart of Sonic Atlas is the process of
revitalizing connections between languages active in Europe through Language
Stations, informal translation and discussion exchanges. Bringing together
“language workers”, “language traffickers”, the informal network brings to the fore
the all-important role of energising values of collaboration and friendship
across borders and the relevance of poetic work and practice-led research for
the renewal of translinguistic contact. Research into old endangered European
languages as well as minoritarian languages spoken by recently settled
communities are introduced into the project through recordings.
As part of the internship, Harriet will be holding two Language Station events at King's College London on 21 June: