RCCAHF Creative Writing Fellow Translation Slam 2026
Description
The Research Centre in Creative Arts and Human Flourishing, in collaboration with the Fryer Library and the School of Languages and Cultures warmly invites bi- and multilingual speakers to a live 'translation slam'. This event will facilitate different linguistic groups doing live, collaborative translations of a poem from Svetlana Sterlin's new poetry manuscript, authored as part of her UQ Creative Writing Fellowship. Svetlana's position was generously funded by the Copyright Agency.
In small groups, we will attempt to render the poem into different languages, with input from the poet herself. No translation experience is required. The aim is not to produce polished translations, but to tease out where the challenges lie in translating poetry into different languages, and how to negotiate the interplay between meaning and metre during interlingual transfers.
Lineup
Svetlana Sterlin
Svetlana Sterlin is the author of Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award winning poetry collection, If Movement Was a Language (Vagabond Press), which was Commended in the 2024 Anne Elder Award. She is the 2026 UQ Creative Writing Fellow. Her work appears in Westerly, Island, Cordite, Australian Poetry, and has been recognised in the Queensland Literary Awards, Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, Richell Prize, State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award, and others. She is also the founding editor of swim meet lit mag.
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