Poetic Encounters: Poetry Collection Launch at IUS
On Wednesday, May 8, 2024, Ms. Mehtap Özer-Isović, MA and Asst. Prof. Dr. Vesna Suljić organized a launch of their latest translation project – “Close Encounters of the Poetic Kind” – a three-language poetry collection of poems created by poets from Australia and New Zealand.
Besides poems, the book contains insightful and inspiring comments provided by the authors about their writing process and also about Australian and New Zealand people, culture, customs and nature. The book launch was moderated by Asst. Prof. Dr. Dženana Bračković, one of the book reviewers. Two reviewers from Australia joined via video link – Ms. Tuba Boz, lecturer from Melbourne RMIT, and Ms. Mersija Ilić, author from Sydney. They provided their comments about the book – from the choice of themes and topics to the quality of translation into Bosnian and Turkish – and recommended it to students and teachers to use it as a multifold resource for students of language, literature, cultural or translation studies.
One of the poets whose poem was translated into Turkish by Mehtap Özer-Isović and into Bosnian by Dr. Vesna Suljić also attended the event via video link. It was Jennifer Compton from New South Wales, Australia. She read her poem “Epicentre” which was inspired by an earthquake she had experienced while she was living in New Zealand. The audience could enjoy listening to poems written by Dan Disney – “To the Reader”, Alan Jefferies – “The Truth”, Reihana Robinson – “If you poison us, do we not die”, and by the Indigenous Australian poetess, Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt – “Lost Mother”.
All poems were presented and read in English, Bosnian and Turkish. As the title of the collection suggests, Mehtap Özer-Isović and Dr. Vesna Suljić, the editors and translators of this collection of poetry, wanted to bring Australian and New Zealand poets closer to this part of the world and spread their messages that in the essence we are all human beings, Earthlings, with similar problems, joys and sorrows, and that only geographical distances across the oceans and continents separate us from each other. The event was attended by IUS staff and students.