Croatia at the London Book Fair - Bilateral Poetry Party
An evening of poetry with a line-up of 3 Croatian Poets and 3 UK poets. Hosted by contemporary avant garde English poet and artist, Steven Fowler, this promises to be a lively evening of words and wine. Featuring Croatian poets Olja Savičević, Damir Šodan, Ana Brnardić and UK poets Stephen Watts and James Byrne. This event is bought to you by the Croatian Writer’s Society in co-operation with Istros Books and Arc Publications.
Featuring:
Stephen Watts is a London-based poet, editor and translator with cultural roots in the Swiss Italian Alps and Scotland. He has two bilingual English-Italian works, The Mountain Language/Lingua di montagna (2008) and Journey Across Breath/Tragitto nel respiro (2011), six other collections of poems, including Ancient Sunlight (Enitharmon, 2014) and The Blue Bag (Aark Arts, 2004).
James Byrne: James Byrne’s most recent poetry collection Blood/Sugar, was published by Arc Publications in 2009. Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, published in June 2012, is co-edited with ko ko thett and is the first anthology of Burmese poetry ever to be published in the West (Arc 2012). Byrne is the editor of The Wolf, an internationally-renowned poetry magazine, which he co-founded in 2002. He is the International Editor for Arc Publications.
Steven J. Fowler is a contemporary avant garde English poet and artist. Fowler was born in Truro, Cornwall, studied at the University of Durham and the University of London, Birkbeck college. He lives in London and has published 6 poetry collections: The Rottweiler’s guide to the Dog Owner (Eyewear press 2014); Enemies: the selected collaborations of SJ Fowler (Penned in the Margins 2013); Recipes (Red Ceilings press 2012); Minimum Security Prison Dentistry (Anything Anymore Anywhere press 2011); Fights (Veer books 2011) Red Museum (Knives forks & spoons press 2011).
Olja Savičević is an awarded poet and novelist, who burst onto the authorial stage with her short story collection Make the Dog Laugh in 2006. Last year, her collection of poems Mamasafari and Other Things was short-listed for the ‘Kiklop Award for Best Collection of 2012′, awarded annually by the Pula Book Fair. Her best-selling book Farewell, Cowboy has already achieved great success in the region, and was even adapted into a stage play. Part of the novel, Farewell, Cowboy was included in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2014.
Damir Šodan is a Croatian poet, playwright and translator. He has published four volumes of poetry, two collections of plays and an anthology of Croatian “neorealist” poetry. He has translated many influential American poets into Croatian and lectured on the topic of poetry. A recipient of two playwriting awards, he has been internationally featured in The American Poetry Review (2007), New European Poets, (Graywolf Press, 2008), Les Poètes de la Méditerranée (Gallimard, 2010), The World Record (Bloodaxe, 2012) and The Hundred Years’ War (Bloodaxe, 2014). He lives in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Ana Brnardić has published four books of poetry that received several prestigious Croatian awards for poetry: Pisaljka nekog mudraca (The Pen of a Sage, 1998. – Goran Award for young poets; Slavić Award for poetry debut), Valcer zmija (The Snake Waltz, 2005. – Kvirin Award for young poets), Postanak ptica (The Creation of Birds, 2009) and Uzbrdo (Uphill, 2015). With Adrian Oproiu, Ana translates modern and contemporary Romanian literature into Croatian. She is also the General Secretary of Croatian Writers Society.
http://www.londonbookandscreenweek.co.uk/event/croatian-poetry-party/
