DUAL Poetry Podcast

This week's poem 'the mule' by Adelaide Ivánova begins with an epigram by the Romanian-German poet Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger. Celan wrote predominantly about The Holocaust and the challenge of finding the words to express the unsayable.

This poem references other instances of rape in literature including 'The Rape of Lucrece' by William Shakespeare.

First, you will hear the poet, journalist and activist Adelaide Ivánova discussing the poem and reading her original Portuguese text, then her poet-translator, the UK poet Rachel Long will read the English version.

You can buy an introduction to Adelaide Ivánova's poetry 'the hammer and other poems' translated by Rachel Long & Francisco Vilhena from the PTC online store.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in 1951. She has published six books of poems. Her poems were translated for the PTC's 2005 World Poets' Tour by Tom Boll and the poet Katherine Pierpoint.

Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of world.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

What is most difficult to translate, in my experience, is poetry that toys with sentimentality without ever crossing into its territory, poetry that counterbalances abstraction with precision. And that's Víctor Terán's poetry.

It is difficult to approach the edge of sentimentality without crossing it, and it is equally difficult to get as close to that edge as Terán has managed in Isthmus Zapotec. This funambulism is even more significant an achievement for Terán considering the state of the language: a Zapotec dialect spoken by fewer than one-hundred-thousand inhabitants of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, Mexico.

-David Shook

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

The ironically entitled 'Title' (like another poem by Abdulla Pashew, 'Unfinished Poem', that we translated in the same workshop) is concerned with the exigencies of writing poetry. In this case, the poet is tired; his life-long poem is turning into an epic and he becomes aware that in his mind, 'words slip out of place'.

The prominent Kurdish poet and writer, Abdulla Pashew, is widely regarded as the most popular living Kurdish 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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

Anphimiadi is one of Georgia's leading contemporary poets. With subtle lyricism, her poetry describes the most intense experiences of many women's lives: childbirth; love, with its many complications and death.

Anphimiadi's own paternal roots lie in Pontus, a historically Greek region on the southern coast of the Black Sea which at one time stretched from central Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, to the borders of the Colchis in modern western Georgia. Home to the legendary Golden Fleece, West Pontus is sometimes referred to as the home of the Amazons. Undoubtedly, Diana's Greek roots inspired her use of the goddesses and other female figures from Greek mythology. Both Helen of Troy and Medusa are conjured up; these figures allow the poet to speak out – throwing her voice through centuries of experience – against the unchanged restrictions placed on women in patriarchal societies.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

This week's poem is by Coral Bracho from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Katherine Pierpoint and then in Spanish by Coral herself.

Coral Bracho's poems were translated for the PTC's 2005 World Poets' Tour by Tom Boll and the poet Katherine Pierpoint.

Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of the world. When she visited London in 2005 she described the way that her tour-de-force 'Agua de bordes lúbricos' [Water of Jellyfish] operates: 'It tries to get close to the movement of water' with images that are 'fleeting'; 'you can't grasp them, they are very fluid. What remains is that continuity of water. Her works is considered to be part of the contemporary neo-baroque literary movement from Latin America.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

'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. Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's poems have also been published in Poetry Review and The Times Literary Supplement. This is a real indication of Saddiq's growing status as an important international 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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

This week, to celebrate Nowrus, the Dual Poetry Podcast poem is Haft Seen by Shakila Azizzada from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Mimi Khalvati and then in Dari by Shakila Azizzada.

'Haft Seen' is a traditional custom for the Persian new year celebration known as Nowruz. A table is set with 7 different items which its essential items letters start with (Sin-Seen "س"). These are Sib - Apple, Sabze - Grass, Senjed - Sea-buckthorn, Serkeh - Vinegar, Samanu -a sweet paste made from germinated wheat, Somaq - Sumac and Seer - (Garlic) each with their own symbolic meaning.

The poem also references Dam Platz, a historical square in Amsterdam flanked by the Royal Palace and the National Memorial to the Dutch war dead.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

This week's poem is by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by David Huerta.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

Much of Azita Ghahreman's work is deeply personal yet infused with political undertones. Her poems often reflect on her childhood growing up in a land-owning family in the South-Eastern Khorasan province of Iran – referenced in evocative images of the natural world amongst which she grew up – and on the changing face of modern Iran.

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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.