November 2006

The EPC Scandinavian Portal is a project dedicated to enriching contacts and exchange between the innovative writing communities in Scandinavia (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland) and the English speaking countries, primarily the US.

The project will adopt a two-way approach where making Scandinavian poetry and other writing available in English (both as translations and work directly written in English) is not (only) seen as cultural export, but (also) as a way to engage foreign poets and writers (and readers) in what is happening at the local scene – to initiate dialogs, to facilitate influence given and taken, to allow for "cross-pollination" of forms, languages, methods of writing, and subject matters.

The Portal's central task is to facilitate and motivate new translations / English work from and by Scandinavian poets. The Portal will publish such work online, facilitate its publishing elsewhere, including in book form, and at the same time act as a gateway to other Scandinavian writing available in English online. While the emphasis is in the most innovative current writing, the Portal will strive to give as wide a picture as possible of various approaches, styles, forms, etc, used and adopted by Scandinavian poets, including historically.

The project / portal will also work in close cooperation with various Scandinavian organizations / literary events, such as the Audiatur festival in Norway, and the Helsinki Poetics Conference and the Kuopio Sound Poetry Seminar (in Finland), supporting these in inviting US and other English language poets and critics to participate. The EPC / Scandinavian Portal could also be actively involved in planning and organizing these and other events. It is our belief that the involvement and personal contacts thus made possible should and will eventually lead into more translations from US and other English language poetry into the Scandinavian languages as well. In this, as elsewhere, a close cooperation between the Portal and local online publications / resources, such as nypoesi.net (Norway), afsnit P (Denmark), and Tuli&Savu Net (Finland) is envisaged.

While strongly relying on the voluntary enthusiasm and motivation of the poets themselves, the project will also seek for financial support from various national and international organs, both in Scandinavia and elsewhere. The eventual financing will be primarily used for maintaining the portal, enabling larger translation projects, and to cover travelling and lodging costs in connection to various events, seminars, etc.

The EPC Scandinavian Portal project is committed to an idea of dialog / exchange, at the level of innovative poetry, between local and world languages – something we see as an essential precondition for a (new kind of) World Poetry to emerge. We start with the Scandinavian / English axis because of the de facto "lingua franca" role of the latter; eventually, this should be followed by initiatives vis-à-vis other widely spoken languages such as Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, and the various Asian languages.