DUAL Poetry Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Poetry Translation Centre
The Poetry Translation Centre is dedicated to translating contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Each week we bring you a new poem podcast from one of the world's greatest living poets, in both the original language and in English translation. To find out more about our work, please visit www.poetrytranslation.org. The Poetry Translation Centre is funded by Arts Council England.
Join the PTC's Partisipation Producer Bern Roche Farrelly and one of our Queer Digital Residency translators Jon Herring for a wide ranging conversation about getting started in translation, the interplay between linguistics and transition and , of course, a discussion of queer readings of DC superhero. Who else remembers Chris O'Donnell's robin?
But wait... what was the Queer Digital Residency? The Poetry Translation Centre (UK) and the Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina) partnered together to run a Queer Digital Residency programme to support two queer-identifying translators in 2022 and 2023. We worked with one translator based in Argentina, Paula Galindez, translating from English into Spanish and one translator based in the UK, Jon Herring, translating from Spanish into English. During the residency the translators received tailored seminar support, led translation workshops, produced a new body of translations, and generated videos reflecting on the translation process. They also both recorded podcast interviews, so, watch out for our Paula Galindez chat coming soon.
Right now in April 2022 the PTC has just released our latest World Poets Series Book ‘To Love a Woman’ by Argentinian poet Diana Bellessi, translated by Leo Boix. So this week we are taking a little thematic inspiration and playing you four poems about desire written by female poets. You will hear 'Make Me Drunk with Your Kisses' by Maria Clara Sharupi Jua from Equador, translated from Shuar by Nataly Kelly and The Poetry Translation Workshop, 'Cat Lying in Wait' written in Dari by Shakila Azizzada from Afghanistan and translated by Zuzanna Olszewska with the poet Mimi Khalvati, 'The Lost Button' by Fatena Al-Gharra from Palastine, translated from the Arabic by Anna Murison and Sarah Maguire and 'Taste' by Ash Lul Mounamd Yusif translated by Said Jama Hussein with Claire Pollard. Remember to do as the Somali women would at the live readings and chant along to the repeating lines.
Say it- "If he's not to your taste, he's just a blocked path!"
Today’s podcast is dedicated to the poetry of Georgian Poet Diana Anphimiadi. Thanks to our working relationship with the translator Natalia Bukia-Peters the PTC has been translating Georgian poetry since 2013 when two of Diana’s poems 'May Honey’ and ‘Tranquillity’ were translated at one of our collaborative workshops, then in 2018 Diana was part of our Georgian Poets tour alongside Salome Benidze.
Now the PTC with Bloodaxe Books has published Diana’s first full-length English Language collection entitled Why I no Longer Write Poems, with translations by Natalia Bukia-Peters and the UK poet Jean Sprackland. The book has received Creative Europe funding and a PEN translates award. Plus, Diana’s work was described as 'gorgeous, fabulising verse’ by Fiona Sampson in The Guardian
In her introduction, translator Natalia says: Diana Anphimiadi’s paternal roots lie in Pontus, a historically Greek region on the southern coast of the Black Sea that once stretched form central Anatolia to the borders oft he Colchis in modern-day Turkey. Her mother is Georgian,from the area known as Megrelia-Colchis, where the famous legends of the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts, Jason and Medea also originate. In this small area of the Caucasus, Georgian literature – and Georgian poetry, in particular, has always been of central importance and its legacy, the urgency of expression and narrative allusions, can be felt in Anphimaidi’s work
You will hear prayer before taking nourishment, one of several prayer-poems Diana has penned, Dance 3 / 4 time, not just a dance Diana tell us but an Erotic poem and Medusa on of serval poems where Anphidiadi gives voice to the women of Greek mythology.
Welcome to the Dual Poetry Podcast’s department of births deaths and marriages.
Reflecting our remit, the department of births deaths and marriages will be playing you three poems reflecting these three themes:
The Caesarean of Three Continents by Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde
Death of a princess by Gaarriye from Somalia &
the married woman by Adelaide Ivánova from Brazil
The start of the new year suggested a podcast about fresh beginnings, renewal and rebirth. But this, of course, is impossible as all poems are about death, or if not death, perhaps poems are simply about poetry, about form.
The idea that all poems are about death comes from Tom Boll, a Spanish Translator and lecturer who was once my boss at the PTC. He found that picking a poem to read at a wedding was near impossible because even love poems contain within them the seed of love’s withering.
It’s easy to think there is meaning on one side and form on the other but its never so neat and a poem tends to meld these two stands lightly together like the curing phosphate backbones of a DNA double helix. As the translation process itself often demonstrates, you ask a question about form and you will get an answer about meaning.
The 30th parallel north links several countries represented in the PTC archive, Mexico, Morocco, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan Pakistan, India and China even glancing off the far south of the Japanese archipelago, sweeping between Tanega-shima and Sumanose-Jima, while totally avoiding Europe. Just like the PTC.
So to close up 2021 this podcast is a poetry collection of the 30th parallel north, featuring poems from the PTC audio archive, including:
Entropy in Wiesbaden by David Huerta From Mexico,
In Vain I Migrate by Abdellatif Laâbi from Morocco,
The Boat That Brought Me by Azita Ghahreman from Iran
Kabul by Shakila Azizzada &
Stay by Yu Yoyo
These poems are literally from around the world, points on a line that encircles the globe but the texts themselves shrug off such simple plotting, we will hear a Mexican reflecting on a German City, an Iranian arriving in Sweden, a Moroccan in lifelong exile, a Chinese poet dreaming of betrayal in Vietnam, and Kabul remembered from afar by a poet living in the Netherlands. This all reminds us that people, and poems for that matter, are not static pin drops on a map. People move about, meanings migrate, homes are lost and found.
So to round out the year, a year with less travel and exploration than maybe we would have all liked, 5 poems from the 30th parallel north.
This week the Dual Poetry Podcast is focusing on nature poems. In the shadow of the climate emergency poems about the natural world take on a new significance, so during the second week of the 2021 COP 26 conference in Glasgow we consider now contemporary poets are taking on and reshaping the traditional subject of nature.
Setting aside red roses, summer flowers, floral metaphors about love or odes to the glories of the countryside, rather we are looking to nature as a site of political encounter.
So on this weeks podcast our poems in Turkish, Somali and Chinese are offered in that spirit, as a call to encounter nature as a radical alternative where the vibrancy and resiliency of nature with its cycles of regrowth and complex balancing of interwoven diverse systems offer an alternative to a destructive capitalistic model of endless growth driving towards an unsupportable monoculture.
You will hear I know the unspoken by Bejan Matur translated from the Turkish by Canan Marasligil with Jen Hadfield, Our land by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf, translated by Said Jama Hussein
Maxamed Xasan ‘Alto’ with Clare Pollard and Empty Town by Yu Yoyo, translated by Dave Haysom with AK Blakemore.
You can read Leo Boix blog Diana Bellessi: Ecological Subjectivity and the Poetics of Biodiversity on the PTC website. In fact you can read it in English or Spanish.
Born in 1990, Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo had already begun to earn critical attention before she turned sixteen, publishing dozens of poems in Poetry, Poetry Monthly and other prestigious publications in China. She studied business management and accounting in university, but never gave up on her long-standing passion for poetry and finally embraced her life’s calling upon graduation. She is now seen as a representative voice among the post-90’s generation, especially known for her mature voice and subtle treatment of modern femininity. She has two collections published in China Seven Years (2012) and Me as Bait (2018)
Dave Haysom a literary translator and editor who has been living in Beijing since 2007. He first started publishing translations online at spittingdog.net in 2012. He has also written articles and essays on contemporary Chinese literature for publications such as Words Without Borders and China Dialogue. His portfolio is online at spittingdog.net.
A K Blakemore is the author of two full-length poetry collections - Humbert Summer published by Eyewear in 2015) and Fondue from Offord Road Books in 2018) - and one pamphlet, pro ana with if a leaf falls in 2016). She is the author of The Manningtree Witches which won the Desmond Elliot Prize 2021.
Dual Poetry Podcast is taking a look at Afghan poetry, with five poems from the PTC archive. We made this recording in September 2021, weeks after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Western forces. There is worldwide concern for poets, scholars and intellectuals still in the country, many of whom have publicly supported universal human rights and been openly critical of the Taliban
The world recognises the importance of classical poets who hailed from this part of the world, towering figures like Rumi, and now there are important contemporary poets there that needs further recognition, support and shelter. Towards the end of the podcast, we will be talking about what you can do to help.
All of these poems are in Dari, the regional variation of Persian that has developed in that part of the world. However, there are two official languages in Afghanistan, the second being Pashtu, spoken by ethnic Pashtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sadly, we do not have any audio recordings of Pashtu poems to play to you but you can find translated Pashtu poetry of the PTC website.
As ever we would like to thank Arts Council England and our donors for their continued support. Thank you for listening, please tell your brilliant poetry loving friends and inspirational relatives about the Dual Poetry Podcast and repost, rate and review.
Born in the remote Khojand province of Tajikistan in 1964, Farzaneh Khojandi is widely regarded as the most exciting woman poet writing in Persian today and has a huge following in Iran and Afghanistan as well as in Tajikistan, where she is simply regarded as the country's foremost living writer. Her frequently playful and witty poetry draws on the rich tradition of Persian literature in an often subversive and humorous way.
Khojandi was translated by Narguess Farzad, Senior Lecturer, Persian Studies, at SOAS and Chair of Centre for Iranian Studies WITH the UK poet Jo Shapcott, who has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition.
Persian poetry is rightly famed for the richness of its heritage and many classical Persian poets, such as Rumi and Hafez, are famous across the world. But little is known about how contemporary Persian-language poets have continued to enrich and enliven their tradition, a gap that the PTC sought to fill in its early days translating Persian poets working within the local variations of Dari spoken in Afghanistan, Farsi from Iran and Tajik from Tajikistan.
