Translator Joel Mitchell joined us to lead a second workshop on poetry in Arabic from Mauritania by Mbarka Mint al-Barra’. Known as the country of a million poets, Mauritanian poetry has rarely been translated into English, so this was a welcome opportunity to discover more about Mauritania’s leading woman poet. In our first workshop on Mbarka’s poetry we translated the wonderful poem, ‘Poetry and I’.
Joel began the workshop by talking to us about how Mbarka’s poetry is consciously ‘literary’. She is defining her poetry against the oral, folk poetry tradition that is a important feature of life in Mauritania. Instead, the linguistic complexities and formal dexterity of her work align it with the great tradition of written Arabic poetry.
We first translated a small folk poem to give us a sense of the difference between this kind of poetry and that written by Mbarka. And then we went of to translate her poem, ‘Message from a Martyr’.
Our poetry translation workshops are one of the PTC’s core activities. Through them we’ve first encountered some of the poets we’ve gone on to translate, publish and record at length. A significant number of the poets who’ve visited the UK to take part in our tours were introduced to us by a translator bringing their poems to a workshop.
The workshops are open to anyone who can contribute a translation of a poem by a living African, Asian or Latin American poet who has an established reputation in their own language.
Workshops are free but places are limited so advance booking is essential. If you’ve not attended one of our workshops before, please read this before booking a place.
