
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
- Dialect of Hurricanes
- Branches That Thirst
- a shadow always follows behind me
- many leading western brands expand into China
- the world hasn’t changed
- taking off everything that can be taken off
- In the Bowl of this World
- in the plenary session
- The Voice?
- In Prison (Kifungoni)
- The Word Cutter
- from Ten Songs for a Friend
- Ghazal
- Mountain Child
- Prose Poem
- It Happens Again
- In the Stillness of a Word
- Deep in the Stillness
- One Day
- Perfection
- La Luna
- Like a Desert Flower
- Flowers and Man
- Balloons
- Oh Warrior of My Sacred Land
- Returning to Visit My Love
- To Offer a Hand
- The Heart’s Fifth Chamber
- Undress Yourself and Dress Me in Your Body
- Before You the Rain
- Longing
- She Too
- Grandmother Moon
- Fare Well, Thank You
- Face Cloth
- From: Garrison Poems
- When I Arrived the Place Was
- The Half Facing the Sky
- On the Tomb of a Peace-Loving Man
- I Am Not the Man
- Memories of Seclusion
- Literature
- The Well
- An Afternoon at Snowfall
- Exile
- Sahara
- Touch Me
- I Crossed
- Two Sunsets
- Message from a Martyr
- Children of the Sun and the Wind
- Nine Years Later - A Poem Dated
- Poetry and I
- The Winds of Time
- Floods
- I Came to the World Before You
- Celia
- We Are Reborn
- Spring
- I Go Bodiless
- The Banana Plant
- Family Secret
- Evening Tea
- Here and There
- Singular
- Salep
- On Time
- Exhortation to the Village (8)
- In the Home of the Homeless
- 14 • metaphor
- 16 • search
- Mother Africa
- Tranquillity
- May Honey
- They Pounced at Dawn
- Belongings
- At the Door of a Lonely Heart
- I Sit on the Pier
- The World Is Nothing
- You’re a Stranger
- Improvisations on a Poem
- It Arrives
- When I Rest My Head on Your Shoulder
- Portrait: Mr Dreamer of Butterflies After a Long Illness in Bed
- This Smile Hasn’t Come from the Canary Islands
- Washing Lines
- Sorrows of the Black City
- Woods
- Ontological Distance
- History-Geography
- Uncle Abdur-Raheem
- Vainakhs
- Fading
- Speed
- Unfinished Poem
- Crossing
- The Speaking Hour
- October Landscape
- Minitopography of Santa Isabel
- Nostalgia
- Title
- The Burden of Life
- Mourning Kanjikaa
- The Lost Child
- Dream
- Aleppo Diary
- The Yellow Stocking
- Moon
- You Will Turn in Your Sleep
- This Craving and this Me
- The Contract
- Fusion
- Football
- A Few Lines About My Age
- No Gifts from War
- Chapter V: Sleeping Poem
- Door
- In Prison (Kizuizini)
- One Day When You Look For Me
- The Word I Forgot
- The Life of the Living Room
- Shoulder to Shoulder
- My Fall
- Movements
- The Word Gulag
- Fingerprints
- Seeds in Flight
- You Deserted Me in Rohi
- Autumn Leaves
- Hope Against Hope
- Shakir, How Strange
- Album
- You Crossed the Border
- In itself
- Your face
- Breathless Postcard
- The city goes on sleeping/awake
- Daughter of Locusts
- Metekù
- Blood Sunday
- One Hand Isn’t Enough to Write With
- Knowledge Is Unforgiving
- Houses and People
- Other People’s Hell, Other People’s Heaven
- from The Shepherd
- Cataclysm and Songs
- Travellers
- Three Contemporary Truths
- Six Green Polish Chairs
- Pride
- people’s central street section two
- do not fear heights
- Coming Back from the Hemp Plantation
- Urban ranch
- A Lizard Walked Beside Me in the Desert
- I Will Become a Traveller Again
- After that Strange Church Wedding
- Union
- Hair
- Pendulum
- Crime
- Note 1
- The Good Doll
- The King
- Kabul and Peshawar Are the Closest of Friends
- The Poet
- Delirium
- Let’s Unite
- Guantanamo, written
- In Rented Homes
- Centre of the Universe
- Children and the Sun
- This Love
- ‘Welcome to Whole Food’
- The Man Who Looked After Suicidal Penguins on the Abandoned Beaches of the World
- Finger ♥s Blade
- Three line poem
- Mother I’ve Been Saved
- Lonavala Dawn
- Valentine’s Day
- The Language of Gestures
- ***
- Separate Beings
- Tehran letter
- the sudden movement of objects
- ‘In another world’
- ‘Ah me’
- ‘Dusk like’
- In the land of Ashkenaz
- Make Me Drunk with Your Kisses
- Dreams
- Far from Baghdad
- Distant Yet Never So Close
- Longing
- Virginity
- Remission
- Frog
- The Blue-Eyed Blackbird
- The Washerman
- The Poet’s Fate
- In the mirror
- The Manuscript
- Like Red-Hot Lava
- The Hagia Sophia Library
- Escape!
- The Corridor
- Stone
- Ms Trolley Recalls Countries
- White Trash
- guerilla bitchcraft
- More rich taints yer!
- for laura
- The Language of my Parents
- Notes after Watching HBO in a Hotel Room
- We are the Iraqis
- ‘To dream away a’
- ‘Darling when you left’
- Appeal
- Hope is Lonely
- Sing for me
- I am thinking now!
- My Mother Daughter
- The Un-God
- This Day Our Daily Dog
- We Never Left Egypt
- On the Bed
- Black and Beautiful
- Savannah
- Red Kubbeh
- Electric Shadows
- lap
- Pro: Sarton
- Embrace
- Taps at a Window on an Evening
- Earthquake
- from 52 Fragments for the Beloved [7 & 8]
- The Mountain Of Your Body Is A Strange Poem
- From ‘Exile’
- annyeong
- the woman
- Towards the Field of Sleep
- ‘this morning’
- The Grass Is Like Me
- while I was with her
- Wine on the Curtains
- Hands in the Water of the Mind
- to lost friends
- you want to eat the sun
- 52 Fragments for the Beloved [1]
- holding hands
- Any Liquid Poured into a Vessel…
- At a Poetry Festival
- Arrival
- from ‘The Death of Abderrahman’
- [the chair]
- from In the Garden of Joy
- The women who really drove me crazy
- A word to the wealthy
- ‘The man put on a new winter coat and walked off like a thought.’
- The Sun is one who sees and knows everything…
- Poem of the Hammer and Sickle
- Empty wine bottle…
- A Night in Hospital
- Flower and Butterfly…
- Living life out of habit
- Nothing of Note
- Spikin’s Letter
- ANỤNỤEBE
- untitled
- Let’s Do It Again
- Ambalavan Pokkanai Street, May 2009
- 21. Sayeth the Voter
- The Nude Maja
- IV - Nobody comes in here with words
- **** (‘Opening an eye…’)
- Gaza Under Siege
- From ‘on a species of bird that doesn’t fly away’
- Harmony