On today’s episode, we are travelling again to Mexico to spend some time with the work of Coral Bracho, winner of the Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000.
The PTC first published Bracho’s work in 2008 when she was part of our Mexican Poets Tour along with Victor Teran and David Hurta. Her work was translated by Tom Boll with the poet Katherine Pierpoint.
Bracho’s early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of the artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of world. Her poems have been seen as part of a neo-baroque trend in Latin American literature and in 1996 her work was included in the definitive anthology of contemporary neo-baroque writing from Latin America.
Neo-baroque writing can be seen as the foundational literary movement of Latin America, with writers taking on the ornate literary and artistic styles of a 'transplanted' European Baroque as a way of disrupting more classical orderly forms of writing.
Today’s poems are Of Their Eyes Adorned with Crystal Sands, which sounds neo-baroque and Touches Its Depths and Is Stirred Up, a title that doubles as a good working definition of poetry itself.
This week we are looking at the work of Abdellatif Laâbi, who is widely acknowledged to be Morocco's greatest living poet. This week the PTC publishes My Mother’s Language featuring a selection of Laâbi’s poems originally written in French with translations into English by the noted Poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely, who has just become the editor of Poetry London Magazine.
In his introduction to My Mother’s Language Naffis-Sahely details Abdellatif Laâbi’s biography, living through the end of French rule in Moroccan, then the oppressive 'Years Of Lead' that saw many dissidents and intellectuals imprisoned or disappeared. Laâbi himself was imprisoned for 8 years between 1972 and 1980, during his captivity he was tortured and deprived of medical care. Five years after his release Laabi moved to France, where he continues to live.
This week’s poems are 'My Mother’s Language', which lends its title to the new collection and 'The Earth Opens and Welcomes You' the last poem in the collection.
To get your copy of My Mother’s Language, with an afterword by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, directly from the PTC online store, for just £7 + P&P, head to poetrytranslation.org/shop.
Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. She now lives in the Netherlands and writes in both Dari and Dutch. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely addressed by women poets writing in Dari.
After working on the transitions with the cultural anthropologist Zuzanna Olszewska, the poet Mimi Khalvati said of Azizzada:
She is a very musical poet, tender and intimate, but also uncompromising in her political poems, and sometimes surreal – a poet of range and courage. Many of the poems, or parts of them, were relatively straightforward to translate and, perhaps because of the European influence, seemed to slip happily into English.
Shakila’s voice is not as adorned as some poetry in Farsi that I have read, and is idiomatic and sometimes humorous or satiric.
Don’t forget to like, review, recommend and subscribe to support the Dual Poetry Podcast. You can find more translated poems, articles about translation and culture, as well as our upcoming program over on our internet home poetrytransation.org.
With his work translated and anthologized around the world, Víctor Terán is the preeminent living poet of the Isthmus Zapotec. He was born in 1958. His work has been published extensively in magazines and anthologies throughout Mexico. Since 2000, he has also appeared in anthologies in Italy and the United States and he is a three-time recipient of the national fellowship for writers of indigenous languages,
The PTC translated Victor Teran first in 2010 when he was part of our Mexican Poets tour, alongside Spanish language poets Coral Bracho, David Huerta. Victor Teran was translated by David Shook, who has gone on to translate over a dozen books from Spanish and Isthmus Zapotec and has produced short literary documentaries and video poems in locations including Bangladesh, Burundi, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea.
This week we are bringing you two poems in from a series by the Georgian poet Salome Benidze, The Story of Flying and The Story of the poor. Salome was one of two Georgian poets who toured the UK with the PTC in 2018 alongside Diana Amphidiadi. Benidze’s poems were translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters with the UK poet Helen Mort and we published a chapbook of her poems called I wanted to ask you.
In this episode of the podcast, we are looking at Hindi poetry. Late last year the PTC published two chapbooks in our World Poet Series featuring Hindi poets: The Cartographer by Mohan Rana and This Water by Gagan Gill.
The poems you hear on today’s podcast are by Mohan Rana who lives in Bath, England and writes deceptively simple poems circling metaphysical themes.
Today’s two poems are In Your Own Words and After Midnight by Mohan Rana translated by Lucy Rosenstein with the poet Bernard O'Donoghue.
You can buy our Hindi Poetry Set here: poetrytranslation.org/shop/hindi-poetry-set
You can donate to the PTC here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/support-us
In this podcast, we bring you poems that take the form of messages from afar, the poets are addressing loved ones but communicating to the reader as well, the implied distance between the writer and the addressee standing in for personal and emotional distance.
Kajal Ahmad was born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad began publishing her remarkable poetry at the age of 21 and has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish-speaking world. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian and now, for the first time, into English.
Noshi Gillani was born in Pakistan in 1964. The candour and frankness of her highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large poetry gatherings in Pakistan, Australia, Canada and the US. Unknown outside the Pakistani community, the translations here mark her introduction to an English-speaking audience.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
We start 2021 with two poets whose poems have narrative strands, one is a fairy tale complete with daemons and the other is a sketch of the life of an economic migrant who fears the host of his wife.
Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely adressed by women poets writing in Dari.
Mohammad Bagher Kolahi Ahari was born in 1950 in Mashhad, Khorasan. His first collection Above the Four Elements was published in 1977. He published six more collections of poetry. Kolahi has developed his distinct voice inspired by lyrical and elegiac traditions of Persian poetry combined with his story-telling talent. Many of Kolahi’s poems contain a narrative containing elements of folk tales and description of rural Khorasan. In his poems, he very often depicts the life and the stories of marginalized groups of the society like gypsies, petty criminals and labourers.
This week we bring you poems by Salome Benidze from Georgian & Azita Ghahreman from Iran.
Ghahreman's work was translated by the filmmaker Elhum Shakerifar with the poet Maura Dooley and Benidze's poems were brought into English by the translated Natalia Bukia-Peters working with the poet Helen Mort.
Both Salome Benidze and Azita Ghahreman lived through tumultuous times in their home countries and these political forces can be felt in their poetry. Their work reflects both personal stories and national narratives, looking at lost friends, lost parents and exile.
This month the PTC is offering a deal on our Resistance Poets book bundle, get four dual-language poetry books that embrace the idea of poets as activists for just £24: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/resistance-poets
Translated by Atef Alshaer with Paul Batchelor.
This October the PTC published 'Embrace' a dual-language Arabic and English collection of poems by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, who has been called one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation. This collection includes many new poems and was translated by Atef Alshaer with UK poet Paul Batchelor.
Listen to three poems from the collection in this podcast.
To get a copy of the book head to the PTC online shop: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/embrace
Listen to two poems from the Poetry Translation Centre Archive: 'Taste' by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf translated by Said Jama Hussein with poet Clare Pollard and 'He Tells Tales of Meroe' by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, translated by Atef Alshaer and Rashid El Sheikh with poet Sarah Maguire, selected for Black History Month.
DEALS
Our Black History Month bundle features So At One With You, an anthology of modern poetry in Somali and He Tells Tales of Meroe: Poems for the Petrie Museum by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan.
Buy it here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/black-history-month-bundle
ALSO use the code NAJWAN 2020 to get access to our Online Najwan Darwish ‘Embrace’ Launch event, a copy of the book plus postage and packaging all for £7: http://embrace-launch.eventbrite.com/
This week as part of the PTC’s Resistance Poets series we bring you two poems by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, a Sudanese poet who writes in Arabic.
'Poem of the Nile' was published in The London Review of Books one of the rare occasions the LRB has published poetry translated from Arabic and the first time they featured the work of an African poet.
'They Think I Am a King: Yes, I Am the King' is from a book of poems by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi inspired by the Petrie Museum’s collection of material from Meroe in Sudan. which was nominated for a Ted Hughes Award.
The PTC Resistance Poets season looks at poets as political activists. This selection brings together four poets who are unafraid to engage with the urgent political issues of our day, sometimes explicitly addressing inequity and tragedy were they find it, yet often simply holding a space for reflection and joy amidst dark times and chaos.
Get the Resistance Poets Book Bundle here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/resistance-poets
Currently, the PTC is looking at Resistance Poets whose work is unafraid to tackle political issues. This week we are bringing you two pomes by Afghan poet Reza Mohammadi who writes in Dari. These were translated for the PTC in 2012 by Hamid Kabir and the Northern Irish poet, novelist and screenwriter Nick Laird.
You can purchase the PTCs Reza Mohammadi’s dual-language Chapbook, containing 10 of his poems in the original Dari alongside the English translations as part of our Resistance Poets book deal.
The book bundle includes 4 books from poets hailing from Eritrea, Brazil, Sudan and Afghanistan reflecting on issues important to them and their culture, but echoing wider global concerns.
Order now from poetrytranslation.org/shop
Translator André Naffis-Sahely worked with Ribka Sibhatu for 10 years leading up to the publication of their PTC World Poet series book Aulò! Aulò! Aulò!
While Ribka translates her own poems from Tigrinya and Amharic into Italian, Andre translates her poems from Italian into English and works tirelessly promoting her work in the anglophone world.
In addition to her work as a lyric poet and human rights activist, Sibhatu has devoted a considerable amount of her creative energies to assembling and recording of Eritrea’s folkloric cannon which is then handed down through the ages in the form of Aulòs.
This podcast brings you Ribka reading her Italian translation of ‘To the Sycamore’ and the fable ‘How African spirits Were Born’ in Tigrinya with André Naffis-Sahely reading his English transitions.
This month the PTC is celebrating resistance poets looking at poets as activists and poetry a space for resistance Our resistance poets book bundle focuses on four writers including Ribka who are unafraid to engage with the urgent political issues of our day, sometimes explicitly addressing inequity and tragedy were they find it, yet often simply holding a space for reflection and joy amidst dark times and chaos.
To order this book bundle go to our online shop.
The PTC has just published Aulò! Aulò! Aulò! a collection of poems and fables by Ribka Sibhatu with translations by André Naffis-Sahely as part of our World Poet Series.
