Translation was central to Edwin Morgan’s activity as a poet. His Collected Translations (Carcanet, 1996) is as voluminous as his own Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990) and his lifelong commitment to making the voices of foreign cultures ring out in English and Scots was never a secondary preoccupation. During the years he wrote many of his most popular and enduring collections he was just as busy translating from a vast array of world languages.
In alternate years to the Poetry Award, the Edwin Morgan Trust sponsors biennial translation events that will bring some of the world’s leading foreign language poets to Scotland to participate in workshops and readings alongside Scottish poets.
In November 2025, the fifth edition of this series brought together four poets – Beth Frieden, Iva Jevtić, David Kinloch, and Milan Šelj – working across Scottish Gaelic, Scots, and Slovene for a week of translation workshops in Edinburgh, hosted by the Scottish Poetry Library and facilitated by Ken Cockburn. The poets translated each other’s work and explored the cultural and linguistic contexts that inform their writing, visited the Edwin Morgan Archive at the University of Glasgow, and presented their work at an event hosted by the Centre for Comparative Literature and Translation at the University of Glasgow.
In June 2026, Beth, Iva, David, Milan and Ken will be joined by Barbara Korun in Slovenia for another series of workshops. The group will participate in a reading and a conversation about translating minoritised languages at the Museum of Slovenian Language in Stanjel, and open a literary festival in Ljubljana.
This two-part exchange has been organised with and supported by the Centre for Slovenian Literature and the Slovenian Book Agency.
Participating Poets
Ken Cockburn is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh, where he worked for many years at the Scottish Poetry Library. He was the first writer-in-residence at the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, and was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008.
Beth Frieden is an American poet who writes in English and Scottish Gaelic. Her debut pamphlet, Acair san talamh / Anchor in the land, was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2023. She received a New Scottish Writer’s Award in 2021 from the Scottish Books Trust, and was in the 2023-24 cohort of Genesis Emerging Writers.
Iva Jevtić is a poet, translator, and literary theorist. Her first poetry collection Težnost [Gravity] was published by Apokalipsa in 2005. In 2023, KUD Zrakogled published her second poetry collection Milost [Grace], which won the 2023 Veronika Prize for best poetry collection.
David Kinloch is the author of six collections of poetry, most published by Carcanet Press, the latest being Greengown: New and Selected Poems. In 2022, David received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in recognition of his contribution to poetry.
Barbara Korun has published seven poetry collections thus far and has received several Slovenian and international awards and nominations, including the Regina Coppola Award (2016) and the Mira Award (2020). Her work has been published in 15 standalone book translations and in over 60 anthologies in more than 20 languages.
Milan Šelj is an award-winning Slovenian poet and translator. He is the author of five poetry collections: Darilo [Gift] (2006), Kristali soli [Crystals of Salt] (2010), Gradim gradove [Building Buildings] (2015), Slediti neizgovorjenemu [Tracing the Unspoken] (2018), and Jezik je ključ [Language Is the Key] (2023).
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