How do you choose which language to write in, if you inhabit two or three cultures? Perhaps a language chooses you… How do you make yourself feel at home between languages that differ as much as English and Polish? How do literary translation, self-translation and translanguaging assist poetry-making which negotiates national borders, cultural stereotypes and individual idiosyncrasies? 

To consider these and similar questions, Marta Dziurosz, former translator-in-residence at the Free Word Centre, will talk to five Polish-born poets – Maria Jastrzebska, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, Maria Kardel, Anna Blasiak and Agnieszka Studzinska – about their contribution to contemporary British poetry and translation culture.

The conversation will circle around the anthology Wretched Strangers: Borders, Movement, Homes, edited by Ágnes Lehóczky and JT Welsch (Boiler House Press, 2018) ‘to commemorate the anniversary of the June 2016 EU Referendum and in solidarity through struggles to come.’ The poets will also read from their poetry selections and translations.