Ribka writes in Tigrinya and Amharic, two languages native to Eritrea as well as Italian and French. The poet calls her five languages her stepdaughters. She translates her own work into Italian and Andre, in turn, translates the Italian and English.
The collaboration has been going for a decade since André began translating her work in 2010. At that time Sarah Maguire, founder of the PTC, invited him to lead a series of workshops on Sibhatu’s poetry.
Ribka’s work includes short lyric poems and her more recent longer political works. Alongside her poetry Ribka has worked to collect and record the folkloric canon of the horn of Africa, a body of oral literature that was handed down for generations These stories are known as Aulòs, literally meaning:
Please give me permission, I have something to say in rhyme!
So today we will be playing you one poem and one fable so you can get a sense of the breadth of her work, this means it is a long 20-minute podcast. Enjoy.
Translated by Serafina Vick and Abigail Parry
This week's podcast brings together two poems from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias 2015 collection Hilo+Hilo / Thread+Thread. These poems were translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for the PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry.
You can find out more about the translation process on the PTC blog, were one of the translators Serafina Vick has written a piece called 'Mistrustful Trust - Musings on Translating Legna Rodriguez Iglesias'. Find it here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/articles/mistrustful-trust-musings-on-translating-legna-rodriguez-iglesias
'A little body are many parts' has been shortlisted for the first annual Derek Walcott Prize for a full-length book of poems published in 2019 by a living poet who is not a US citizen.
You can buy the shortlisted collections 'A little body are many parts' and 'the hammer and other poems' here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/derek-walcott-poetry-prize-shortlist-bundle
This week the podcast features two poems by Cuban poet Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, both from her 2013 collection Sucking The Stone. The first of these, The Law of Dynamics, sees the poet explaining to Galileo why he can't to the Macarena. (Why? Because it is 'a dance for Satyrs and other sex-mad creatures.') while the second poem, one of two in the collection to share the volumes name, Sucking The Stone, references Lapis Lazuli the semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue colour.
You can find more poems from Sucking The Stoneon the PTC's free online audio archive of Legana's poems: https://soundcloud.com/alittlebodyaremanyparts.
Also, the podcast announces details of our upcoming Online Tour with Eritrean poet and refugee-rights activist Ribka Sibhata. Find out more here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/events/series/ribka-sibhatu-tour
This week we have two poems by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias 'Farmer's Treasure' and 'An accumulation of dry matter that is slow after flowering but intensifies during the lactic phase' both from her collection Gimmer Spray.
The exceptional skill and formal dexterity that marks Rodríguez Iglesias’s work in Spanish has been expertly brought to life in English by Abigail Parry, an award-winning poet whose debut collection Jinx was published by Bloodaxe in 2018, working in collaboration with bridge-translator and writer Serafina Vick.
You can find our free online active of Legna's poems here: https://soundcloud.com/alittlebodyaremanyparts
A little body are many parts by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias and the hammer and other poems by Adelaide Ivanova have both shortlisted for the first-ever Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Get them both for just £15 here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/derek-walcott-poetry-prize-shortlist-bundle
Find our more about our online Ribka Sibhatu Tour mentioned in the podcast here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/events/series/ribka-sibhatu-tour
Contemporary Cuban poetry is as diverse and indefinable as contemporary poetry in any other country, but Legna does belong to a particular generation of poets. Generación O, formed mainly of poets born after 1975, is founded on the shared experience of growing up after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Cuba was launched into extreme deprivation. This week's two poems highlight Legna's use of humour.
The DUAL POETRY PODCAST is focusing on her work for the next few weeks as we release a free online audio archive of poems from her PTC collection 'A little body are many parts' you can explore the archive here: https://soundcloud.com/alittlebodyaremanyparts
'A little body are many parts' has been shortlisted for the first-ever Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Get our Derek Walcott Poetry Prize Shortlist Bundle for just £15.
The Cuban poet Legna Rodríguez Iglesias was born in Camagüey in central Cuba in 1984 and currently lives in Miami, Florida. As well as poetry she has written theatre, short stories, children’s books and a novel. Her poetry has been translated into Portuguese, German, Italian and English.
The DUAL POETRY PODCAST is focusing on her work for the next few weeks as we release a free online audio archive of poems from her PTC collection 'A little body are many parts'.
This week we are bringing you two poems 'The Day I' and 'Red Room' both originally published in her 2012 Spanish language collection The Perfect Moment.
'A little body are many parts' an overview of poems from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' career translated by Serafina Vick and Abigale Parry has been shortlisted for the first-ever Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.
Get our Derek Walcott Poetry Prize Shortlist Bundle for just £15: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/derek-walcott-poetry-prize-shortlist-bundle
The DUAL POETRY PODCAST continues with its focus on the Cuban writer Legna Rodríguez Iglesias who burst onto the Cuban literary scene with all the ferocity of a stampeding elephant aged 19.
This week we are bringing you two poems, Pure Jazz and Maggot People, that originated in her 2017 title Miami Century Fox, a collection of 51 Petrarchan sonnets.
Last year in partnership with Bloodaxe Books the PTC co-published 'A little body are many parts' an overview of poems from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias 8 Spanish language collections with translations by Serafine Vick and Abigale Parry and this year it was shortlisted for the first ever Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.
Get our Derek Walcott Poetry Prize Shortlist Bundle including both Legna's collection and the second shortlisted book published by the PTC 'the hammer and other poems' by Award-winning poet Adelaide Ivánova’s fro just £15.
This week's podcast brings you 'I must ask you' & 'Mad Dog Pack' both translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry.
The collection has been shortlisted for the first annual Derek Walcott Prize for a full-length book of poems published in 2019 by a living poet who is not a US citizen.
You can find out more about the translation process on the PTC blog, were one of the translators Serafina Vick has written a piece called 'Mistrustful Trust - Musings on Translating Legna Rodriguez Iglesias'. Find it here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/articles/mistrustful-trust-musings-on-translating-legna-rodriguez-iglesias
The Dual Poetry Podcast is (normally) one poem in two languages from the PTC. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week the Dual Poetry Podcast is breaking its form to bring you two poems rather than one. 'Thirty heads a day' & 'Graduate' were both translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for the PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry.
The collection has been shortlisted for the first annual Derek Walcott Prize for a full-length book of poems published in 2019 by a living poet who is not a US citizen.
You can find out more about the translation process on the PTC blog, were one of the translators Serafina Vick has written a piece called 'Mistrustful Trust - Musings on Translating Legna Rodriguez Iglesias'. Find it here.
The Dual Poetry Podcast is (normally) one poem in two languages from the PTC. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is by Shakila Azizzada from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Mimi Khalvati and then in Dari by Shakila herself.
Shakila has spent many years in the Netherlands and her poetry reflects both her Afghan heritage and her European influences. She also writes in Dutch and translates her own poetry both ways. She is a very musical poet, tender and intimate, but also uncompromising in her political poems, and sometimes surreal – a poet of range and courage. Many of the poems, or parts of them, were relatively straightforward to translate and, perhaps because of the European influence, seemed to slip happily into English. Shakila’s voice is not as adorned as some poetry in Farsi that I have read, and is idiomatic and sometimes humorous or satiric. I speak colloquial Farsi and this of course was a great help as, with Zuzanna’s help, I could understand most of the original. Zuzanna also recorded a tape for me of the poems we were working on and this, more than anything else, helped me to try and find equivalent idioms while replicating the musical phrases.
If you would like to take part in the PTC workshop survey mentioned in the podcast introduction, please follow this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVydXD-N6nP-hSiZ7QYKAjWrJqCukmeQQPxcHWk_HPwZ8bDA/viewform
The Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Partaw Naderi.
Partaw Naderi studied science at Kabul University and was imprisoned in the notorious Pul-e-Charki prison by the Soviet-backed regime for three years in the 1970s shortly after he’d begun to write poetry.
He is now widely regarded as one of the leading modernist poets in Afghanistan, the lyrical intensity of his work coupled with his bold use of free verse distinguishing him as a highly original and important poet.
The Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by Reza Mohammadi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Reza.
The prize-winning poet, Reza Mohammadi - widely regarded as one of the most exciting young poets writing in Persian today - was born in Kandahar in 1979. He studied Islamic Law and then Philosophy in Iran before obtaining an MA in Globalisation from London Metropolitan University.
You have been listening to the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre.
If you enjoy our podcasts and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
This is one of two prayer-poems from Diana's PTC Chapbook 'Begining to speak'
Diana Anphimiadi quickly distinguished herself as an unusually imaginative, original talent in the Georgian poetry scene. Her work refuses the formulaic or expected response, wrong-footing readers with its wit and delicacy. In her acclaimed 2013 collection, Personal Cuisine, for instance she explores the traumatic experiences of recent years, yet the narrative unfolds as a patchwork of recipes, poems and stories.
You have been listening to the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre.
If you enjoy our podcasts and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Today's poem is 'Aural ' by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by the original poet.
Also, this week we have details of the PTC's first-ever online workshop season looking at the work of Yoruba Poet & political activist Ọláńrewajú Adépọ̀jù.
Sign up for these workshops here: https://buff.ly/3c28IY8
This week's poem is 'Empty Town' by the Chinese poet Yu Yoyo. In her afterword to Yu Yoyo's collection My Tenantless Body the poet Rebecca Tamás notes that Yoyo's concerns are often the global, concerns of those whose future is at stake in an uncertain world.
All this week the poet and artist Ella Frears is joining our PTC YouTube Takeover with a series of videos that mix the language of the YouTube Makeup Tutorial with seen short reflections on Yu Yoyo's book My Tenantless Body. Check them out here.
Get a copy of this book of Yu Yoyo's book My Tenantless Body from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Today’s poem is Fertile Truce the title poem from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias’ 2012 collection. It was translated for the PTC in 2019 by the award-winning poet Abigail Parry and the Havana based writer Serafina Vick.
