On these pages you can find reviews of our translations and events; interviews with our poets and translators; blog posts; and a selection of fascinating essays on translation by some of the UK’s best known poets and translators.
Three exciting poetry collections from the PTC coming up this year: Real by Karin Karakaşlı (tr. Canan Marasligil and Sarah Howe), The Thorn of Your Name by Víctor Terán (tr. Shook), and Translation of the Route by Laura Wittner (tr. Juana Adcock).
As the organisation celebrates 20 years since its founding and as Director Erica Hesketh steps down after an incredible 8 years in post, we are seeking a dynamic and creative individual to lead the next chapter in our story and to support the incredible team at the PTC to realise the next phase of our vital work.
Throughout 2024, the Poetry Translation Centre is celebrating its 20th birthday with a jam-packed programme of events, workshops, publications and prizes.
The Poetry Translation Centre is seeking a freelance Editor to join our small and dynamic team. This is an excellent opportunity for someone with experience of editing poetry and/or literature in translation, an international outlook and an entrepreneurial spirit.
I never realised the Moon landings had such a profound and far-reaching effect. For Corsino Fortes, driving his battered Peugeot 204 from Kuito to Luanda, the moment he heard the Americans had touched down was a revelation. He stopped the car, got out, put his hands on his head and looked up at the sky.
Coach D. I’m sitting opposite two of the world’s greatest living poets. Gaarriye is pinching my salt and vinegar crisps. Farzaneh Khojandi is asking, through her friend and translator, Narguess Farzad, about Welsh place names. I am not being much help.
If we could read the poets that move huge audiences elsewhere in the world, would it wake up our own? On the Guardian’s blog Sarah Maguire prescribes a course of translation to restore the vitality of British verse.
Following the extraordinary success of the first World Poets’ Tour in 2005, the Poetry Translation Centre has organised its second World Poets’ Tour which begins on Sunday 7th September at the Bristol Poetry Festival.
Lavinia Greenlaw writes about the impact that listening to Noshi Gillani read her poems had on her translations: ‘I had in my head Emily Dickinson’s dashes - how they hold the parts of her poems in mid-air, or the artist Cornelia Parker’s suspended cutlery and blown-up shed.’
‘Translating poetry is the opposite of war’. In the keynote speech at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2008 Sarah, Maguire, The Artistic Director of The PTC, argues for the importance of translated poetry in times of conflict.
This is an interview Saddiq gave to Richard Lea of Guardian Online during his Autumn Tour in 2006. ‘In the face of Sudan’s long conflict between the supposedly Arabic north and African south, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi’s poetry blends influences from both. Richard Lea meets him.’
The Poetry Translation Centre works with leading poets and translators to share poetry from around the world with people across the UK. If you have read and enjoyed one of our poems please support us by making a donation today.