We start the new season of Poetry Translation Workshops with a session focusing on contemporary Dari poetry . The workshop will be Facilitated by Clare Pollard with literal translations provided by Alireza Abiz.

Alireza Abiz is an award-winning translator and has translated many leading modern English-language poets into Persian, including W B Yeats, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Basil Bunting, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Alireza will produce literal traslations of the poems for the group to work from and help provide the cultural context of the work.

Clare Pollard is a poet, playwright, journalist, Editor and teacher. Her first poetry collection The Heavy-Petting Zoo was published by Bloodaxe in 1998. Clare was a Royal Literary Fellow at Essex University, has been a mentor for Arvon and New Writing North, and is a core tutor on the new Poetry School/University of Newcastle Poetry MA.