The poem refers to the national flower of Cuba, the Mariposa or white ginger lily. Also in this poem, you will hear the use of the English term 'grandfather' in place of the Spanish 'Abuelo'
This plays on the idea of foreign intrusion and interference:
a vexed issue for Cuba’s revolutionary generation.
You can buy our collection of Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' work from our online store: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/a-little-body-are-many-parts
The Dual Poetry Podcast is one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
here is a constant struggle in Turkey between being oneself and having to fit into a mould – a mould shaped by nationalistic values and imposed by a majority – which makes daily life extremely difficult for people who come from one of the many minority communities. This state of struggle and in-betweenness is described in the poem ‘Uniform’ – from school days dressed in ‘mouse grey’ skirts all the way to adulthood.
The human suffering, the yearning for love and hope, portrayed in Karakaşlı’s poems is the daily reality for people in many parts of the world. Beyond specific historical and cultural contexts, Karin Karakaşlı’s poetry is a beautiful expression of the human soul: with all its darkness and light, including all the many shades of emotions and thoughts in between, seeking to build a common language through poetry.
Canan Marasligil, from her introduction to Karin's Chapbook History-Geography
The Dual Poetry Podcast is one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is 'Orphan' by Asha Lul Mohamad Yusuf from Somalia/Somaliland. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Asha.
Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is a powerful woman poet in a literary tradition still largely dominated by men. She is a master of the major Somali poetic forms, including the prestigious gabay which presents compelling arguments with mesmerising feats of alliteration.
The Dual Poetry Podcast is one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Nukhbah Langah and Lavinia Greenlaw.
This week’s poem is by Noshi Gillani from Pakistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Lavinia Greenlaw and then in Urdu by novelist Kamila Shamsie.
The candour and frankness of Gillani's highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large poetry gatherings in Pakistan, Australia, Canada and the US. Unknown outside the Pakistani community, the translations here mark her introduction to an English-speaking audience.
The Dual Poetry Podcast is one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Mimi Khalvati and Choman Hardi
Born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish-speaking world. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian and now, for the first time, into English.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold new women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her people, and yet there is also a mysticism in her writing, a closeness to nature, an embracing of mythology – a dialogue with God.
This poem and many others that appear in Bejan's PTC World Poets Series book 'Akin to Stone' with translated by TS Elliot Award-winning poet Jen Hadfield and bridge translator Canan Marasligil.
**This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.**
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by Abdellatif Laabi from Morocco. The poem is read first in English translation by Andre Naffis-Sahely and then in French by Abdellatif.
The prize-winning Moroccan poet, Abdellatif Laâbi, is widely acknowledged as being one of the most important poets writing today. Laâbi was born in Fez in 1942. He began writing in the mid-1960s, publishing his first novel in 1969. In 1966 he founded the renowned literary magazine Souffles, a journal of literature and politics that was to earn its editor an eight-year prison sentence (from 1972 to 1981) under the authoritarian reign of Hassan II. Once released from jail, Laâbi left Morocco in 1985 and has lived in Paris ever since.
This is part of our rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. Her poetry has received many prestigious awards and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Born in 1986 in Kutaisi, Salome grew up during the turbulent decade of the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and many new countries emerged from its ruins. In Georgia these years were marked by civil war, a downturn in the economy, widespread corruption and rampant crime. As a consequence, a great number of people were forced to emigrate in order to earn their living. The majority of these migrants were women, many of whom had to leave their young children with relatives and live in exile from their homeland, often working abroad for decades in order to provide for their families.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and emotional frankness of his lyrics. This poem is included in a chapbook of poems by Al-Saddiq, in our shop you can also find his first English collection entitled 'A Monkey At The Window' published 2016 by PTC and Bloodaxe Books.
This is part of our rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is by Bejan Matur. The poem is read first in English translation by Jen Hadfield and then in Turkish by Bejan herself.
Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her Kurdish people, and yet there is also a mysticism in her writing, a closeness to nature, an embracing of mythology – a dialogue with God.
This poem and many others that appear in her PTC chapbook 'If This is a Lamnet' were translated by TS Elliot Award-winning poet Jen Hadfield and bridge translator Canan Marasligil.
This week's poem is by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David himself.
David Huerta's poems frequently turn on images that are experiences in themselves. In an eerie piece, he describes a poem by Gottfried Benn:
A flower fell apart in the middle of an autopsy
and the doctor who'd cut open the corpse
saw how those petals landed among the inner organs.
This may only be a poem, but it takes hold of the speaker, removing him from his daily obligations. It is ‘something I must / come to terms with it won't be easy but I have to do it'.
If ‘Poem by Gottfried Benn' recalls the violence of ‘Nine Years Later', it also revisits the earlier poem's cathartic purpose. Huerta turns away from questionable generalizations about history to concentrate on the experience of the individual. But he doesn't stop there; he casts a steady gaze back on the self that is the repository of that experience. This is not confessional poetry and he pokes fun at the autobiographical figure with his ‘imperious solipsistic moustache, / the hirsute landscape of minor characters'.
This week’s poem is 'With a Red Flower' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. The poem is read first in English translation by the poet Maura Dooley and then in Farsi by Azita.
Her published book 'Negative of a Group Photograph' brings together three decades of poems by the leading poet Azita Ghahreman, it was also translated by Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar.
find the book in our shop: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/negative-of-a-group-photograph
This is part of our rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde. The poem is read first in English translation by Sean O'Brien and then in Portuguese by Corsino Fortes.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Thanks to Kurdish poet and translator, Choman Hardi, we translated this wonderful poem by Dilawar Karadaghi over the course of three workshops at the beginning of 2005 when, appropriately enough, it was bitterly cold – though too cold for snow. And, as London faces its first ‘arctic blast’ of this remarkably mild winter, it seems fitting to choose ‘An Afternoon at Snowfall’ for our poem-podcast this week. The poem is read beautifully for us by two poets: in Kurdish by Mohammad Mustafa and in English by W N Herbert.
This is one of my favourite poems that we’ve translated in our workshops, I think because of the way in which Dilawar expresses something so essential about what it means to be exiled through the repeated evocation of every day, almost banal, details.
Book a Season Pass for our upcoming Poetry Translation Workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-translation-centre-winter-spring-workshops-2020-tickets-84139289881
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem ‘Bucket, rope, fire extinguisher, etc’ is from by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' collection Dame Spray, which was published in 2016.
The poem refers to Cubans entering the US by crossing the border from Mexico.
You can buy Legna's book 'A little body are many parts' from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Adelaide Ivánova was born in Recife, Brazil in 1982. A poet,
journalist, photographer, activist and performance artist, she
currently lives between Berlin and Cologne. She is the author
of the collections 13 Nudes and o martelo (the hammer),
the latter awarded the 2018 Rio de Janeiro Literature Prize
for Poetry. Adelaide’s work has been featured in several
anthologies, and has been translated into Galician, German,
Greek, Italian and Spanish. She curates the anarcho-feminist
zine of queer and erotic poetry MAIS PORNÔ, PFVR! (MORE
PORN, PLS!), and is a co-founder of the feminist collective
RESPEITA! (RESPECT!), a coalition of Brazilian female
poets.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Reza Mohammadi is a prize-winning poet, prolific journalist and cultural commentator. He is widely regarded as one of the most exciting young poets writing in Persian today.
He was translated collaboratively for the PTC by Hamid Kabir, editor in chief of the only Afghan fortnightly newspaper published in London, Simorgby and the Irish poet Nick Laird.
You can buy a short introduction to the work of Reza Mohammadi with translations by Nick Laird and Hamid Kabir from the PTC online shop: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/reza-mohammadi-chapbook
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
The poem is about the poet's love of a medieval stone tower in Istanbul, Turkey. Karin Karakaşlı’s pain can be deeply felt in most of her poems. However, alongside this we encounter an enormous amount of love for the geography she lives in, especially the city of Istanbul. Karakaşlı has an almost synergetic relationship with this city, as we can see in this poem ‘Galata’ – with the history embedded in every stone, every building and every landscape.
You can buy 'History-Geography' a short introduction of poems by Karakaşlı, with translations by the poet Sarah Howe and Canan Marasligil.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is 'When Winter Comes' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. The poem is read first in English translation by Maura Dooley and then in Farsi by Azita herself.
Azita Ghahreman's collection 'Negative of a Group photo', translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar, has been Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation award.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem ‘My girlfriend leaves for Cancún today ’ is from by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' collection Dame Spray, which was published in 2016.
The poem refers to Cubans entering the US by crossing the border from Mexico.
You can buy Legna's book 'A little body are many parts' from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
List week's poem is Empty Town by the chinese poet Yu Yoyo. In her afterward to Yu Yoyo's collection My Tenantless Body the poet Rebecca Tamás notes that Yoyo's concerns are often the global, concerns of those whose future is at stake in an uncertain world.
Get a copy of this book of Yu Yoyo's book My Tenantless Body from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is 'Earth' by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Partaw himself.
Partaw Naderi was born in Badakhshan a northern province of Afghanistan in 1331 [1953]. He studied in his birthplace and graduated from the Faculty of Sciences at Kabul University in 1354 [1976]. He was imprisoned in the notorious Pul-e-Charki prison by the Soviet-backed regime for three years in the 1970s shortly after he’d begun to write poetry. He is now widely regarded as one of the leading modernist poets in Afghanistan, the lyrical intensity of his work coupled with his bold use of free verse distinguishing him as a highly original and important poet. After years in exile he recently returned to live in Kabul where he is president of Afghan PEN.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
'But' is by Azita Ghahreman from Iran.
Azita Ghahreman's collection 'Negative of a Group Photograph' has been longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. This wonderful collection of Farsi poems was translated by Maura Dooley & Elhum Shakerifar.
Order your copy here: https://buff.ly/2FiQMvL
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
‘Giddy-up Johnny’ is from by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' collection Miami Century Fox, a series of Petrarchan sonnets the poet wrote when she was finding her feet in America.
