Writers and translators often maintain that their real home is language. In whatever tongues they speak or create, wherever they live or travel, ultimately, their only real home is language—a both rational and irrational miracle which helps us to recreate reality. To give voice to, and tell of their own experience and that of the world through poetry, prose, dramaturgy and translations.

The English author Virginia Woolf considered that a writer does not need many worldly goods in order to create—just money and a room of one’s own. This need is more keenly felt in today’s society, where the writer, like everyone else, is caught up in the nervous flow of everyday life. It is therefore no wonder that creative centres for writers and translators have become so highly valued and well-loved, particularly in Europe. For a moment you are away from your usual existence, away from the everyday and life’s responsibilities and can allow yourself the pleasure of being a full-time writer. You recreate reality and are together with your colleagues: brothers and sisters in language. You feel calm in the knowledge that in this rational and pragmatic world there are many others like you who devote themselves to the difficult, beautiful and exclusive task that is working with language.

The Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, Gotland; Ledig House in America; Casa Pantrovà in Switzerland; the Writers' and Translators’ House in Käsmu, Estonia and many, many others are now joined by the Ventspils Writers' and Translators’ House in Latvia.

Here on the vast world map is another place where language lives, where experiences meet, where each tells the same ancient mystery—of life, death and love—in their own language. The historic former town hall, located on the square between the renewed city library and the Lutheran church, has been remodelled as a Centre for Writers and Translators, giving the opportunity for writers from around the world to meet and work.

Although the writers studies have modern facilities, they have not lost a touch of history and are ready to extend a warm welcome to language travellers. The inner garden and sauna create a feeling that the process of writing has some connection to faith, divine revelations and succumbing to sinful joys.

Here everything is in one place—loneliness and conversation, work and respite, daily bread and wine.

When weary of work, residents can go wandering around Ventspils—a well-maintained coastal city where in each house, street, yard and square, the past is just as important as the future. Having walked through a green park, the language traveller suddenly finds himself on the beach. He is free to go wherever his eye takes him, in one direction or the other—kilometres of beautiful, white sandy coastline will stretch far away. Just the sky, the sea on one side, a strip of green forest on the other, and the walker who treads the sand and opens his mind to the creative moment.

Who knows, perhaps this century’s most beautiful literary stories of life and love will be created right here, at the Ventspils House of Language. Let them be!

Nora Ikstena


HALMA grant holder Urs Faes wrote about his stay at the International Writers' and Translators' House. His essay is available in the European Library of the HALMA network.