ON COLLABORATION

An interview with Versopolis poets

by Stephanie Nebenführ and Rebecca Weingart

In November 2024, three poets from Versopolis, an online European poetry platform for emerging poets, visited the WashU campus for a reading and discussion on the work they are doing to build connections across borders and languages. We interviewed them while they were here on topics such as the origins of Versopolis, collaboration, and translation. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

TERN: Can you talk a bit about literary journals? In your eyes, how would you describe their relevance today, that is: what is the state of the journal?

Steger: The classical journals are out. We all know it. I miss them, but still they’re out. But, on the other hand, there is so much – if you’re well connected – that you can do in terms of online stuff. Within Versopolis we have this showcase festival, Poetry Expo, which you can basically read it also as a journal, a big journal with one edition.

Pogačar: There’s also the Versopolis Review. It’s not unique, but a quite unique venture, because it’s in English, it’s open and free, and submissions are really from all over. It’s not as neatly curated as World Literature Today—of course it’s a less budgeted thing—but I can’t recall a hub like that where you can really read news and texts from small European languages in an English format. 

Duyan: The author of the week column, in that regard.

Pogačar: For students of foreign literatures, it’s a great address; you can always find something.

Steger: Also for us, because Europe is divided by languages and national literatures and we want to change that when it comes to poetry, at least a bit. And what we found out over the number of years that we are now running Versopolis, over ten years, that there is little to zero interest among poets themselves and poetry readers of what is really going on in different parts of Europe or the world or perhaps they are much more interested in big centers. So that means that we have to build it very slowly, to search for people who are out there, young people, who have this different vision of what literature can be. That’s probably the main reason that we exist. To bridge basically these differences that existed before.

TERN:  Could you talk a bit about the beginnings of Versopolis? 

Steger: Yes, it was over ten years ago, and when we started it was just ten festivals, Marko was one of the founding members there. We just wanted…it is a complete different thing writing in a language generally understood by everyone than to write in a language where you drive two to three hours in one direction and no one speaks it anymore. And of course, you develop to thinking how to get out of this prison of your language. And on the other hand, also, how to get to know what’s going on somewhere else. When we created it, the generation which created it, it was already a bit late for us, because we had already done some of this field work and exploration. But we wanted to change it for younger generations, for those who are following. So that’s why we created Versopolis, mainly as a hub for emerging poets. Emerging meaning not poets necessarily who have never published or don’t have a book. On the contrary, we created also a definition of what emerging means and in our view these are the most recognized already poets in their languages but internationally unrecognized or unknown. So we wanted to basically internationalize this space and create possibilities that poets in Europe didn’t have before. And now we are ten years later, we grew, and we know each other much better. It’s also a question of trust and friendship that emerged from that. And for now it’s 36 international festivals, maybe a few more, but we want also to explore possibilities of having exchange or opening new possibilities for poets from US but also other parts of the world. We can only do it in a very limited way, since we get all the finances from the EU and they should be spent within the EU or in an European context, but we try also to break out of this and to create other possibilities. Through the fact that we now know each other, before we didn’t, and this creates a big difference.

TERN: How would you describe the collaborational aspect of your work?

Pogačar: We didn’t know each other before. We did collaborate in various ways now and then, you meet once a year at a festival, maybe you propose, you can send me something, but it’s very kind of grassroots and peer to peer. So, when Aleš proposed, as a spiritual father of the project, when we had seen the first sketches, I immediately said, Wow, this is gonna be amazing, if only I had that 10 or 15 years before when I was starting out. What was created is a very stable, institutional, well-financed network. This trust that Aleš was mentioning is not only trust between partners but also trust in creative Europe and so on. The platform was building infrastructure and connecting people that were already kind of connected and searching for loads of other people and institutions and providing them with the means to substantially work on a long-term basis.

TERN: Can you talk a bit about the organisational or financial side of things?

Steger: We just discussed before that we want to make a short video recording today in order to support an open call of Berlin literary organisations since they are facing serious cuts and we want to join the protest. What’s the problem with literature: in most countries, it’s just outside of any financial stability. You have theaters, you have opera houses, all these institutions have also proper management. Literary organisations seldomly have proper management. Our festivals usually run on energy of individuals who just love to do it. 

Duyan: Without governmental support, it’s based on volunteer work of poets, me and colleagues. Of course you do it and you do it because you love it and because it is also a political act. These budget cuts are not because the country is poor, it is a political decision to not use finances for poetry, or for free-thinking open minded poetry. It is cultural activism to organize these festivals. But then on the other hand with this personal activism energy, there are limits, at least in the long term. You need a lifeline from other countries, finances but also inspiration and collaboration, you feel that you are a part of a bigger forest, it sort of renews your energy. Our festival in Istanbul—back then there were so many festivals in Turkey, but then they became less and less and less, now there are only a few, small volunteer-based festivals— became the most important festival in the country, we managed to keep the quality. Without Versopolis, there was no way.

Steger: Although, if we really look at the details, what we talk about is really very small money, there is more money distributed to partners through Versopolis, but it’s a regular income and this really makes a change, that institutions can count the next four years to get at least this. It’s a starting point. Usually in Europe we are all used to work with projects which last for two years, or annual projects, so basically you make a huge effort to let something happen once and then it’s impossible to get a follow up to it because it’s impossible. And we just want to change this. So part of the network is also exchange of experiences, of knowledge.

