"Poetry Here and Now Translation" Seminar as part of the "Literature – A New Chapter series"

Poetry Here and Now is a translation seminar initiative in which acclaimed Polish and Georgian poets will meet in person to translate each other’s works into their native languages, with the support of translators Magdalena Nowakowska and Katia Wolters. The result will be a bilingual publication containing both the original poems and their translations. This initiative accompanies the April edition of the Tbilisi Book Fair.

Polish participants include Krystyna Dąbrowska, Jacek Dehnel, and Dariusz Sośnicki. On the Georgian side, the project involves Rati Amaglobeli, Lela Saniashvili, and Nini Eliashvili.

The translations produced during the seminar will be published in the form of a newspaper—both in format and content referencing the tradition of samizdat. The project will culminate in a public event featuring a joint reading and discussion of the poems, held at the Tbilisi Museum of Photography & Multimedia.

The seminar will take place from April 8–10, with the public presentation scheduled for April 11.
This initiative is the first collaboration of its kind between creators working in Polish and Georgian, opening a space for direct and vibrant exchange—both among the artists and between the semantic fields of their languages—making the project uniquely valuable.

Equally significant is the composition of the participant group: on both the Polish and Georgian sides, the poets are engaged with current social and political issues. The selected texts address themes such as war, the body as a space, and the individual in resistance to systemic repression.

Event partners: Fundacja Komos, Polish Institute in Tbilisi, PEN Georgia, Tbilisi Book Fair