
The Poetry Translation Workshop
When Sarah Maguire was the Royal Literary Fund's Writing Fellow at The School of Oriental and African Studies, she was struck by the number of academics and students she encountered who were fascinated by poetry and who knew a great deal about the languages and literary cultures of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Sarah decided to arrange a workshop where these translators could collaborate in translating poetry together. The workshops began in 2002 and their success led Sarah to approach Arts Council England for funding to set up The Poetry Translation Centre.
Since then, we have continued to hold workshops on a regular basis. They are the PTC's core activity. Members bring along translations of poets new to us all and, in the workshops, we can tell whether we like their poems and if they might be worth us translating at length. This is how we were introduced to the work of key PTC poets such as Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac 'Gaarriye'. You can see us together with some of the poets we translated at the launch party for the World Poets' Tour in October 2005 in the photo, above.
For details of how the workshops function and how to join us - either in person (if you're in London) or via our mailing list - please see Poetry Translation Workshops.
Poems translated by The Poetry Translation Workshop
- In the Bowl of this World
- Returning to Visit My Love
- Fare Well, Thank You
- Literature
- Message from a Martyr
- We Are Reborn
- Singular
- Mother Africa
- The World Is Nothing
- Sorrows of the Black City
- Speed
- The Burden of Life
- Moon
- No Gifts from War
- My Fall
- You Deserted Me in Rohi
- Your face
- Three Contemporary Truths
- Urban ranch
- Crime
- The Poet
- ‘Welcome to Whole Food’
- Separate Beings
- ‘Dusk like’
- in the plenary session
- Perfection
- To Offer a Hand
- Face Cloth
- The Well
- Children of the Sun and the Wind
- Spring
- Salep
- You’re a Stranger
- Woods
- Unfinished Poem
- Mourning Kanjikaa
- You Will Turn in Your Sleep
- Chapter V: Sleeping Poem
- Autumn Leaves
- Breathless Postcard
- One Hand Isn’t Enough to Write With
- A Lizard Walked Beside Me in the Desert
- The King
- Delirium
- The Man Who Looked After Suicidal Penguins on the Abandoned Beaches of the World
- In the land of Ashkenaz
- Dialect of Hurricanes
- Mountain Child
- La Luna
- The Heart’s Fifth Chamber
- From: Garrison Poems
- An Afternoon at Snowfall
- Nine Years Later - A Poem Dated
- I Go Bodiless
- On Time
- Tranquillity
- Improvisations on a Poem
- Ontological Distance
- Crossing
- This Craving and this Me
- Door
- Hope Against Hope
- The city goes on sleeping/awake
- Knowledge Is Unforgiving
- Six Green Polish Chairs
- I Will Become a Traveller Again
- The Corridor
- Let’s Unite
- Branches That Thirst
- The Voice?