This poem makes reference to Queso proceso, a kind of processed cheese eaten during Cuba's Special Period, from 1989 to 2000 when the country was struggling to survive after the collapse of the Soviet Union and food shortages and power outages were very much the norm.
You can buy Legna's book 'A little body are many parts' from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is 'Death Of A Princess' by Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac 'Gaarriye' from Somalia. The poem is read first in English translation by W N Herbert and then in Somali by Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac 'Gaarriye'.
‘Gaarriye’ (1949–2012) is regarded as one of the most important Somali poets of the twentieth century. He composed on a wide variety of topics, from nuclear weapons to the nature of poetry. He was the initiator of the Deelley, a very famous 'chain' of poems by leading Somali poets in the 1970s and 1980s that were critical of the regime of Siad Barre.
Pre-order 'Ask the Thunder' our new Gaarriye collection with translations by WN Herbert & Martin Orwin.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. Currently a doctoral student at the linguistic institute at the Tbilisi Javahkishvili University, Diana has published four collections of poetry, Shokoladi (Chocolate 2008), Konspecturi Mitologia (Resumé of Mythology, 2009), Alhlokhedvis Traektoria (Trajectory of the Short-Sighted, 2012 and Kulinaria (Personal Cuisine, 2013.
Her poetry has received prestigious awards, including first prize in the 2008 Tsero (Crane Award) and, in 2009, the Saba Prize for the best first collection.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
'the elephant' by Adelaide Ivánova, looks at how the human body processes trauma, drawing parallels between a mother reacting to the death of her young child and a woman experiencing sexual assault.
In this recording, you will hear Ivánova talk about the origins of this poem in her friendship with an elderly German woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease before she reads her poem in the original Portuguese. Afterwards, you will hear the poet Rachel Long reading the English translation that she prepared collaboratively with the writer and editor Francisco Vilhena.
Adelaide Ivánova and Rachel Long will be appearing together on Saturday, October 19th at the 'Exploring Translation as Disruption' event, part of Poetry International at the Southbank Centre, London.
Book here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/138227-exploring-translation-disruption-2019
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold new women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her people, and yet there is also a mysticism in her writing, a closeness to nature, an embracing of mythology – a dialogue with God.
This poem and many others that appear in her PTC chapbook 'If This is a Lamnet' were translated by TS Elliot Award-winning poet Jen Hadfield and bridge translator Canan Marasligil.
**This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.**
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Show
Despite the pleasurable excitement and excess of youth that Yoyo shows us, these poems are also laced with the insecurity and fear of growing up on a planet which may not outlast you; and the societal fissures that flow from that. In Yu’s poetic world, nature is necessary and liberating, but it is not the beautiful, timeless vision we see in classical Chinese poetry. Nature offers potential freedom, at the same time that it is full of latent, utterly modern threat and suffering." -Rebecca Tamás, from her afterward to 'My Tenantless Body'
Get a copy of this book of Yu Yoyo's work from the PTC website: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/my-tenantless-body
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is by Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde. The poem is read first in English translation by Sean O'Brien and then in Portuguese by Corsino Fortes.
Corsino Fortes's first book Pão & Fonema [Bread & Phoneme] which appeared in 1974 made an immediate impact. 1974 was a momentous year for Portugal and its African colonies as it was the year in which Portugal's dictator Salazar was overthrown, an act which began the process that led to the decolonisation of the Cape Verde Islands in 1975.
You can buy a copy of our Corsino Fortes Chapbook from the PTC website:https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/corsino-fortes-chapbook
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Rachel Long and Francisco Vilhena.
Before we hear the poem in both in the original Brazilian Portuguese and English translation, the poet Adelaide Ivánova talks about the importance of research in her work and how she discovered the work of a British anthropologist called Dame Mary Douglas.
You can buy a copy of the hammer and other poems from the PTC website: www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/the-ham…-other-poems
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Abdellatif Laâbi is a leading Moroccan poet who writes in French. In 1966 he helped found the important artistic journal 'Souffles', in 1972 the journal was banned and in 1974 Laâbi was imprisoned for 8 years for "crimes of opinion" for his political beliefs and his writings. After his release in 1985, he moved to France where he still lives in exile.
His work was translated for the PTC by André Naffis-Sahely, who recently edited 'The Heart of a Stranger' an anthology of exile literature for Pushkin Press: www.pushkinpress.com/product/the-he…of-a-stranger/
The dual-language chapbook introducing the poetry of Abdellatif Laâbi, translated by André Naffis-Sahely can be brought from the PTC website: www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/abdella…abi-chapbook
This is part of our weekly the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
'Stay' starts with the wonderfully direct and odd line 'Your beard is expendable', a great example of Yu Yoyo's lithe, arresting language, deftly translated by UK poet AK Blakemore and the translator Dave Haysom.
This is a poem in seven sections that sees the poet imaging a lover's journey to Viet Nam, a country she had never visited when she wrote the poem.
You can find this poem in My Tenatless Body, an introduction to Yoyo's work published by the PTC as part of our World Poets Series.
You can buy a copy of My Tenantless Body from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This is one of two poems titled 'the hammer' in Adelaide Ivánova's World Poets Series collection the hammer and other poems. This poem shows the great breadth of Adelaide's references, from the mating rituals of hammerhead sharks to reports that when a Pope die a senior member of the Vatican staff strikes him on the forehead with a silver hammer to make sure he isn't just sleeping.
Also, in this recording, you can hear the contrast between how Adelaide Ivánova reads the original text, with a quick, unhalting delivery and Rachel Long's slower, more deliberate reading of her translation.
You can buy a copy of the hammer and other poems from the PTC website.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Nick Laird and Hamid Kabir
I was a word abandoned in an old battered book, a word forgot by politics, by love and the speaking world.
The prize-winning poet, Reza Mohammadi - widely regarded as one of the most exciting young poets writing in Persian today - was born in Kandahar in 1979. He studied Islamic Law and then Philosophy in Iran before obtaining an MA in Globalisation from London Metropolitan University.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
'July' is by Diana Anphimiadi, a Georgian poet who is also a linguist, and whose often complex poetry foregrounds language.
Scrambled thoughts become crow-songs perched on a wire. Famous women from Greek myth speak frankly - upside-down, headless, from beyond the grave. The five senses tussle on the page, among cats and fish and chandeliers. Eating and bathing offer a glimpse of the eternal.
In Beginning to Speak, Anphimiadi repeatedly makes the world unfamiliar with the flick of a pen, demonstrating why she is one of her country’s outstanding contemporary poets.
You can buy a copy from our website here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/beginning-to-speak
at three o’clock in the morning
you put your arms around a tree
because there’s no-one to put their arms
around you
Sleepwalking by Yu Yoyo is a set of 9 connected poems. In translating this poem the translators, Dave Haysom and AK Blakemore, were forced by the form of the English language to specify who the poem is addressing in a way that the Chinese original left totally open.
You can buy an introduction to Yu Yoyo's poetry My Tenantless Body translated by Dave Haysom and AK Blakemore from the PTC online store: www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/my-tenantless-body
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
"dad sentence me to death so you can live inside my tenantless body" Born in 1990, Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo had already begun to earn critical attention before she turned sixteen, publishing dozens of poems in Poetry, Poetry Monthly and other prestigious publications in China. She is seen as a representative voice among the post-90’s generation, especially known for her mature voice and subtle treatment of modern femininity. You can buy an introduction to Yu Yoyo's poetry My Tenantless Body translated by Dave Haysom and AK Blakemore from the PTC online store.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Jo Shapcott and Narguess Farzad.
This week's poem is 'Behind The Mass Of Green' by Farzaneh Khojandi from Tajikistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Jo Shapcott and then in Tajik by Farzaneh.
Farzaneh Khojandi is a poet with a huge following in Afghanistan and Iran as well as her native Tajikstan. She is widely regarded as the most exciting woman poet writing in Persian today and is revered as Tajikistan’s foremost living writer.
Thank you for listening to the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
(Explicit content)
This week's poem 'the good animal' by Adelaide Ivánova. First, you will hear the poet, journalist and activist Adelaide Ivánova discussing the poem and reading her original Portuguese text, then her poet-translator, the UK poet Rachel Long will read the English version.
You can buy an introduction to Adelaide Ivánova's poetry 'the hammer and other poems' translated by Rachel Long & Francisco Vilhena from the PTC online store.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is by Mohan Rana from India. The poem is read first in English translation by Bernard O'Donoghue and then in Hindi by Mohan himself.
The poet and critic, Nandkishore Acharya, has written that, 'Amongst the new generation of Hindi poets, the poetry of Mohan Rana stands alone; it defies any categorisation. However, its refusal to fit any ideology doesn't mean that Mohan Rana's poetry shies away from thinking - but that it knows the difference between thinking in verse and thinking about poetry. For Mohan Rana the poetic process in itself is also thought process.'
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Beloved by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is a passionate love poem!
It is a jiifto, one of the many Metric forms of Somali poetry made up of short lines.
First, you will hear the stunning translation by UK poet Clare Pollard who captures the alliterating Bs of the original Somali and the sense of yearning with lines like 'be my new moon / unbreakable metal'.
Afterwards, you can hear Asha reading the poem in the original Somali.
This month sees the publication of her first English Language collection published by Bloodaxe Books.
The collection's title The Sea-Migrations or, Tahriib in Somali, refers to the search for a better life in another country.
You can buy The Sea-Migrations here.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Translated by Jamie McKendrick
This week's poem is 'Heaven's Kitchen' by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English by the translator, the poet by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David Huerta.
