DUAL Poetry Podcast

Abboud al Jabiri fixes on a deceptively simple image and, when elaborating on it, manages to convey complex and delicates feelings about loss and acceptance.

An Iraqi poet and translator, Abboud al Jabiri, was born in Najaf in 1963. A member of the Iraqi Writers' Union and the Arab Writers' Union, he was one of the founders of the Iraqi Youth Literature forum. His two poetry collections are Index of Faults (2007) and Lean on his Blindness (2009). Since 1993, he has lived and worked in Amman, in Jordan.

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Salome Benidze is a respected poet, novelist and translator. She has rendered the work David Beckham and Salman Rushdie into Georgian. Her poetry is direct yet deeply felt, dealing with love and it's many shadows. Benidze was translated for the PTC multi-award winning poet Helen Mort, host of BBC Radio 4's Mother Tongue show and Natalia Bukia-Peters, a respected Georgian Translator and academic.

You can buy I Wanted to Ask You a short collection of Benidze's poems where she explores romantic love and all its corollaries: longing, regret, trauma, confession, revelation, even war, from the PTC shop.

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Azita Ghahreman was born in Mashhad in 1962. One of Iran's leading poets, she has lived in Sweden since 2006. She is a member of the South Sweden Writers' Union. Her poems directly address questions of female desire and challenge the accepted position of women.

Negative of a Group Photograph is the title poem of her new book published in 2018 by the PTC and Bloodaxe Books. The collection runs the gamut of Ghahreman's experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran's book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

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Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is quickly emerging as one of the most exciting young poets living in the Somali diaspora. Like all Somalis, Asha grew up in a culture steeped in poetry and while she was young she started to compose her own poems. Her work began getting published on Somali websites in 2008 and, since then, she's rapidly garnered a great deal of praise for her ability to infuse her poetry with fresh imagery enlivened by telling details.

Her collection The Sea-Migrations was named the Poetry Book of the Year 2018 by The Sunday Times. Asha came to the UK in 1990 having fled the Somali Civil War. She now has three children and a steady job and a growing career as a poet.

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Welcome to our rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

If you enjoy our podcasts and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us.

In this poem, Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi captured the deep-seated antipathy of the late night bartender 'Nursing a drink that bores him' translated by Atef Alshaer and Sarah Maguire.

If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us

This week's poem is by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Partaw himself.

Naderi is now widely regarded as one of the leading modernist poets in Afghanistan, the lyrical intensity of his work coupled with his bold use of free verse distinguishing him as a highly original and important poet.

If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us

This week's poem is by Mohan Rana from India. The poem is read first in English translation by Bernard O'Donoghue and then in Hindi by Mohan Rana.

The poet and critic, Nandkishore Acharya, has written that 'Amongst the new generation of Hindi poets, the poetry of Mohan Rana stands alone; it defies any categorisation. However, its refusal to fit any ideology doesn't mean that Mohan Rana's poetry shies away from thinking - but that it knows the difference between thinking in verse and thinking about poetry. For Mohan Rana the poetic process in itself is also thought process.'

If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support the work of the Poetry Translation Centre then please visit poetrytranslation.org/support-us

Poetry is an important part of Georgian literature, and dates back to the 4th century AD. The first known woman poets are Queen Borena and Queen Tamar, who reigned in medieval times. Contemporary Georgian women's poetry has its origins in the Soviet period, when a new form of free verse appeared.

Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. She has been nominated for and has received many prestigious awards, and her poems have been translated into more than 10 languages. She writes both in a traditional poetry mode and in free verse.

Salome's poems are a journey through the dramatic historical and social changes in Georgia's recent history and her own experience of life and love. They are conveyed in a rich and romantic language, highly charged with passion and love. In some ways, her work is a call for women's voices to be taken more seriously.

You can buy Salome Benidze's chapbook 'I Wanted to Ask You' with translations by Helen Mort and Natalia Bukia-Peters from the PTC online bookstore.

This week's poem is by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Asha herself.

We are celebrating the launch of the anthology, So At One With You, an anthology of modern poetry in Somali produced in collaboration with Kayd Somali Arts & Culture and Poetry Translation Centre. Asha's poems can be found within this.