DUAL Poetry Podcast

This week’s poem is 'Drawing' by Reza Mohammadi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Nick Laird and then in Dari by Reza. If you enjoy this poem and would like to find out more about Reza Mohammadi and all the other poets we’ve translated, please visit our website www.poetrytranslation.org.

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

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 'Letter' by Azita Ghahreman from Iran. The poem is read first in English translation by Maura Dooley and then in Farsi by Azita herself. 

Azita will be touring the UK with October to promote her new collection Negative of a Group Photograph, published by The Poetry Translation Centre & Bloodaxe Books

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

Salome Benidze’s poems often simultaneously address these hardships and changes, unprecedented since the Second World War. Her poem ‘The Story of Those Without Motherland’ conveys the pain of mass emigration in the form of a letter to a young man who has probably never known or experienced love for his homeland. He is the son of an emigrant and sees his parents’ country only through the eyes of the poet. The poet laments that not everything is as fine as it should be:

my motherland is a Venus fly trap

which eats us down to our skeletons

and spits out what it can’t digest

Nevertheless ‘the worst is death under a different flag’.

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

Diana Anphimiadi makes a use of the great Greek myths in her poetry, using these stories to get at her preoccupations as a poet. In Helen of Troy, the familiar story is reworked to talk about the Georgian nation's more recent experience of war, displacement and alienation.

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 is the final poem in Salome Benidze’s chapbook ‘I wanted to ask you’, a lament which contains both prayer and secular invocation. In ‘My Soldier Husband’, a woman longs for her husband’s return from the war that has ravaged her country. Imploring him, and trying to console herself, the speaker describes a heightened sensitivity that might well describe Salome’s poetics:

When you’ve survived bullets and ghosts
the smell of cotton sheets is all the sweeter

Salome’s poems explore the dramatic historical and social changes of Georgia’s recent history, as they map out very personal stories of life and love. They are conveyed in a rich and Romantic language, and yet speak to the living moment. In its exemplary construction as well as its subject matter, her work is a call for women’s voices to be taken more seriously.

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

Diana Anphimiadi quickly distinguished herself as an unusually imaginative, original talent in the Georgian poetry scene. Her work refuses the formulaic or expected response, wrong-footing readers with its wit and delicacy. In her acclaimed 2013 collection, Personal Cuisine, for instance she explores the traumatic experiences of recent years, yet the narrative unfolds as a patchwork of recipes, poems and stories.

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

Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. Her poetry has received many prestigious awards and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Born in 1986 in Kutaisi, Salome grew up during the turbulent decade of the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and many new countries emerged from its ruins. In Georgia these years were marked by civil war, a downturn in the economy, widespread corruption and rampant crime. As a consequence, a great number of people were forced to emigrate in order to earn their living. The majority of these migrants were women, many of whom had to leave their young children with relatives and live in exile from their homeland, often working abroad for decades in order to provide for their families.

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

Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. This is the title poem of her PTC Chapbook 'Begining To Speak'. The poem concerns her Child, who has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, learning to speak late in childhood, as well as Diana's own return to writing poetry after a long break.

UK poet Jean Sprackland was the poem's poet-translator. She commented that like many of Diana's poems 'Autism Beginning to Speak' works on several levels, with both personal autobiographical interpretations, but also concerning the emergence of language more broadly.

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 'Among These Ruins' by Coral Bracho from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Katherine Pierpoint and then in Spanish by Coral Bracho.

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