David Huerta was born in Mexico City in 1949. He is one the leading poets of the generation that first came to prominence during the 1970s in Mexico. He published his first book of poems, El Jardín de la luz [The Garden of Light] (1972), while still a student in the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts at Mexico's Autonomous National University (UNAM). It has been followed by numerous collections, among them: Cuaderno de Noviembre [November Notebook] (1976), Huellas del civilizado [Traces of the Civilized] (1977), Versión [Version] (1978), El espejo del cuerpo [The Mirror of the Body] (1980) and Incurable [Incurable] (1987), a long poem in nine parts that encourages the reader to participate in constructing the meaning of the poem.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem podcast contains three short poems by Kurdish-Turkish Poet Bejen Matur, translated by Canan Marasligil and UK poet Jen Hadfield. The poems are 'Dead Sun', 'There is no Sun' and 'Truth'.
Bejan Matur’s enthralling visceral poems are among the most imaginatively potent being written anywhere in the world. She is one of the leading voices of a bold new women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her award-winning poems describe a delicate space between concrete realism and mystical reflection, engaging with the struggles of the Kurdish people of Turkey.
The PTC's introduction to Bejen Matur's poetry, Akin to Stone will be published in October. You can pre-order it from the PTC online book shop now.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download
'guerilla bitchcraft' was the first poem by Adelaide Ivánova that the Poetry Translation Centre translated at a workshop with Francisco Vilhena and Clare Pollard in 2017.
The PTC workshop was dazzled by Ivánova’s breadth of reference, lurching between the personal and political. One moment she jokes about weed and star-signs, the next she’s addressing rape, colonialism and Zika. It’s not often in a poetry workshop you have to read a whole Nirvana lyric (turns out ‘Polly’ is not really about a parrot). And how to translate the ‘piriguetismo’ of the title? Francisco Vilhena, who provided the bridge translation, said it meant something like ‘bitchism’, but had more a celebratory charge (a woman saying it to another woman was being positive). Anne Macaulay made a very convincing case for ‘bitchismo’ but in the end we settled on Francisco’s suggestion of ‘bitchcraft’ as it sounded more empowered and cunning!
The poem is read in Portuguese and English by Adelaide herself.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is 'the dog' by Adelaide Ivánova, taken from her collection the hammer and other poems, translated by Francisco Vilhena and Rachel Long. The poem is read first in Brazilian Portuguese by the poet herself and then in English by her poet-translator Rachel Long.
This poem looks closely at the experience of a raped woman, worried about whether she will be able to enjoy sex after her experience.
In her introduction, Adelaide also discusses Humboldt, an ambiguous male figure that appears throughout the book.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem 'the mule' by Adelaide Ivánova begins with an epigram by the Romanian-German poet Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger. Celan wrote predominantly about The Holocaust and the challenge of finding the words to express the unsayable.
This poem references other instances of rape in literature including 'The Rape of Lucrece' by William Shakespeare.
First, you will hear the poet, journalist and activist Adelaide Ivánova discussing the poem and reading her original Portuguese text, then her poet-translator, the UK poet Rachel Long will read the English version.
You can buy an introduction to Adelaide Ivánova's poetry 'the hammer and other poems' translated by Rachel Long & Francisco Vilhena from the PTC online store.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in 1951. She has published six books of poems. Her poems were translated for the PTC's 2005 World Poets' Tour by Tom Boll and the poet Katherine Pierpoint.
Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of world.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
What is most difficult to translate, in my experience, is poetry that toys with sentimentality without ever crossing into its territory, poetry that counterbalances abstraction with precision. And that’s Víctor Terán’s poetry.
It is difficult to approach the edge of sentimentality without crossing it, and it is equally difficult to get as close to that edge as Terán has managed in Isthmus Zapotec. This funambulism is even more significant an achievement for Terán considering the state of the language: a Zapotec dialect spoken by fewer than one-hundred-thousand inhabitants of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, Mexico.
-David Shook
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
The ironically entitled 'Title' (like another poem by Abdulla Pashew, 'Unfinished Poem', that we translated in the same workshop) is concerned with the exigencies of writing poetry. In this case, the poet is tired; his life-long poem is turning into an epic and he becomes aware that in his mind, 'words slip out of place'.
The prominent Kurdish poet and writer, Abdulla Pashew, is widely regarded as the most popular living Kurdish poet.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Anphimiadi is one of Georgia’s leading contemporary poets. With subtle lyricism, her poetry describes the most intense experiences of many women’s lives: childbirth; love, with its many complications and death.
Anphimiadi’s own paternal roots lie in Pontus, a historically Greek region on the southern coast of the Black Sea which at one time stretched from central Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, to the borders of the Colchis in modern western Georgia. Home to the legendary Golden Fleece, West Pontus is sometimes referred to as the home of the Amazons. Undoubtedly, Diana’s Greek roots inspired her use of the goddesses and other female figures from Greek mythology. Both Helen of Troy and Medusa are conjured up; these figures allow the poet to speak out – throwing her voice through centuries of experience – against the unchanged restrictions placed on women in patriarchal societies.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week's poem is by Coral Bracho from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Katherine Pierpoint and then in Spanish by Coral herself.
Coral Bracho's poems were translated for the PTC's 2005 World Poets' Tour by Tom Boll and the poet Katherine Pierpoint.
Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of the world. When she visited London in 2005 she described the way that her tour-de-force ‘Agua de bordes lúbricos' [Water of Jellyfish] operates: ‘It tries to get close to the movement of water' with images that are ‘fleeting'; ‘you can't grasp them, they are very fluid. What remains is that continuity of water. Her works is considered to be part of the contemporary neo-baroque literary movement from Latin America.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
'Poem of the Nile' was published in The London Review of Books one of the rare occasions the LRB has published poetry translated from Arabic and the first time they featured the work of an African poet. Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's poems have also been published in Poetry Review and The Times Literary Supplement. This is a real indication of Saddiq's growing status as an important international poet.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week, to celebrate Nowrus, the Dual Poetry Podcast poem is Haft Seen by Shakila Azizzada from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Mimi Khalvati and then in Dari by Shakila Azizzada.
'Haft Seen' is a traditional custom for the Persian new year celebration known as Nowruz. A table is set with 7 different items which its essential items letters start with (Sin-Seen "س"). These are Sib - Apple, Sabze - Grass, Senjed - Sea-buckthorn, Serkeh - Vinegar, Samanu -a sweet paste made from germinated wheat, Somaq - Sumac and Seer - (Garlic) each with their own symbolic meaning.
The poem also references Dam Platz, a historical square in Amsterdam flanked by the Royal Palace and the National Memorial to the Dutch war dead.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
This week’s poem is by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David Huerta.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Much of Azita Ghahreman's work is deeply personal yet infused with political undertones. Her poems often reflect on her childhood growing up in a land-owning family in the South-Eastern Khorasan province of Iran – referenced in evocative images of the natural world amongst which she grew up – and on the changing face of modern Iran.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Abboud al Jabiri fixes on a deceptively simple image and, when elaborating on it, manages to convey complex and delicates feelings about loss and acceptance.
An Iraqi poet and translator, Abboud al Jabiri, was born in Najaf in 1963. A member of the Iraqi Writers' Union and the Arab Writers' Union, he was one of the founders of the Iraqi Youth Literature forum. His two poetry collections are Index of Faults (2007) and Lean on his Blindness (2009). Since 1993, he has lived and worked in Amman, in Jordan.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Salome Benidze is a respected poet, novelist and translator. She has rendered the work David Beckham and Salman Rushdie into Georgian. Her poetry is direct yet deeply felt, dealing with love and it’s many shadows. Benidze was translated for the PTC multi-award winning poet Helen Mort, host of BBC Radio 4’s Mother Tongue show and Natalia Bukia-Peters, a respected Georgian Translator and academic.
You can buy I Wanted to Ask You a short collection of Benidze's poems where she explores romantic love and all its corollaries: longing, regret, trauma, confession, revelation, even war, from the PTC shop.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Azita Ghahreman was born in Mashhad in 1962. One of Iran's leading poets, she has lived in Sweden since 2006. She is a member of the South Sweden Writers' Union. Her poems directly address questions of female desire and challenge the accepted position of women.
Negative of a Group Photograph is the title poem of her new book published in 2018 by the PTC and Bloodaxe Books. The collection runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran's book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.
Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is quickly emerging as one of the most exciting young poets living in the Somali diaspora. Like all Somalis, Asha grew up in a culture steeped in poetry and while she was young she started to compose her own poems. Her work began getting published on Somali websites in 2008 and, since then, she's rapidly garnered a great deal of praise for her ability to infuse her poetry with fresh imagery enlivened by telling details.
Her collection The Sea-Migrations was named the Poetry Book of the Year 2018 by The Sunday Times. Asha came to the UK in 1990 having fled the Somali Civil War. She now has three children and
a steady job and a growing career as a poet.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
Welcome to our rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
If you enjoy our podcasts and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
In this poem, Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi captured the deep-seated antipathy of the late night bartender ‘Nursing a drink that bores him’ translated by Atef Alshaer and Sarah Maguire.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This week's poem is by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Partaw himself.
Naderi is now widely regarded as one of the leading modernist poets in Afghanistan, the lyrical intensity of his work coupled with his bold use of free verse distinguishing him as a highly original and important poet.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This week’s poem is by Mohan Rana from India. The poem is read first in English translation by Bernard O'Donoghue and then in Hindi by Mohan Rana.
The poet and critic, Nandkishore Acharya, has written that 'Amongst the new generation of Hindi poets, the poetry of Mohan Rana stands alone; it defies any categorisation. However, its refusal to fit any ideology doesn't mean that Mohan Rana's poetry shies away from thinking - but that it knows the difference between thinking in verse and thinking about poetry. For Mohan Rana the poetic process in itself is also thought process.'
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Poetry is an important part of Georgian literature, and dates back to the 4th century AD. The first known woman poets are Queen Borena and Queen Tamar, who reigned in medieval times. Contemporary Georgian women’s poetry has its origins in the Soviet period, when a new form of free verse appeared.
Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. She has been nominated for and has received many prestigious awards, and her poems have been translated into more than 10 languages. She writes both in a traditional poetry mode and in free verse.
