‘It’s a bigger thing than poetry—it’s communicating across the globe. Poetry is a wonderful way to do that.’ - Workshop participant

The Poetry Translation Centre has been running collaborative poetry translation workshops for 20 years. Everyone is welcome to join us this Summer as we set out to translate four more poems from Asia, Africa and Latin America into English.

For this season, we will be meeting in-person at the Deptford Lounge and looking at poems spoken by communities in the Lewisham area including Turkish, Vietnamese, Tamil and Portuguese.

There is no need to know the language being translated. The group works together from a guide translation, and each workshop ends with a magical moment when the translated poem is read aloud in English for the first time. Simply join in.

These workshops are a great workout for the mind, bringing together language skills, problems solving and creativity to dig deeply into the original poem and transfer its essence into a new English version.

The workshops are perfect for anyone looking to take the first steps into translation, meet fellow poetry readers or celebrate a language they love.

What to expect at a PTC Workshop

Our workshops are guided by expert translators and facilitated by leading English-language poets. Ahead of each workshop, the translator prepares a guide translation to allow everyone to participate in the process, and during the session they are on-hand to offer guidance on the language and poetry. The poet-facilitator draws out contributions from the group to create a final collaborative translation.

The workshop starts with the poem being read in the original language so everyone can hear its cadence and music, and at the end the brand-new English translation is read aloud for the first time.

Our poet-facilitator: Chrissy Williams

Each season of PTC translation workshops is lead by a poet, in this case we are delighted to be working with poet, editor and comic book writer Chrissy Williams. Her writing has been featured on BBC radio and television, and her full poetry collections are Bear (Bloodaxe, 2017) and Low (Bloodaxe, 2021). She edits the online poetry journal Perverse, and has run numerous workshops over the years. She has an Italian mother and English father, and was raised bilingually.

Dates and times

The workshops will take place online every second Monday in June and July from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

Monday, June 3
Translating Vietnamese poet Do Trung Quan with Quynh Nguyen

Monday, June 17
Translating Turkish poet Karin Karakaşlı with Canan Marasligil

Monday, July 1
Translating Tamil poet Sugan with Hari Rajaledchumy

Monday, July 15
Translating Brazilian poet Érica Zíngano with Francisco Vilhena

Pricing

You can save 20% by getting a season pass for all four of this summer’s workshops.

A season pass costs £52 or £32 with concessions.

Individual workshops cost £16 or £10 with concessions.

Get your season pass here.

Concessions are for participants who are low-income, students, or pensioners. We do not ask for proof—just select this option on the booking page if you need.

Getting to the Deptford Lounge

There are plenty of environmentally-friendly ways to get to the Deptford Lounge:

The venue is close to Deptford Station, Deptford Bridge Station on the DLR, and New Cross Station on the Overground line.

There are multiple bus routes serving the area, including the 171, 172, 177, 47, 53 and 453.

Plus, there are plenty of places to lock up your bike!

Community Standards

By translating poems together and sharing our responses we are becoming a small community. Everyone at each workshop will be a participant and should feel encouraged to speak up and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings. We have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying or harassment at our events and anyone displaying this behaviour will be asked to leave the event.