Japanese poets

This year's Festival of Poetry in Wine will introduce Japanese poetry. From August 19th until August 26th, Ptuj will host acclaimed Japanese poets Misumi Mizuki, Kiwao Nomura, Kenji Fukuma, Ryochi Wago and Keijiro Suga who will meet in translation workshops with Slovene poets Katja Perat, Milan Dekleva, Boris A. Novak and Aleš Šteger on three consecutive days. With the help of translators, assisting them in cracking the toughest translation nuts, the poets will mutually translate their poetry as well as selected classics from the Slovene and Japanese modern poetic oeuvre. Translation workshops always provide a wonderful experience for participating poets while also offering a unique chance to create new Japanese-Slovene cultural ties. The created translations will undoubtedly be a vital and important by-product of the workshops and provide the Slovene cultural audience with a glimpse into modern Japanese poetry and vice-versa, all while paving a new way for future literary translations.
The translation workshop will conclude with two round-tables in Ptuj and Maribor, on August 22nd and 23rd respectively. The workshops will feature the authors presenting the translated works, talk about the toughest translation assignments and about the unexpected linguistic similarities they encountered during the process. The Japanese poets will remained in Ptuj after the workshops, reading their poems at great nightly reading events within the Days of Poetry and Wine festival, held every evening between August 22nd and 25th, at 20.30, at Vraz Square in Ptuj.