Earlier research has shown that translation holds the potential to combine close reading and critical authorship practices. But despite that, translation has occupied a marginal position as a creative writing practice in classrooms. Through practice-based research involving the students, the translators and the authors of the translated poems, the paper demonstrates how mistranslation and open response activities on one end of the translation spectrum can be used as exercises of rewriting to incorporate creative writing practice in an English language learning classroom in a non-anglophone context. This paper demonstrates how translation can be used as an exercise to encourage creative writing in students through a play of the strategies of derivation, deviation and self-expression