Great launch of Colette Wittorski translations in Brittany

international | arts and media | news report Thursday July 08, 2010 19:12 by Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude - WWC westernwriters at eircom dot net Canavan House, Nuns Island, Galway 087.2178138

Sun and an Arthurian forest lend their ambiance to great evening

Irish poets and French painters and poets mingled at "L'Autre Rive" restaurant in Huelgoat, Berrien, Brittany, for launch and readings on Saturday, June 26th.

Musician, poet Colette Wittorski, and Fred Johnston

Brittany's Huelgoat is the ancestral home of the American writer, Jack Kerouac, and a plaque on a bridge commemorates him there. A place of inspiring beauty, complete with rockfall, lake and waterfall powering an ancient mill, it also boasts bee-cultivation, festivals, and open-air operas. Hardly surprising then that the "L'Autre Rive" restaurant and bookshop in the Arthurian woods around Berrien should be chosen as the spot, in hot sunshine, to host a reading by Colette Wittorski and Fred Johnston of Colette's original French poems and Johnston's translations, published by Lapwing poetry Press as 'Northern Lights,' and Colette Wittorski's partner, Scottish-born painter and sculptor Olivier Danican, presented an exhibition of new work. The restaurant garden was full of sculptures by various artists.

There was plenty of open-air music and one of the Western Writers' Centre directors, Brian Mooney who heads up the Clare Three-Leggéd Stool writers' group, read from translations of his own work made by Colette Wittorski. Other French poets arrived, including Eve Lerner, who will read in Galway and Clare shortly. The following day saw a poet's picnic.

"It was a wonderful setting and we are thankful to everyone who helped us," said Fred Johnston, whose collection of stories translated into French by writer and film-maker Kris ar Braz will be published by Terre de Brume in October of this year. "It was really quite marvellous, and a privilege to read out my translations. When Colette read recently in Galway on her first-ever visit to Ireland, let me just say that the poetry audience of that city did not bother to show its best side. It was really, in hindsight, quite disgraceful and should have sent out a strong message to anyone who had ears to hear that Galway has a very bitter taste in its cultural mouth. I have to admit that I was a touch less than politic recently when the city's university French department contacted me looking for information on how to organise an event! I'm getting too old for nonsense. By contrast, her reading in Glór in Ennis was marvellously attended and even her books solely in French began to disappear! We were all very happy for her."

Poet Brian Mooney reading at Huelgoat