In December 2012, Mahsn Majidy joined us for a very enjoyable workshop on the poetry of Abdulla Pashew, widely regarded as the most popular poet writing in Kurdish today. We translated four small poems by Abdulla Pashew, ‘A Few Lines About My Age’, ‘Football’, ‘Fusion’ and ‘The Contract’.
In this workshop we translated three more of his poems, two of which – ‘Unfinished Poem’ and ‘Title’ are concerned with the exigencies of writing poetry; the third poem, ‘Nostalgia’ is a delightful small lyric about Kurdistan.
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 has the skills to translate the poetry of a living African, Asian or Latin American poet with an established reputation in their own language. You don’t need to send us your translations before you join us.
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.
