Translating Slam and Spoken Word Poetry. Translation through Performance
Poetry slam and spoken word are global phenomena that often require translation for international events. Artists usually perform in their own language and employ various strategies to make their poems comprehensible to the audience. This paper aims to report and analyze the different experiences of...
Gardado en:
| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/clo, |
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| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Cahiers de littérature orale
2026
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| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Poetry slam and spoken word are global phenomena that often require translation for international events. Artists usually perform in their own language and employ various strategies to make their poems comprehensible to the audience. This paper aims to report and analyze the different experiences of translation of performance poetry that I have observed both as a scholar and as a spoken word artist. One of the most interesting strategies is “translation through performance”: a collaborative practice for a multilingual show. The projects “One Poetic Voice” and “Sturm und Poetry” involved two groups of poets of different nationalities who created a bilingual live performance that interweaves the source poem and its translation with the idea of conveying the bodily intention, tempo, rhythm, and the connection with the audience beyond the linguistic barriers. With reference to Meschonnic’s concept of signifiance, using tools developed by theater translation studies and interviews with the artists, I will analyze a bilingual performance by poets Giuliano Logos and Jesko Habert, to point out some choices for translating the gestural and sound dimension of their poems. |
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