Festival programme
Wednesday 2 October 2024
2pm, United Colleges Room 31, St Salvator’s Quad
Resurrecting Lost Languages Through Poetry: A Hands-On Workshop
by Professor Peter Constantine (University of Connecticut)
Over a quarter of the world’s languages have less than a thousand speakers left and are now on the brink of extinction. More languages than are spoken today have become extinct over the years, their deaths often quiet and disregarded by the communities that once spoke them.
Can poetry, literature, words written by last speakers centuries ago, be used to revive a language?
In recent years indigenous peoples have been reconstructing their languages that have lain dormant for centuries with fascinating paleolinguistic detective work. Languages that lay silent for centuries—such as Mohegan and Massachusett in the United States, Cornish in the United Kingdom—are being reconstructed and taught to children as first languages.
In this hands-on-workshop, Peter Constantine will discuss different strategies that communities have used to bring back their traditional languages. Using the paradigm of these efforts in the workshop, the participants will bring back to life a Phoenician poem and its words that became extinct several millennia ago.
6.30 pm, Byre Studio Theatre
Byre World: Poetry from the Mine (and elsewhere)
To mark the beginning of the Festival of Languages and the fortieth anniversary of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, Gavin Bowd and acclaimed poet Paul Malgrati will present and read the work of three miner-writers: the Fifer Joe Corrie, the Belgian Constant Malva, and the Frenchman Jules Mousseron, who wrote in Scots, English, French and Picard dialect. Paul will then present his French translations of their precursor, the Ploughman Poet himself, Robert Burns. He will conclude with a reading from his own Franco-Scottish verse collection, Poèmes écossais.
National Poetry Day, Thursday 3 October
2pm, Byre Auditorium
‘The Poetry of Migration’
Poetry reading by Vahid Davar
Vahid Davar will read two ekphrastic poems inspired by Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian’s ‘fluid paintings’, From Sea to Dawn and If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose The Third. These paintings are moving images drawn on found footage from the media, dealing with ‘the Refugee Crisis’ and the fall of the icon. Commissioned by the artists, Davar created his two poems in 2021, which accompanied their visual counterparts in the artists’ exhibitions in Munich (2021), Abu Dhabi (2022), and Paris (2023).
Poetry reading by Eleni Kefala
Eleni Kefala’s poetry book Direct Orient (2024) centres around a Cypriot immigrant woman who crosses the English Channel in 1973 and in Paris boards the Direct Orient (a cheaper version of the legendary Orient Express) to travel to Athens and eventually Cyprus. Direct Orient zooms in on migration, colonialism, family history, and the role of women in history, literature, and art. Set against the backdrop of Greek and world literature, the book explores, among others, the themes and textures of the Epic of Gilgamesh through Cypriot Renaissance poetry, detective fiction, Greek folk songs, film noir, and women’s poetry from antiquity.
Poems on Immigration with Italian Translation from Caroline Smith
Caroline Smith will read a selection of poems from her collection The Immigration Handbook (Seren, 2016) and students from the School of Modern Languages will read the same poems in their Italian translation by Professor Paola Splendore.
The Immigration Handbook was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2016 and translated into Italian by Paola Splendore in 2020 and published by Edizioni dell’asino. The collaboration between Caroline and Paola was an outcome of the conference ‘Press Play: Creative Interventions in Research and Practice’, held at the British School in Rome in March 2019 and part-funded by the University of St Andrews’ Knowledge Exchange Fund.
https://www.carolinesmithpoet.com
2-3:30pm, Byre Conference Room
Poetry ‘Wiki Workshop’ with Kirsty Ross and Pauline Souleau
Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopaedia and is constantly being edited. However, there are significant gaps, especially in other language versions of Wikipedia. This workshop will introduce you to the world of Wiki editing and translating through the prism of poets’ biographical entries. After signing you up as a Wiki editor, we’ll collaboratively work to identify poets’ Wikipedia pages which are missing language versions, and we will start translating some of these pages together.
This workshop is open to University of St Andrews staff and students, as well as members of the public. The ability to read and write in other languages, in addition to English, is desirable, but not essential. Laptops or tablet devices with keyboards will be required for the session.
