As a teenager with overly vivid imagination I dreamt of having a book published. Writing has always accompanied me - from scientific publications, blogs, through poetry, hand-written letters and brain dump notes on napkins and scrap paper. Most of the writing I considered the only thing I did only for myself: especially poetry which had me engaged in an online art community since the age of 13, where I got to study literary analysis, style and history and observe the debuts of new great poets and writers for many years. The first time I showed it to the world, my spontaneously written four-liner won beer for all of my friends at a poetry jam event a friend from literature studies took me to.
First book published
I kept writing and the dream stayed fresh; my thoughts revolves around how I can make it serve something more than my personal needs. In 2016 I got involved with a non-profit related to my other fields of interest and education. One thing lead to another and I found myself talking to architects and designers involved in social change - people who found a way to take themselves off the focus of their career but shift it onto others. And I was amazed. After all it was exactly what initially made me choose this path! Together with the non-profit we prepared a book - 21 interviews with exceptional individuals, where most of the interviews were performed and edited by me and then required a hell of a lot of postproduction, DTP and publishing-related work from the founders. This was the year 2017, countless hours of hard work but it all went smoothly - we were so inspired and excited there were nights we couldn’t sleep, and kept discussing ideas. As we say in Poland: who wants something will look for methods, who doesn’t - will look for reasons.
The book was finally published in January this year and received a design award in the meantime. It was fully self-published by the foundation and the costs were covered by a donation from a company that believed in the idea and decided to sponsor it. Now I'm holding it in my hands and it’s hard to believe I got a chance to contribute to it.
Literature of Latvia
As some of you may know, I spent some time of my life in Latvia and studied the Latvian language and literature as my second degree. It made me realize that despite the small geographical distance between our countries, we have very few literary connections. There are only a couple of translated books of poetry from Latvian into Polish and close to none of them are contemporary! It should be noted that each month in Latvia I attended poetry slams, and the literature studies at the Latvian University were very advanced, which gave me a huge possibility of insight into the topic. This is how I found Karlis Verdins, whose most recent book of prose poetry I selected to translate as my thesis. It was a suicidal decision – before I went to Latvia my understanding of the language was elementary and I wasn’t aware it was a jump into the deep end of the pool. I worked on the book in the year 2016 - I read more about the poet than he knows about himself, found as many of his analytical works as possible, studied the history of Latvian literature and culture as hard as I could to be as much immersed in all the references. I attended seminars and workshops with translators, which kept me motivated as I encountered difficulties, when I heard that translators with 20 years of experience struggle with the same ideas! Last but not least - each evening, for hours, I was writing, reading out loud, rewriting, looking for the right word for days, reading in both languages, comparing, reading to Poles, reading to Latvians, having it read out loud by Latvians and Poles... I exchanged emails with the poet to understand it, I over-analyzed it, absorbed his experience writing and translating. And I loved how I wanted his words to be safe under my fingertips.
I finished studies with honors and at the end of my stay I was a fluent Latvian speaker on a daily basis and professionally, as I worked there which forced me to use technical terms.
It was a year later that I realized I need to finally show the work to the world and try to find a publisher.
Where big ideas turn into disappointment
As you can imagine turning literature into the physical instance of a book requires a lot of prozaic actions and factors. I did my research first, and looked for a publisher who doesn’t make a fuss about publishing poetry. There weren’t really that many options – I contacted about fifteen and received three responses:
- It’s a pity, but the market is too chimeric for niche poetry.
- If the poet has nothing against it, we can publish 5 translations in our on-line publication.
Everything, including in the arts, is about business. But finally… - Let’s do this.
We exchanged e-mails for a couple of months, trying to figure out ways of funding the publishing. I’m glad I found a person who truly believes in the work, but because it is niche which doesn't make it easy to find funding. The cost is estimated to approximately $1000. We sent out multiple proposals – silence ever since. So now my goal is to reactivate the search and find ways of getting it published: research options, re-send proposals, try to think outside the box.
So wish me luck and I will keep you posted!
And let me know if you have any ideas!