Salome’s poems are a journey through the dramatic historical and social changes in Georgia’s recent history and her own experience of life and love. They are conveyed in a rich and romantic language, highly charged with passion and love. In some ways, her work is a call for women’s voices to be taken more seriously.
You can buy Salome Benidze's chapbook 'I Wanted to Ask You' with translations by Helen Mort and Natalia Bukia-Peters from the PTC online bookstore.
This week's poem is by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Asha herself.
We are celebrating the launch of the anthology, So At One With You, an anthology of modern poetry in Somali produced in collaboration with Kayd Somali Arts & Culture and Poetry Translation Centre. Asha's poems can be found within this.
You can order your copy of So At One With You from the PTC online bookstore.
A chilly poem: ‘Snow’ by the wonderful Iranian poet, Azita Ghahreman, who now lives in exile in snowy Sweden.
The seemingly endless snow is a metaphor for the hopelessness the poet feels – she and her lover are lost in its vastness. Only ‘a single stray earring’ can be seen – ‘not a tree, not a rabbit, not a star’.
You can buy the book 'Negative of A Group Photo' from the PTC online: petrytranslation.org/shop.
Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf‘s poem 'The Sca'b is a passionate critique of the caste system, a 'belief in the noble gob and the lower caste gun.'
Asha’s Friend and longtime translator Clare Pollard will read the English translation. Then you will hear Asha read in the original Somali
Last year Asha Lul's collection The Sea-Migrations was named the Poetry Book of the Year by The Sunday Times.
You can buy The Sea-Migrations here.
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. Jean Sprackland was the poem's poet-translator. This is a synesthetic poem, where the senses are confused, it reaches for a language beyond words, perhaps a language between two lovers.
The poet-translator Jean Sprackland noted that in Georgian the word for 'Braille' is close to the word for 'Fault' but this was a suggested meaning that was impossible to pull across in her translation.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This December you can get a gift set of both of our Georgian Chapbooks for the sale price of £10.
https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/our-2018-chapbooks-gift-set
This week’s poem is 'Crow’s Final Frontier' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. This is from a set of new recordings we made of Azita reading her poems in October 2018 when she was in the UK to launch her new book 'Negative of A Group Photo' published by the PTC and Bloodaxe Books.
First, you can hear Azita tell us a bit about the poem and read the original text in Persian, then her poet-translator Maura Dooley will read her translation in English.
You can buy the book 'Negative of A Group Photo' from the PTC online: poetrytranslation.org/shop
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This week’s poem is by 'Gaarriye' from Somalia and has been translated by WN Herbert and Martin Orwin. The poem is read first in English translation by Martin Orwin and then in Somali by 'Gaarriye'.
If you enjoy this recording and would like to find out more about 'Gaariye' and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org
You can find this poem and more in the anthology, 'So At One With You', an anthology of modern poetry in Somali produced in collaboration with Kayd Somali Arts & Culture and Poetry Translation Centre.
Translated by Sarah Maguire and Maxamed Hasan 'Alto'
This week's poem is by the Somali poet Jaamac Kadiye Cilmi. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Somali by Jaamac himself. If you enjoy this recording and would like to find out more about Jaamac Kadiye Cilmi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
This month we are celebrating the launch of the anthology, 'So At One With You', an anthology of modern poetry in Somali produced in collaboration with Kayd Somali Arts & Culture and Poetry Translation Centre.
Translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar
This week’s poem is 'Night Demon' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. This is from a set of new recordings we made of Azita reading her poems in October 2018 when she was in the UK to launch her new book 'Negative of A Group Photo' published by the PTC and Bloodaxe Books.
First, you can hear Azita tell us a bit about the poem and read the original text in Persian, then her poet-translator Maura Dooley will read her translation in English.
You can buy the book 'Negative of A Group Photo' from the PTC online: poetrytranslation.org/shop
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This week's poem is by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Asha herself. UK poet Claire Pollard worked with bridge-translator Maxamed Xasan 'Alto' to translate this poem from Somali.
This month we are celebrating the launch of the anthology, 'So At One With You', an anthology of modern poetry in Somali produced in collaboration with Kayd Somali Arts & Culture and Poetry Translation Centre. Asha's poems can be found within this.
If you enjoy this recording and would like to find out more about Asha and all the other poets we've translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
This week’s poem is 'Red Bicycle' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. This is the first in a set of new recordings we made of Azita reading her poems in October 2018 when she was in the UK to launch her new book 'Negative of A Group Photo' published by the PTC and Bloodaxe Books.
First, you can hear Azita tell us a bit about the poem and read the original text in Persian, then her poet-translator Maura Dooley will read her translation in English.
If you enjoyed this poem you can buy Azita's collection from the PTC website here: http://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/negative-of-a-group-photograph
Our Poem Podcast this week is 'Album' by Reza Mohammadi from Afghanistan. Translated by The Poetry Translation Workshop and Hamid Kabir. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Reza himself.
In October 2018 we are celebrating the publication of 'Negative of a Group Photograph', a new collection of poetry by Farsi poet Azita Ghahreman, with a national tour. From the 6th to the 13th of October Azita will be Touring the UK. Reza Mohammadi will be joining her at SOAS for an evening of Persian Poetry this Friday on October 12.
http://www.poetrytranslation.org/events/soas-an-evening-of-farsi-poetry-with-azita-ghahreman
Translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar
This week’s poem is 'Glaucoma' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. The poem is read first in English translation by Maura Dooley and then in Farsi by Azita.
In October 2018 we are celebrating the publication of 'Negative of a Group Photograph', a new collection of poetry by Farsi poet Azita Ghahreman, with an national tour and from the 6th to the 12th of October Azita will be Touring the UK. To find out where you can see Azita follow this link:
http://poetrytranslation.org/events/series/azita-ghahreman-tour-2018
Poetry is an important part of Georgian literature, and dates back to the 4th century AD. The first known woman poets are Queen Borena and Queen Tamar, who reigned in medieval times. Contemporary Georgian women’s poetry has its origins in the Soviet period, when a new form of free verse appeared.
Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. She has been nominated for and has received many prestigious awards, and her poems have been translated into more than 10 languages. She writes both in a traditional poetry mode and in free verse.
Salome’s poems are a journey through the dramatic historical and social changes in Georgia’s recent history and her own experience of life and love. They are conveyed in a rich and romantic language, highly charged with passion and love. In some ways, her work is a call for women’s voices to be taken more seriously.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar
A chilly poem, ‘Snow’ by the wonderful Iranian poet, Azita Ghahreman, who now lives in exile in snowy Sweden.
The seemingly endless snow is a metaphor for the hopelessness the poet feels – she and her lover are lost in its vastness. Only ‘a single stray earring’ can be seen – ‘not a tree, not a rabbit, not a star’.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Andre Naffis-Sahely
This week’s poem is by Abdellatif Laabi from Morocco. The poem is read first in English translation by Andre Naffis-Sahely and then in French by Abdellatif.
Translated by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters
Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. Jean Sprackland was the poem's poet-translator. She commented that the poem is about more than a simple dance, it is an erotic poem. Jean also worked hard to maintain the 3/4 time of the original poem in her translation.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Sarah Maguire and Maxamed Xasan 'Alto'.
This week’s poem is 'Harmony' by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf from Somalia/Somaliland. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Somali by Asha Lul.
Translated by Clare Pollard and Said Jama Hussein.
This week's poem is 'Recollection' by the Somali poet Asha Luul Mohamud Yusuf. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Caasha herself.
Translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar
This week's poem is 'Letter' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. The poem is read first in English translation by Maura Dooley and then in Farsi by Azita herself.
Azita will be touring the UK with October to promote her new collection Negative of a Group Photograph, published by The Poetry Translation Centre & Bloodaxe Books
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Salome Benidze’s poems often simultaneously address these hardships and changes, unprecedented since the Second World War. Her poem ‘The Story of Those Without Motherland’ conveys the pain of mass emigration in the form of a letter to a young man who has probably never known or experienced love for his homeland. He is the son of an emigrant and sees his parents’ country only through the eyes of the poet. The poet laments that not everything is as fine as it should be:
my motherland is a Venus fly trap
which eats us down to our skeletons
and spits out what it can’t digest
Nevertheless ‘the worst is death under a different flag’.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters
Diana Anphimiadi makes a use of the great Greek myths in her poetry, using these stories to get at her preoccupations as a poet. In Helen of Troy, the familiar story is reworked to talk about the Georgian nation's more recent experience of war, displacement and alienation.
Translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Helen Mort
This is the final poem in Salome Benidze’s chapbook ‘I wanted to ask you’, a lament which contains both prayer and secular invocation. In ‘My Soldier Husband’, a woman longs for her husband’s return from the war that has ravaged her country. Imploring him, and trying to console herself, the speaker describes a heightened sensitivity that might well describe Salome’s poetics:
When you’ve survived bullets and ghosts the smell of cotton sheets is all the sweeter
Salome’s poems explore the dramatic historical and social changes of Georgia’s recent history, as they map out very personal stories of life and love. They are conveyed in a rich and Romantic language, and yet speak to the living moment. In its exemplary construction as well as its subject matter, her work is a call for women’s voices to be taken more seriously.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters
Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. This is the title poem of her PTC Chapbook 'Begining To Speak'. The poem concerns her Child, who has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, learning to speak late in childhood, as well as Diana's own return to writing poetry after a long break.
UK poet Jean Sprackland was the poem's poet-translator. She commented that like many of Diana's poems 'Autism Beginning to Speak' works on several levels, with both personal autobiographical interpretations, but also concerning the emergence of language more broadly.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
This poem by was translated ay at a PTC workshop run by our founder Sarah Maguire. In her translation notes, she ponders the origins of rhubarb as the distinctive plant gets referenced in the third line of the poem:
'We Brits tend to think of rhubarb as being a very distinctive British - especially Yorkshire - plant and so we were pleased to come across it the very different context of a poem by a Kurdish poet written when he was living in Moscow. (In fact, the plant originated in China and was brought to Britain during the fourteenth century via the Silk Route and was first known as 'Turkish Rhubarb'.)
