Marion Molteno gives a brief introduction to Urdu poetry, relating its popularity, discussing the Ghazal poem form and Marvelling at mushairas: poetry recitals that draw massive crowds.
Nukhbah Langah reveals the challenges she experienced in translating Noshi Gillani’s intense, ambiguous and exceptionally complex poetry from Urdu into English.
If we could read the poets that move huge audiences elsewhere in the world, would it wake up our own? On the Guardian’s blog Sarah Maguire prescribes a course of translation to restore the vitality of British verse.
Lavinia Greenlaw writes about the impact that listening to Noshi Gillani read her poems had on her translations: ‘I had in my head Emily Dickinson’s dashes - how they hold the parts of her poems in mid-air, or the artist Cornelia Parker’s suspended cutlery and blown-up shed.’