Found in Translation

Performed by Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare, Found in Translation is the result of an attempt by the three writers to take up the challenge of the Univocalism – a poem written using only one type of vowel and one of the many constraints used by the bizarre writing movement, The OULIPO, who were a small group of leading French poets and mathematicians who flooded their work with rules and restrictions as a way of breaking into their subconscious minds.

Ross Sutherland was born Edinburgh in 1979 and now works as a writer, poet, freelance journalist and a tutor in creative writing. Described by the Scotsman as “sublimely twisted” he was included in the Times’s list of Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008. Ross has co-written eight live literature productions, including the critically acclaimed Poetry Boyband, which was Time Out Critic’s Choice of the Year 2005. He has four productions touring in 2009 including Found in Translation, Infinite Lives, The Dead That Never Lived and The Shallowing Shovel. A regular at Port Eliot and Glastonbury, Ross’s debut solo collection of poems Things To Do Before You Leave Town was published in January 2009.

Joe Dunthorne is a writer and poet and his debut novel Submarine is published by Hamish Hamilton. His poetry has been published in Poetry Review, Magma, New Welsh Review and the Manhattan Review. His short stories have been read on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and published in Vice magazine.

Tim Clare is a writer, stand-up poet and musician. His autobiographical book about thwarted ambition and growing up, We Can’t All Be Astronauts, will be published by Ebury Press in mid-2009. He has written for the Guardian and the Times, and has performed his work on Radio 1 and 2. In 2005 he presented the Channel 4 series How To Get A Book Deal. He’s a regular performer at many festivals including Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading, and Latitude.

The three will perform Found in Translation at this year’s Port Eliot Festival, a stand-up poetry show described by the Londonist as “a recipe for madness.”

“Part lecture, part poetry reading, and 100% brilliant, Found in Translation is a work of pure, unadulterated, genius.”
The Daily Info

“A fantastic writer—his prose contains both the bumbling charm of Jon Ronson and the splenetic bile of Charlie Brooker.”
The Bookseller on Tim Clare

“It is remarkable how much genuine life and surprise Joe Dunthorne brings to his perfectly pitched debut novel Submarine.”
Submarine review in the Observer

“In his free-wheeling lyricism, caustic wit and brilliantly surreal turn of image, Sutherland is a truly contemporary original. His poetry rejuvenates techniques as disparate as collage, memoir, sound experiment and formal appropriation in vigorous but finely wrought lines. Refreshingly fearless and bleakly funny, Things To Do Before You Leave Town collects works that shock and delight in performance but reveal their true depth on the page.”
Luke Kennard on Ross Sutherland

Links:

• Tim Clare writes in the Guardian: ‘Everyone does not have a novel inside them’
• Found in Translation review in the Daily Info

Video:

Watch a clip from Found in Translation: