The cacophony of voices at Olympia London yesterday reminded me why translation remains one of literature’s most mysterious arts. Wandering through the London Book Fair’s sprawling pavilions, I found myself gravitating toward conversations that unfolded in multiple languages simultaneously—publishers negotiating rights in rapid-fire German, authors discussing character motivations in accented English, editors debating narrative structures while switching fluidly between French and Italian.
The Literary Translation Centre’s seminar on “Decolonising Eastern Europe: Found in Translation” proved particularly illuminating. As writers and translators from post-Soviet contexts gathered to explore questions of linguistic resistance and cultural reclamation, I realized how rarely we acknowledge the political dimensions of language choice in creative work. Each word choice becomes an act of cultural translation, each sentence a small bridge spanning the gulf between inherited and acquired vocabularies.
I found myself seated beside Lydia Grigorieva, a Ukrainian poet whose work synthesizes photography with verse in ways that challenged my assumptions about genre boundaries. During the panel discussion on “bridge translation” and decolonising literary practices, her insights into how displacement can become a source of creative liberation rather than loss resonated deeply. “Language carries emotional architecture,” she explained during our coffee break, “but so does light, composition, the space between elements on a page.”
Lydia’s perspective on displacement proved equally revelatory. Having worked extensively with the BBC World Service and Russian media, she navigates multiple cultural contexts with remarkable fluidity. “The question isn’t whether you belong to one tradition or another,” she told me, “but how you transform the tension between them into something generative.” Her observation resonated deeply as I consider the Russian-British duality threaded throughout “Anonymous Letters.”
Our conversation meandered through discussions of resistance through language, the challenges of reclaiming cultural narratives from colonial frameworks, and how certain concepts refuse transfer between imperial and indigenous worldviews. The panel’s exploration of “bridge translation”—creating pathways between decolonized understanding rather than reproducing colonial interpretations—seemed to mirror what we were doing in real time. When I mentioned my own attempts at poetry—fragments that emerge between prose projects, capturing moments too ephemeral for narrative—Lydia encouraged me to consider how verse might complement rather than compete with my fiction. Her work combining photography with poetry, particularly her pieces for the BBC World Service, exemplifies precisely this kind of multi-modal creative practice.
The afternoon session featured readings by poets whose work actively challenges Western literary frameworks. Listening to these voices—each carrying traces of suppressed languages, alternative ways of organizing thought—I was struck by how decolonization can become a source of creative expansion rather than limitation. The panel’s focus on post-Soviet literary contexts felt particularly relevant as I consider my own position writing from a Russian heritage within British literary landscapes.
Walking back through Kensington afterward, I reflected on how my own writing has been unconsciously shaped by this linguistic liminality. The psychological landscapes I’m drawn to explore—fractured identities, permeable boundaries, the collapse of certainties—perhaps emerge naturally from the experience of navigating between post-Soviet memories and British present, between inherited and acquired vocabularies.
“Bridge translation is not about reproducing colonial interpretations but creating pathways toward decolonized understanding—new frameworks rather than inherited limitations.” (Lydia’s parting observation, which continues to resonate)
— Writer Anastasia Dubinina