The Language Hub: Poetry and Translation at Swords Castle (Cultúr 2026)

I'm very pleased to be partnering with Fingal Libraries, Fingal Arts Office and the official Irish EU Presidency 2026 Cultural Programme (Cultúr 2026) to conceive, programme and host 'The Language Hub: Poetry and Translation' - an activity consisting of four linked sessions with guests from across Europe and from Ireland.

The date is Saturday 3 October, and the venue is The Chapel, Swords Castle, in north county Dublin.

Full details and booking link below:

The Language Hub: Poetry and Translation

Saturday 3 October 2026

11am - 4pm

The Chapel, Swords Castle, Swords, Co Dublin

Free Admission - booking recommended [BOOK HERE]

As part of Cultúr 2026 - the country-wide cultural programme celebrating Ireland's EU presidency - poet Christodoulos Makris has curated a series of four linked sessions on poetry and translation that explore connectivity through language.

Centred on language as a means of connection and cultural exchange, the programme will explore how poetry can foster dialogue across borders and traditions. Poets, writers and translators visiting from across Europe and within Ireland will present their work - in English, Latvian, Italian, Dutch and Irish - and discuss their creative and translational practices in an informal and participatory setting.

Schedule:

11am: Kimberly Campanello & Nicoletta Asciuto

Independent and collaborative literary navigations between Italian and English, past and present.

 

12pm: Sophie Collins

Expanded approaches to translation, its political implications, and translating poetry and prose from the Dutch.

1pm - 2pm: Break

2pm: Ligija Purinaša

Poetry in Latgalian - a historical-regional variant of Latvian - minority languages, and feminist priorities.

3pm: Ciara Ní É

Hybrid poetry in Irish and English, self-translation, and toggling between the page and performance.

About the Participants:

Kimberly Campanello is the author of the poetry-object and durational performance MOTHERBABYHOME. Her latest poetry collection An Interesting Detail (Bloomsbury) and debut novel Use the Words You Have (Somesuch Editions) were both published last year. Kimberly’s abiding preoccupation is with the power of language to "change states" – transforming the law and the State, our emotional-physical-spiritual-intellectual states, and its own state as each word shifts and morphs with every use and encounter. She is Professor of Poetry and Director of Poetry@Leeds at the University of Leeds.

Nicoletta Asciuto is Reader in Modern Literature at the University of York.  She is the author of Brilliant Modernism: Cultures of Light and Modernist Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025) and has published various articles on modernist poetry, as well as literary translations. Her latest translation work includes the first Italian translations of Hope Mirrlees’s 'Paris. A Poem' (Interno Poesia, 2025) and of Kimberly Campanello’s 'Moving Nowhere Here' (in Poesia: rivista internazionale di cultura poetica, vol. 32, 2025).

Sophie Collins is the author of small white monkeys (Book Works, 2017) and Who Is Mary Sue? (Faber & Faber, 2018). She is the editor of an anthology of translations, Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016), and is the translator, from the Dutch, of Lieke Marsman's The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes (Pavilion Poetry, 2019), a Poetry Book Society Choice, and The Opposite of a Person (Daunt Books, 2021), which was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. Her translation of Marsman's On Another Planet They Can Save Me will be published this year by Daunt in the UK and Catapult Books in the US. Collins' first novel, Private View, will be published by Daunt in 2028.

Ligija Purinaša is a poet and journalist writing in Latgalian and Latvian. She has published three critically acclaimed poetry collections: Sīvīte (Woman, 2019), which was shortlisted in the Best Debut category at the Annual Latvian Literature Awards in 2020, Pierobežas (Borderlands, 2022), longlisted for the Best Poetry Collection, and Magnificat (2025), shortlisted for the Best Poetry Collection. Her poems have been translated into English, German, Estonian, Czech. She is currently working on her first novel exploring women's relationships with the environment. Her literary work demonstrates a commitment to exploring complex social themes through diverse literary forms.

Ciara Ní É is a bilingual writer and performer working across poetry, theatre and screen. She has performed in Paris, New York, London, Brussels, and across Ireland at festivals and venues such as Electric Picnic, IMMA, the National Concert Hall, and Áras an Uachtaráin. Her work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Aneas and Comhar, and in anthologies including Bone and Marrow / Cnámh agus Smior, and has been translated into German, French, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Corsican. She is the founder of the bilingual spoken word event REIC, co-founder of AerachAiteachGaelach, and was named one of the Irish Examiner's 100 Women Changing Ireland.