Our collaborative poetry translation workshops are looking at poets from Brazil, Indonesia, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan and Mauritius. Get a season pass and discover the best international poets working today.
The PTC’s regular poetry workshops are a great way to deepen your engagement with poetry, whether you are an emerging translator, poetry lover or aspiring poet. The translation process offers the opportunity for an intimate look at poets from around the world combined with a lively discussion that often illuminates the wider cultural forces shaping our lives.
At each session poet Edward Doegar, the PTC’s Commissioning Editor and a Guest-Translator will introduce you to the work of a living poet from Asia, Africa or Latin America. Starting from a bridge translation, the group works collaboratively towards a new translation that works as an English language poem. The emphasis is on the translation process itself, and everyone is given the opportunity to participate.
Our friendly, inclusive workshops are a great way to meet like-minded poetry lovers and to reawaken your love of literature.
Save money and buy a Season Pass for all 6 workshops in the Winter Workshop Season now.
Our workshops are free to asylum seekers, refugees and the unwaged.
This season we are returning to look again at the work of Hebrew poet Batsheva Dori-Carlier and Debra Yatim from Indonesia, as well as working with a host of new names including Brazilian poet and artist Carla Diacov, Mauritian poet Umar Timol and Najwan Darwish, a leading voice in contemporary Arabic literature.
The saving on a season pass is equivalent to one free workshop. Plus, with each workshop, you attend you can earn points towards free PTC chapbooks and poetry collections.
This season’s guest-translators include Annie McDermott (Portuguese), Micha Meyers (Hebrew), Atef Alshaer (Arabic), Dawood Azami (Pashto) & Delaina Haslam (French)
Feedback from our most recent workshops:
“Fascinating. I often recommend it.”
“Friendly … a shared joy in language and poetry.”
“It reminds me of how much I love words and meaning, and being part of a group.”
“A great space to connect with others.”
The workshops are open to all. There is no need to know the language being translated
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The winter season of PTC workshops is set to start with a bang as we translate Carla Diacov, an exciting young Brazilian poet and artist writing in Portuguese, with guest-translator Annie McDermott.
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Debra Yatim was born in Aceh in 1954, and currently lives in Jakarta. She is an activist, journalist, columnist, filmmaker, and founder of more than three NGOs in Indonesia.
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Najwan Darwish is a leading voice in contemporary Arabic literature, working as a poet, journalist, editor and critic. The New York Review of Books has described him as “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation”.
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Batsheva Dori-Carlier’s poetry deals with family and relationships. Her debut book, Soul Search details the evolution of a love, from a first meeting to marriage, maturity and even couples therapy.
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Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan and Poetry Translation Centre has been translating Pashto poetry at its workshops with journalist and translator Dawood Azami since 2014.
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Hailing from Mauritius, the small island nation off the Southeast coast of Africa that bares the linguistic legacies of both Dutch and French colonisation, Umar Timol writes poetry in a French creole that is thick with neologisms.