- Prose Poem
- Like a Desert Flower
- Undress Yourself and Dress Me in Your Body
- When I Arrived the Place Was
- Exile
- Poetry and I
- The Banana Plant
- Exhortation to the Village (8)
- May Honey
- It Arrives
- History-Geography
- The Speaking Hour
- The Lost Child
- The Contract
- In Prison (Kizuizini)
- Shakir, How Strange
- Daughter of Locusts
- Houses and People
- Pride
- After that Strange Church Wedding
- Kabul and Peshawar Are the Closest of Friends
- Guantanamo, written
- Finger ♥s Blade
- Lonavala Dawn
- Tehran letter
- a shadow always follows behind me
- In Prison (Kifungoni)
- It Happens Again
- Flowers and Man
- Before You the Rain
- The Half Facing the Sky
- Sahara
- The Winds of Time
- Family Secret
- In the Home of the Homeless
- They Pounced at Dawn
- When I Rest My Head on Your Shoulder
- Uncle Abdur-Raheem
- October Landscape
- Dream
- Fusion
- One Day When You Look For Me
- Movements
- Album
- Metekù
- Other People’s Hell, Other People’s Heaven
- people’s central street section two
- Union
- In Rented Homes
- Three line poem
- Valentine’s Day
- the sudden movement of objects
- many leading western brands expand into China
- The Word Cutter
- In the Stillness of a Word
- Longing
- On the Tomb of a Peace-Loving Man
- Touch Me
- Floods
- Evening Tea
- 14 • metaphor
- Belongings
- Portrait: Mr Dreamer of Butterflies After a Long Illness in Bed
- Minitopography of Santa Isabel
- Aleppo Diary
- The Word I Forgot
- The Word Gulag
- You Crossed the Border
- from The Shepherd
- do not fear heights
- Centre of the Universe
- Mother I’ve Been Saved
- The Language of Gestures
- the world hasn’t changed
- from Ten Songs for a Friend
- Deep in the Stillness
- Balloons
- She Too
- I Am Not the Man
- I Crossed
- I Came to the World Before You
- Longing
- At the Door of a Lonely Heart
- This Smile Hasn’t Come from the Canary Islands
- Vainakhs
- Nostalgia
- Football
- The Life of the Living Room
- Fingerprints
- Cataclysm and Songs
- Hair
- Note 1
- Children and the Sun
- ***
- ‘In another world’
- taking off everything that can be taken off
- Ghazal
- One Day
- Oh Warrior of My Sacred Land
- Grandmother Moon
- Memories of Seclusion
- Two Sunsets
- Celia
- Here and There
- 16 • search
- I Sit on the Pier
- Washing Lines
- Fading
- Title
- The Yellow Stocking
- A Few Lines About My Age
- Shoulder to Shoulder
- Seeds in Flight
- In itself
- Blood Sunday
- Travellers
- Coming Back from the Hemp Plantation
- Pendulum
- The Good Doll
- This Love
- ‘Ah me’
- Make Me Drunk with Your Kisses
- The Manuscript
- White Trash
- Appeal
- This Day Our Daily Dog
- Pro: Sarton
- From ‘Exile’
- ‘this morning’
- holding hands
- A word to the wealthy
- Dreams
- Far from Baghdad
- Virginity
- The Blue-Eyed Blackbird
- Like Red-Hot Lava
- The Hagia Sophia Library
- guerilla bitchcraft
- Hope is Lonely
- We Never Left Egypt
- The Grass Is Like Me
- Any Liquid Poured into a Vessel…
- ‘The man put on a new winter coat and walked off like a thought.’
- The Washerman
- More rich taints yer!
- for laura
- The Language of my Parents
- Sing for me
- On the Bed
- Embrace
- annyeong
- while I was with her
- At a Poetry Festival
- The Sun is one who sees and knows everything…
- The Poet’s Fate
- Notes after Watching HBO in a Hotel Room
- I am thinking now!
- Black and Beautiful
- Taps at a Window on an Evening
- the woman
- Wine on the Curtains
- Arrival
- Poem of the Hammer and Sickle
- We are the Iraqis
- Savannah
- Leaving
- Hands in the Water of the Mind
- from ‘The Death of Abderrahman’
- Empty wine bottle…
- Remission
- Escape!
- ‘To dream away a’
- Red Kubbeh
- Earthquake
- to lost friends
- [the chair]
- A Night in Hospital
- Distant Yet Never So Close
- Frog
- In the mirror
- Stone
- ‘Darling when you left’
- My Mother Daughter
- Electric Shadows
- from 52 Fragments for the Beloved [7 & 8]
- Towards the Field of Sleep
- you want to eat the sun
- from In the Garden of Joy
- Flower and Butterfly…
- Ms Trolley Recalls Countries
- The Un-God
- lap
- The Mountain Of Your Body Is A Strange Poem
- 52 Fragments for the Beloved [1]
- The women who really drove me crazy
- Living life out of habit
- Harmony