For any enquiries, please contact Dr Kirsty Ross ([email protected]) and Dr Pauline Souleau ([email protected])
4pm, Byre Auditorium
‘Language of the Fantastical: Exploring the Mythic and Folkloric’ with Nina Globerson
From investigations into monster theory to semiology, the Language of the Fantastical seeks to open our eyes to how the stories we tell — whether real, imagined, or in between — can create, and are shaped by language. Whether you like zombies, chupacabra’s, or she-devils, folklore belongs to a long pantheon of oral storytelling and retelling, begging the question: why do we keep talking about monsters and the mythic?
As we dive into theory, art, and literature from the Middle Ages to modern day. Let us ask ourselves how language creates monsters and the importance of folklore today.
5pm, Byre Conference Room
¡Conócenos! Spanish Taster and Linguistic Fun Facts with Ana Barazal Barreira
In this session, we will learn some useful words and sentences in Spain and Latin American in an interactive and fun way. We will also learn some important cultural differences between the UK and the Spanish speaking countries- this will avoid misunderstandings when travelling to these countries! Besides, we will have a look at some linguistic fun facts about Spanish.
6:30pm, Byre Auditorium
Multilingual Poetry Reading: From Ancient to Modern
What did ancient poetry sound like? How did it differ from modern poetry? And how much do we really know about all this? The first half of this event, presented by Christine Rauer, Xiyuan Meng, and Orhan Elmaz will bring together staff and students to give you a flavour of Old English, Ancient Greek and Medieval Arabic poetry, and what it sounded like. We will provide information on what ancient poets really cared about and what they thought sounded good, or beautiful. We can also teach you some basics, about poetic metre and pronunciation, and will send you home with a handout of ancient poetry, for you to practise with!
In the second half of this event, there will be poetry readings in the various languages spoken across St Andrews, from Cantonese to Ukrainian to Esperanto.
Friday 4 October
2:30-4:30pm, United Colleges School V
Linguistic travels to Scottish, Ukrainian, and Spanish landscapes:
a walkshop with Liliana Chavez Diaz and Viktoriia Grivina
Join us at 2:30-4:30 pm on Friday 4 October at United Colleges-School V for an exciting workshop where we will look at how poetry is made of nature and imagination. Walking around St Andrews, we will get to see the links between Scottish poetry and nature, as well as imagine some very different landscapes – that of Ukrainian forests and steppes by reading from the 1920s Ukrainian poets, and those of mountains and deserts described by Spanish and Latin American poets.
We will meet at School V at 2:30 pm, and after a short walk, return to the classroom to share our impressions, analyse and compare words to nature.
5pm, Byre Conference Room
Cantonese Taster and the Current State of Hong Kong-style Cantonese, with Andric Pun
The first half of the session will be a brief, and hopefully fun, taster session of the Cantonese language. We will learn some basic and common phrases and words in Cantonese, as well as some of the unique aspects of Cantonese pronunciation.
The second half of the session will be a discussion of Cantonese as it is currently used in the Hongkongese community, in particular patterns of usage and nativising English words, and the evolution of written characters expressing the spoken language.
6.30 pm, Byre Conference Room
Diasporic Creative Workshop with Claire Silverman, Emily Hammer, Mía Zendejas, Nina Globerson and Tingting Zhong
Are you a diaspora writer or researcher? Curious on how to write about languages in a way that honours identity, culture, and heritage? Or simply enthusiastic about language and conducting multilingual research?
This practical workshop will bring together various postgraduate researchers from St Andrews who have been implementing languages and its connection to diaspora within their own writing and research.
Whether you speak more than one language, it influences your creative writing, or used as a major instrument within your academic writing (including translation as a tool for diasporic connections, movements, and analysis), lets engage in different practices that can allow you to harness language even further!
On Wednesday 2 October and Thursday 3 October , from 5 pm in the Byre foyer, various cultural and creative societies will be having stalls.
All day in the Byre foyer: ‘The Interactive Book of Sayings’ and ‘Represent Your Languages: An Interactive Map’.