DUAL Poetry Podcast

Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. She now lives in the Netherlands and writes in both Dari and Dutch. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely addressed by women poets writing in Dari.

After working on the transitions with the cultural anthropologist Zuzanna Olszewska, the poet Mimi Khalvati said of Azizzada:

She is a very musical poet, tender and intimate, but also uncompromising in her political poems, and sometimes surreal – a poet of range and courage. Many of the poems, or parts of them, were relatively straightforward to translate and, perhaps because of the European influence, seemed to slip happily into English.

Shakila's voice is not as adorned as some poetry in Farsi that I have read, and is idiomatic and sometimes humorous or satiric.

Don't forget to like, review, recommend and subscribe to support the Dual Poetry Podcast. You can find more translated poems, articles about translation and culture, as well as our upcoming program over on our internet home poetrytransation.org.

With his work translated and anthologized around the world, Víctor Terán is the preeminent living poet of the Isthmus Zapotec. He was born in 1958. His work has been published extensively in magazines and anthologies throughout Mexico. Since 2000, he has also appeared in anthologies in Italy and the United States and he is a three-time recipient of the national fellowship for writers of indigenous languages,

The PTC translated Victor Teran first in 2010 when he was part of our Mexican Poets tour, alongside Spanish language poets Coral Bracho, David Huerta. Victor Teran was translated by David Shook, who has gone on to translate over a dozen books from Spanish and Isthmus Zapotec and has produced short literary documentaries and video poems in locations including Bangladesh, Burundi, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea.

This week we are bringing you two poems in from a series by the Georgian poet Salome Benidze, The Story of Flying and The Story of the poor. Salome was one of two Georgian poets who toured the UK with the PTC in 2018 alongside Diana Amphidiadi. Benidze's poems were translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters with the UK poet Helen Mort and we published a chapbook of her poems called I wanted to ask you.

In this episode of the podcast, we are looking at Hindi poetry. Late last year the PTC published two chapbooks in our World Poet Series featuring Hindi poets: The Cartographer by Mohan Rana and This Water by Gagan Gill.

The poems you hear on today's podcast are by Mohan Rana who lives in Bath, England and writes deceptively simple poems circling metaphysical themes. Today's two poems are In Your Own Words and After Midnight by Mohan Rana translated by Lucy Rosenstein with the poet Bernard O'Donoghue.

You can buy our Hindi Poetry Set here: poetrytranslation.org/shop/hindi-poetry-set

You can donate to the PTC here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/support-us

In this podcast, we bring you poems that take the form of messages from afar, the poets are addressing loved ones but communicating to the reader as well, the implied distance between the writer and the addressee standing in for personal and emotional distance.

Kajal Ahmad was born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad began publishing her remarkable poetry at the age of 21 and has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish-speaking world. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian and now, for the first time, into English.

Noshi Gillani was born in Pakistan in 1964. The candour and frankness of her highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large poetry gatherings in Pakistan, Australia, Canada and the US. Unknown outside the Pakistani community, the translations here mark her introduction to an English-speaking audience.

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We start 2021 with two poets whose poems have narrative strands, one is a fairy tale complete with daemons and the other is a sketch of the life of an economic migrant who fears the host of his wife.

Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely adressed by women poets writing in Dari.

Mohammad Bagher Kolahi Ahari was born in 1950 in Mashhad, Khorasan. His first collection Above the Four Elements was published in 1977. He published six more collections of poetry. Kolahi has developed his distinct voice inspired by lyrical and elegiac traditions of Persian poetry combined with his story-telling talent. Many of Kolahi's poems contain a narrative containing elements of folk tales and description of rural Khorasan. In his poems, he very often depicts the life and the stories of marginalized groups of the society like gypsies, petty criminals and labourers.

Translated by Atef Alshaer with Paul Batchelor.

This October the PTC published 'Embrace' a dual-language Arabic and English collection of poems by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, who has been called one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation. This collection includes many new poems and was translated by Atef Alshaer with UK poet Paul Batchelor.

Listen to three poems from the collection in this podcast.

To get a copy of the book head to the PTC online shop: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/embrace

Listen to two poems from the Poetry Translation Centre Archive: 'Taste' by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf translated by Said Jama Hussein with poet Clare Pollard and 'He Tells Tales of Meroe' by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, translated by Atef Alshaer and Rashid El Sheikh with poet Sarah Maguire, selected for Black History Month.

DEALS

Our Black History Month bundle features So At One With You, an anthology of modern poetry in Somali and He Tells Tales of Meroe: Poems for the Petrie Museum by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan.

Buy it here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/black-history-month-bundle

ALSO use the code NAJWAN 2020 to get access to our Online Najwan Darwish 'Embrace' Launch event, a copy of the book plus postage and packaging all for £7: http://embrace-launch.eventbrite.com/

This week as part of the PTC's Resistance Poets series we bring you two poems by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, a Sudanese poet who writes in Arabic.

'Poem of the Nile' was published in The London Review of Books one of the rare occasions the LRB has published poetry translated from Arabic and the first time they featured the work of an African poet.

'They Think I Am a King: Yes, I Am the King' is from a book of poems by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi inspired by the Petrie Museum's collection of material from Meroe in Sudan. which was nominated for a Ted Hughes Award.

The PTC Resistance Poets season looks at poets as political activists. This selection brings together four poets who are unafraid to engage with the urgent political issues of our day, sometimes explicitly addressing inequity and tragedy were they find it, yet often simply holding a space for reflection and joy amidst dark times and chaos.

Get the Resistance Poets Book Bundle here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/resistance-poets

Currently, the PTC is looking at Resistance Poets whose work is unafraid to tackle political issues. This week we are bringing you two pomes by Afghan poet Reza Mohammadi who writes in Dari. These were translated for the PTC in 2012 by Hamid Kabir and the Northern Irish poet, novelist and screenwriter Nick Laird.

You can purchase the PTCs Reza Mohammadi's dual-language Chapbook, containing 10 of his poems in the original Dari alongside the English translations as part of our Resistance Poets book deal.

The book bundle includes 4 books from poets hailing from Eritrea, Brazil, Sudan and Afghanistan reflecting on issues important to them and their culture, but echoing wider global concerns.

Order now from poetrytranslation.org/shop