When Sarah Maguire was the Royal Literary Fund’s Writing Fellow at The School of Oriental and African Studies, she was struck by the number of academics and students she encountered who were fascinated by poetry and who knew a great deal about the languages and literary cultures of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Sarah decided to arrange a workshop where these translators could collaborate in translating poetry together. The workshops began in 2002 and their success led Sarah to approach Arts Council England for funding to set up The Poetry Translation Centre.
Since then, we have continued to hold workshops on a regular basis. They are the PTC’s core activity. Members bring along translations of poets new to us all and, in the workshops, we can tell whether we like their poems and if they might be worth us translating at length. This is how we were introduced to the work of key PTC poets such as Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’. You can see us together with some of the poets we translated at the launch party for the World Poets’ Tour in October 2005 in the photo, above.
For details of how the workshops function and how to join us – either in person (if you’re in London) or via our mailing list – please see Poetry Translation Workshops.