Duyan: It’s also so different, languages are different, poetry traditions are different, and also cultural mechanisms are somehow different as well. I was also very curious about how things work in Slovenia, how things are working in Denmark, how are things working in Latvia, with all of these different mechanisms. It is also really interesting to dive into these small other universes and explore the poets and also the culture itself.

TERN: Can you talk on the impact of Versopolis in Europe?

Pogačar: Considering the scope of the project it’s really tectonic changes on the landscape of younger European poetry, because now basically if you count just practically people that travelled for Versopolis or that were translated for Versopolis or presented whether within the pool of the poets or collaborated on the review and so on, it’s huge among us now. Altogether, the festivals have produced little books in 30-35 languages.

Steger: Actually you can access all these booklets in the original language and in English translation on the site, you can download them. It’s a good resource, I think, to get a feeling of different phases of European poetry.

Duyan: The poets in the Versopolis database are selected by festival organizers in their countries so Marko and his team are responsible for selecting Croatian poets every year. It’s not like somebody from one country tries to find poets from other countries. Somebody from inside in the right position to know the field, they select the poets and present to the rest of the festival and poetry community in Europe. So that’s why I think it’s very high quality and trustworthy. So when you click on Versopolis, you know there must be something there.

Pogačar: This database is basically a free online library of PDFs of all these chapbooks, it’s basically a quite reliable, not anthology but a panorama of contemporary young European poets.

TERN: Can you talk about your experience with translation? Does the act of translation or the other way around, being translated, change the way you work in your own creative texts?

Duyan: Obviously I think you change and the best way is not to deny it, it echoes in you, especially if you understand the language you’re being translated into. It affects you and being affected just makes you more rich. We are being affected by so many things, the best thing is to open the windows and let the air come in and accept these changes, these influences and filter them very consciously. I translate only for the people I like, my contemporaries. It’s an act of empathy. So I try think of myself in his or her shoes and imagine, what if Pogačar knew Turkish, how would he write? That’s the empathy, then I think it flows, you’re also relaxed and it also fits to the nature of poetry because empathy is about comparing yourself to somebody else and poetry is based on metaphors, comparing yourself to the world. Translation becomes an act of poetry through empathy.

Pogačar: Well, I translate very seldom, usually when it’s some kind of translation workshop, poets translate poets and so on. I do translate from a couple of languages and I have published some translations in books, but I really never thought of myself as a translator, and I don’t really feel the call to translate professionally, especially poetry you need to feel it somehow. So I do it usually if someone asks me, friends or if it’s an occasion, and then of course often I did it with the authors present and we did collaborate a lot and that’s the fun part for me, that you can really break the bones of the text, dive in and the author can always tell you, “No…cold…warmer.” Sometimes you also need to slam the author and say “no” because the author more often doesn’t know your languages, they need to trust you. Sometimes that’s okay even if it sounds far away, but it’s actually where it needs to be in that particular moment.

And myself, I think I prefer when my books and poems are being translated. Of course we all like to be contacted because then you always figure out, according to the questions, what is more or less in place and then you always think if the translator didn’t write all these places would be unclear or just wrongly translated or just float somewhere in the air. I prefer it, especially thinking about poetry now, for prose not so much, but for poetry it’s very important. I’m happy that some of my translators are poets that I like. I trust their ear.

Even some languages like Latvian, of course I can’t really grasp…up to some extent you can, both a Slavic language, you know the grammatical structure and so on. Trust the translator if he made a semantical mistake, I trust their ear, I know it is going to be more or less in its right place. It’s a slippery slope. Sometimes they do an amazing job. Sometimes, you know the deadline is short, they do the correct words, close but no cigar. I am afraid of these translations, they are accurate, you wouldn’t say they aren’t technically good, but somehow so less, the translator didn’t feel the book. It’s a bit mystical.

Duyan: First, it must be beautiful.

Steger: DeepL level of translation.

Pogačar: Also I go for flare. It needs to have something, je ne sais quoi, that is important. Accuracy, who cares in poetry actually. Personally I don’t care so much, is it a poplar or a maple. I mean for some poems it can be crucial, of course, but for most of poems, it’s all the same. Which tree, you choose the tree, just make it right.

Duyan: It depends why you think the poet chose the particular tree. If it’s for the sound, sometimes you choose something just for the sound, then the translator must go for the sound, not just for the meaning first.

Efe Duyan was born in Istanbul in 1981. As an internationally recognized poet, his poems have been translated to over twenty-five different languages. His debut novel Başka (Other) was published in 2022. The Behavior of Words was published earlier this year by White Pines Press in a translation by Aron Aji. As an advocate of freedom of expression and creative thinking, he has been an active cultural actor curating international events, workshops, and conferences. He currently teaches architecture in Riga.

Marko Pogačar was born in 1984 in Split, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). He has published seventeen books of poetry, essays and prose. The US edition of his selected poems, Dead Letter Office (The Word Works, Washington DC, 2020, translated by Andrea Jurjević) was a finalist for the National Translation Award. 

Aleš Šteger is a poet and prose writer from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Šteger’s books of poems and novels have been translated into over 20 languages. His latest book in English translation is Burning Tongues, New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2022).