Three Poets Between Languages: an Encounter in English, French and Scots

Thu 6 Feb

Join us for a fascinating exchange of personal experiences, ideas, poetic practices – and languages with multilingual and Scotland-based poets Elodie Laügt, Paul Malgrati and Anne Pia!

All three live, think and compose original poetry in English, French and Scots. Through a combination of readings and conversation, we will explore how language-switching can, like poetry itself, establish a creative zone in which to build alternative identities, open new worlds and enable positive encounters with perspectives that differ from our own. Along the way, we will question some assumptions, such as the notion of different languages as a barrier to understanding, and the idea that poetry is often ‘too complicated’.

The conversation will be chaired by Lorna Milne, Professor Emerita of French at the University of St Andrews and President of the Franco-Scottish Society of Scotland.

This event is organized as part of Languages Week Scotland.

Bookings

Elodie Laügt lives in Fife and teaches at the University of St Andrews. She grew up in Vence, in the south of France, and moved to the UK in 1997 before coming to Scotland in 2006. She writes in French and in English, sometimes braiding the two languages together. She practices self-translation as a way of responding to different developments in the poetic traditions of the two languages. ‘Naming Intervals’ features in How Do We Talk About Knives. Contemporary writers in Scotland on names, language and identity, edited by Samina Chaudhry, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir and Rebecca Sharp (Matezcnik Press, 2023). Her pamphlet Waterlines was published by Matecznik Press in 2024.


Paul Malgrati is a Franco-Scottish poet and Lecturer of Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands. His poems in the Scots language have appeared in various journals and anthologies and were shortlisted in the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize. In 2022, these were published in Paul's debut collection, Poèmes Ecossais, the first book of poems in Scots by a non-native Anglophone. Alongside poetry, Paul has also written an academic monograph on Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics, 1914–2014: The Bard of Contention (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 


An internationally award-winning poet, essayist and translator, Anne Pia grew up with English and the Italian dialect of her grandmother, and now writes in English, French, Italian and Scots. Amongst her numerous publications, The Sweetness of Demons (Vagabond Voices, 2021) is a poetic versioning in English of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal with translations from the French, while Anne’s French poetry has also been published in Transitory (Luath Press, 2018). She is currently putting together a poetry pamphlet, based on the work of Georges Brassens, in Scots – a perfect pairing with the Auvergnat culture, sound and language of his poems and songs. Anne also contributes in many other ways to literary culture across languages, for example as an invited member, since 2022, of the Saltire judging panels for the Scottish National Book Awards. 

London