Multilingual World Literature in Swansea: over 30 authors, artists and musicians and more than 17 languages in a unique event series. Meet world writers & performers in events on Friday evenings in April, May & June.
For 3 months, local cross-language writers and artists from around the world will be performing.
Wales PEN Cymru and Swansea University’s Cross-Language Dynamics research project present: Volcano Fridays
Our guests will perform in English and their other languages, chat with the audience, and present a chosen piece of music and an image or clip on the theme of ‘languages and communities’Wales PEN Cymru and Swansea University’s Cross-Language Dynamics research project present: Volcano Fridays
- Launch: Friday 7 April, following the the AGM (starting 6pm) of Wales PEN Cymru
- Weekly events. Doors open at 7.30pm. Performances start at 8pm.
- Venue: Volcano Theatre: 27-29 High Street, Swansea, SA1 1LG. Continues until June.
- Bar & home-cooked multi-continental food.
- Live music curated by Huw Dylan Owen, author of Sesiwn yng Nghymru.
- Free entry: a donation is requested for Wales PEN Cymru and Swansea’s refugee charities.
The most up-to-date information can be found at the VolcanoFridays website: https://volcanofridays.wordpress.com/ which is available in an incredible 16 languages, or their facebook page.
Multilingual World Literature in Swansea – Friday 7 April to Friday 23 June:
Friday 7 April – Chinese, Welsh & Arabic
Yang Lian 杨炼 – multi-award winning Chinese poet, exiled in 1989, now based in Berlin. He performs in Chinese, English and ‘Yanglish’. “Poetry is our unique mother tongue“
Ifor ap Glyn – Welsh-language poet, television producer and presenter, and National Poet of Wales.
Amani Bakhiet اماني عمر بخيت – poet in Arabic, from Sudan and from Swansea.
Friday 14 April – Turkish, Kurdish & Farsi
Novelist and dramatist Meltem Arıkan with actor and director Pınar Öğün. Their play ‘Mi Minor’ was accused of “rehearsing” the 2013 Gezi Park protests
Now they are based in Cardiff. Their play Enough is Enough is touring Wales in February, with a special performance on 8 April at the Millennium Centre, Cardiff.
Poet, translator from/into Turkish, and human rights activist Caroline Stockford.
Swansea artist, from Iran: Amir a Nejad امیر آقا نژا
Friday 21 April – French, Russian, Pidgin, Welsh & ‘FYP’
Eric Ngalle Charles – Cameroon-born poet, based in Cardiff. As a teenager, Eric spent 2 dangerous years in Russia, thanks to unscrupulous traffickers. His memoirs of those years will be published soon.
Rhys Trimble – renowned performance bardd / poet in Welsh
and English.
Edin Suljic – poet and film-maker from London, born in the Former Yugoslavia: he still speaks the vanished language of the Former Yugoslavian People.
Friday 28 April – Arabic, Polish & …
Poets and writers in many languages, including members of Swansea’s Poets on the Hill community writing group and the Hafan Books ‘Refugees Writing in Wales’ project.
Bashar Farahat بشار فرحات – Syrian doctor, poet and Amnesty International activist, from London.
Jeni Williams – Swansea poet, artist and teacher.
Bohdan Piasecki from Birmingham: Polish poet, performance artist, and translator.
Friday 05 May – Hindi, Kurdish, Turkish &…
Preti Taneja प्रीति तनेजा – novelist, poet, blogger, researcher from Cambridge. Her new novel We That Are Young is a retelling of King Lear in modern-day India.
Ali Sizer, Kurdish-Alevi musician and TV/radio presenter from Turkey,
living in Swansea.
Hannah Sabatia – poet from Swansea.
Friday 12 May – French, Kannada & …
Marie Darrieussecq – best-selling controversial French novelist (Pig Games: A Novel of Lust and Transformation; All the Way; My Phantom Husband; and more). Also translator of Ovid, Joyce and Woolf.
Catherine Rodgers – Swansea University researcher on French feminist fiction.
Mamta Sagar – ಮಮತಾ ಸಾಗರ – Indian poet, playwright, world traveller and translator between Kannada and English.
Nia Davies – born in Sheffield, based in Swansea, learning Turkish, poet and editor of Poetry Wales.
Friday 19 May – Italian, Somali, Krio & …
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel pioneered Italian postcolonial literature with her memoir of migration, translated as Far from Mogadishu.
Luca Paci, poet, translator, lecturer and activist with the Italian Cultural Centre Wales.
Alhaji Sheku Kamara – from Sierra Leone, from Swansea: poet and creative writing teacher.
Mike Jenkins – poet and storyteller of Merthyr Tydfil (often in Merthyr dialect) 
Friday 26 May – German, Polish & …
Jörg Bernig, multi-award winning poet, novelist and essayist; he lives near Dresden and has written several stories set in Swansea – in English.
Wioletta Greg [Grzegorzewska], best-selling Polish novelist, poet, editor and translator; she has lived in England since 2006.
Friday 2 June: NO SHOW
Friday 9 June: Swansea Poetry Slam at Cinema & Co
Friday 16 June – Arabic, Welsh, Spanish & …
Maram al-Massri مرام مصري – poet, born in Syria, based in France. She has published several books of poetry in Arabic and in English, French, Italian and Spanish translations, among other languages.
Menna Elfyn – celebrated poet in Welsh, President of Wales PEN Cymru.
Humberto Gatica – poet and prize-winning photographer from Chile, from Swansea.
Sharon Morris – Welsh poet and artist from London, artist in residence at Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Gallery.
Friday 23 June – Spanish, French & …
Educational psychologist José Cifuentes has lived in Swansea since 1977 when he came as a political refugee from Chile. He has written his memoir of the Allende and Pinochet years in Spanish. His daughter Rocio (director of EYST) translated the text into English and also prepared the Spanish text for publication.
Patricia Rodriguez Martinez Jones – researcher and translator of Afro-Colombian poetry, as well as Swansea University’s Director of Interpreting Studies and Employability.
Zoë Skoulding from Bangor – poet and French poetry translator, working with Jean Portante.
Jean Portante, born in Luxembourg, is a prize-winning francophone novelist, poet and playwright and a translator from English, Spanish, Italian and German.