This small poem is, of course, a wry reflection on the ancient culture of the Kurds who, although swindled and pushed from pillar to post for centuries, have not (yet) been accepted as a nation.'
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Translated by Alireza Abiz and The Poetry Translation Workshop
This poem perfectly encapsulates his strengths as a poet: concision and clarity, delivered in language that is both exact and understated. Poems such as these which seem, at first glance, to be very simple, are extraordinarily difficult to pull off. Their ‘simplicity is, of course, deceptive: these few lines are like a miniature short story in the way they manage to convey the hope and despair of an entire life.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Translated by Canan Marasligi and Sarah Howe.
Karin Karakaşlı is an Armenian-Turkish poet who lives in Istanbul and writes in Turkish. As well as poetry she pens regular columns and opinion pieces for independent media outlets and writes fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature.
Her PTC Chapbook History-Geography was reviewed by Katrina Naomi who called it 'that rare thing - good, political poetry'.
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Anna Murison and the Poetry Translation Workshop.
Abdullah al Ryami was born in 1965 in Cairo, where his father had taken refuge from the British-backed suppression of the Omani uprising. As a result of this displacement, Al Ryami's life has been that of an outsider. His first collection of poems was published in 1992. He helped to found the avant-garde theatre group A'Shams, where he worked as dramatist and artistic director; and Najma Publications, which specialises in modern poetry, novels and works in translation; in 2000 he returned to Oman where he works as a theatrical director, journalist and cultural commentator.
This week's poem podcast is 'Woman of Mint' by Fatena Al-Gharra, translated by Sara Vaghefian and Sarah Maguire, the founder of the PTC.
In her notes on the translation, Maguire commented 'Poetry in English is filled with poems that use plants to articulate gender. By and large, it's men poets who continually compare women to fragile, delicate flowers ... It's fascinating to witness a woman poet writing in Arabic using a 'feminine' mint plant and a 'masculine' nettle to express her feelings about gender.'
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Canan Marasligi and Sarah Howe.
There is a constant struggle in Turkey between being oneself and having to fit into a mould – a mould shaped by nationalistic values and imposed by a majority – which makes daily life extremely difficult for people who come from one of the many minority communities. This state of struggle and in-betweenness is described in the poem ‘Uniform’ – from school days dressed in ‘mouse grey’ skirts all the way to adulthood.
The human suffering, the yearning for love and hope, portrayed in Karakaşlı’s poems is the daily reality for people in many parts of the world. Beyond specific historical and cultural contexts, Karin Karakaşlı’s poetry is a beautiful expression of the human soul: with all its darkness and light, including all the many shades of emotions and thoughts in between, seeking to build a common language through poetry.
Canan Marasligil, from her introduction to Karin's Chapbook History-Geography
If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us
Translated by Sarah Maguire and Atef Alshaer.
This week's poem is by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Saddiq himself. If you enjoy this poem and would like to find out more about Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Translated by Alireza Abiz & The Poetry Translation Workshop
All Iranian men are required to do military service and this small poem gives a very clear insight into how they feel about that experience!
Like the other three poems of Ali Abdollahi's we translated in this workshop, it was a pleasure to engage with the compact, concise way in which he conveys complex ideas in an understated idiom using clear imagery. A real example of the effectiveness of poetry that 'shows rather than tells'.
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf‘s 'Our land' is a classic 'pastoral' poem, nostalgic for the beauty and harmony of the Somali countryside, water, flowers, birds, trees, camels, all feature. It is a vision of peace and plenty.
The poem was written in London in 2011 many years after Asha Lul had left the Somali countryside.
The poet herself, and many people who hear the poem live in cities and don't have direct access to the idyllic way of life described in the poem.
This makes the poem feel like a shared but distant memory.
Asha’s Friend and longtime translator Clare Pollard will read the English translation. Then you will hear Asha read in the original Somali
We are thrilled to announce that Asha Lul's collection 'The Sea-Migrations' has been named the Poetry Book of the Year by The Sunday Times.
You can buy The Sea-Migrations here: http://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/the-sea-migrations
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Listen to the 'The Lost Button' by Fatena Al-Gharra, Translated from the Arabic by Anna Murison and Sarah Maguire.
The poem is read first in English by the poet-translator Sarah Maguire and then in Arabi by the poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi.
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
Bejan Matur is an award-winning Kurdish-Alevi poet from Turkey writing in Turkish and Kurdish. Her poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages. She currently lives in London.
Her poems were translated by Jen Hadfield and Canan Marasligil.
Last week we received the sad news that the PTC's founder and Artistic Director, Sarah Maguire, had died. Over the years she produced many wonderful translations for the PTC.
This week to celebrate her work we are releasing this extended podcast featuring 11 poems by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan, that Sarah translated with her good friend and Yama Yari.
Each poem is read first in English translation by Sarah and then in Dari by Partaw himself.
‘The Mark’ by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is addressed directly to the men ruling of Somalia / Somaliland, urging them to find peace, to bring clans together and to raise the country up.
Translated by Said Jama Hussein & Maxamed Xasan ‘Alto’and Clare Pollard
As with many of her poems, it begins with an intro about how Asha Lul hasn't recited for a while but now she must speak.
The main body of the poem lays out her arguments.
Finally, it ends with a summary asking God to bring about a better world that leaves the reader with a hopeful tone.
First, you will hear Clare Pollard’s English Translation and then Asha Lul reading the original Somali
This month sees the publication of her first English Language collection published by Bloodaxe Books.
The collection's title The Sea-Migrations or, Tahriib in Somali, refers to the search for a better life in another country.
You can buy The Sea-Migrations here: http://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/the-sea-migrations
If you would like to support the Poetry Translation Centre please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.
This week's poem is by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Saddiq himself. If you enjoy this poem and would like to find out more about Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
This week’s poem is by Abdellatif Laabi from Morocco. The poem is read first in English translation by Andre Naffis-Sahely and then in French by Abdellatif. If you enjoy this recording and would like to find out more about Abdellatif Laabi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
This week's poem is by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi himself. If you enjoy this recording and would like to find out more about Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
This week’s poem is by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David.
This week’s poem is by Reza Mohammadi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Nick Laird and then in Dari by Reza. If you enjoy this poem and would like to find out more about Reza Mohammadi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.
Translated by Martin Orwin, Maxamed Xasan 'Alto' & David Harsent
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
He Tells Tales Of Meroe by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is from the collection of the same name inspired by The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and published in 2015 by the Poetry Translation Centre.
The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Saddiq himself. The poem was traslated by Rashid El Sheikh, Atef Alshaer and Sarah Maguire.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is widely regarded as one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic. Famous since a teenager, he is admired for the lyric intensity of his poetry and for his principled opposition to Sudan’s dictatorship. His Collected Poems was published in 2010. A distinguished journalist, he was forced into exile in 2012 and now lives in London.
This podcast features the poems of Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan, translated by Sarah Maguire and Atef Alshaer. The recording includes 15 different poems and is about 25 minutes long. Each poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi himself.
This podcast features the poems of Coral Bracho from Mexico, translated by Katherine Pierpoint and Tom Boll. The recording includes 15 different poems and is about 50 minutes long. Each poem is read first in English translation by Katherine Pierpoint and then in Spanish by Coral herself. Some of the poems appear in the chapbook we published in 2010.
This podcast features the poems of David Huerta from Mexico, translated by Jamie McKendrick. The recording includes nine different poems and is about 35 minutes long. Each poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David himself. The poems are read in the same order as they appear in the chapbook of David's poems that we published in 2010. Click here to buy the chapbook.
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This podcast features the poems of Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde, translated by Sean O'Brien and Daniel Hahn. The recording includes four different poems. Each poem is read first in English translation by Sean O'Brien and then in Portuguese by Corsino Fortes himself. The poems are read in the same order as they appear in the chapbook of Corsino's poems that we published in 2008. Click here to buy the chapbook or to download it for free as a PDF.
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This podcast features the poems of Mohan Rana from India, translated by Bernard O'Donoghue and Lucy Rosenstein. The recording includes twelve different poems recorded live at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Each poem is read first in English translation by Bernard O'Donoghue and then in Hindi by Mohan Rana.
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This podcast features the poems of Kajal Ahmad from Kurdistan, translated by Mimi Khalvati and Choman Hardi. The recording includes nine different poems read first in English translation by Mimi Khalvati and then in Kurdish by Choman Hardi. The poems are read in the same order as they appear in the chapbook of Kajal's poems which we published in 2008.
Featuring: Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Sarah Maguire, Sabry Hafez
Our first podcast features the poems of Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan, translated by Sarah Maguire and Sabry Hafez. The recording includes seven different poems read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Saddiq. The poems are read in the same order as they appear in the chapbook of Saddiq's poems that we published in 2008.
We're delighted by the enthusiastic response the podcast has received. David Codling, former Director of the British Council in Sudan, wrote to us to say, ‘This is great news, and beautiful listening. I have forwarded it to my colleagues in Sudan and to our literature team in London.' And workshop member, Peter Wood, wrote, ‘Just to say that these podcasts are absolutely brilliant. I am full of admiration for the work Sarah Maguire and others at the Poetry Translation Centre have done. It brings to us wonderful poetry, enriches all our lives, broadens our horizons, and helps to bridge cultural divides.'
The literal translation of this poem was made by David Shook The final translated version of the poem is by David Shook You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
The literal translation of this poem was made by Ulrich Kratz The final translated version of the poem is by Carole Satyamurti
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
You can find more poems from around the world at: www.poetrytranslation.org Like us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/poetrytranslation Follow us on Twitter: @PoetryTranslate
'Burn The Midnight Oil' by Abdellatif Laâbi translated byAndre Naffis-Sahely PODCAST by Poetry Translation Centre