Dual Poetry Podcast

Translated by Serafina Vick and Abigail Parry This week's podcast brings together two poems from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias 2015 collection Hilo+Hilo / Thread+Thread. These poems were translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for the PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry. You can find out more about the trans...

Translated by Serafina Vick and Abigail Parry This week the podcast features two poems by Cuban poet Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, both from her 2013 collection Sucking The Stone. The first of these, The Law of Dynamics, sees the poet explaining to Galileo why he can't to the Macarena. (Why? Because it is 'a dance for Satyrs and other sex-mad creatures.') while the second poem, one of two in the colle...

This week we have two poems by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias 'Farmer's Treasure' and 'An accumulation of dry matter that is slow after flowering but intensifies during the lactic phase' both from her collection Gimme Spray. The exceptional skill and formal dexterity that marks Rodríguez Iglesias’s work in Spanish has been expertly brought to life in English by Abigail Parry, an award-winning poet whose...

Translated by Serafina Vick and Abigail Parry. Contemporary Cuban poetry is as diverse and indefinable as contemporary poetry in any other country, but Legna does belong to a particular generation of poets. Generación O, formed mainly of poets born after 1975, is founded on the shared experience of growing up after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Cuba was launched into extreme deprivation. This...

The Cuban poet Legna Rodríguez Iglesias was born in Camagüey in central Cuba in 1984 and currently lives in Miami, Florida. As well as poetry she has written theatre, short stories, children’s books and a novel. Her poetry has been translated into Portuguese, German, Italian and English. The DUAL POETRY PODCAST is focusing on her work for the next few weeks as we release a free online audio archiv...

Translated Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick The DUAL POETRY PODCAST continues with its focus on the Cuban writer Legna Rodríguez Iglesias who burst onto the Cuban literary scene with all the ferocity of a stampeding elephant aged 19. This week we are bringing you two poems, Pure Jazz and Maggot People, that originated in her 2017 title Miami Century Fox, a collection of 51 Petrarchan sonnets. Last...

Translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick This week's podcast brings you 'I must ask you' & 'Mad Dog Pack' both translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for Legna Rodríguez Iglesias' PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry. The collection has been shortlisted for the first annual Derek Walcott Prize for...

Translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick This week the Dual Poetry Podcast is breaking its form to bring you two poems rather than one. 'Thirty heads a day' & 'Graduate' were both translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick for the PTC publication 'A little body are many parts' which brings together poems from seven different collections of Legna's poetry. The collection has been shortliste...

Translated by Mimi Khalvati and Zuzanna Olszewska. This week's poem is by Shakila Azizzada from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Mimi Khalvati and then in Dari by Shakila herself.  Shakila has spent many years in the Netherlands and her poetry reflects both her Afghan heritage and her European influences. She also writes in Dutch and translates her own poetry both ways...

Translated by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari. This week’s poem is by Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Partaw Naderi. Partaw Naderi studied science at Kabul University and was imprisoned in the notorious Pul-e-Charki prison by the Soviet-backed regime for three years in the 1970s shortly after he’d begun to write poetry....

Translated by Moheb Mudessir and The Poetry Translation Centre Workshop. This week’s poem is by Reza Mohammadi from Afghanistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Dari by Reza. The prize-winning poet, Reza Mohammadi - widely regarded as one of the most exciting young poets writing in Persian today - was born in Kandahar in 1979. He studied Islamic Law and t...

Translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters & Jean Sprackland This is one of two prayer-poems from Diana's PTC Chapbook 'Begining to speak'. Diana Anphimiadi quickly distinguished herself as an unusually imaginative, original talent in the Georgian poetry scene. Her work refuses the formulaic or expected response, wrong-footing readers with its wit and delicacy. In her acclaimed 2013 collection, Personal C...

Translated by Jamie McKendrick Today's poem is 'Aural ' by David Huerta from Mexico. The poem is read first in English translation by Jamie McKendrick and then in Spanish by the original poet. Also, this week we have details of the PTC's first-ever online workshop season looking at the work of Yoruba Poet & political activist Ọláńrewajú Adépọ̀jù. Sign up for these workshops here: https://buff.ly/3...

Translated by A K Blakemore & Dave Haysom. This week's poem is 'Empty Town' by the Chinese poet Yu Yoyo. In her afterword to Yu Yoyo's collection My Tenantless Body the poet Rebecca Tamás notes that Yoyo's concerns are often the global, concerns of those whose future is at stake in an uncertain world. All this week the poet and artist Ella Frears is joining our PTC YouTube Takeover with a series o...

Translated by Abigail Parry and Serafina Vick Today’s poem is Fertile Truce the title poem from Legna Rodríguez Iglesias’ 2012 collection. It was translated for the PTC in 2019 by the award-winning poet Abigail Parry and the Havana based writer Serafina Vick. The poem refers to the national flower of Cuba, the Mariposa or white ginger lily. Also in this poem, you will hear the use of the English t...

Translated by Sarah Howe and Canan Marasligil. There is a constant struggle in Turkey between being oneself and having to fit into a mould – a mould shaped by nationalistic values and imposed by a majority – which makes daily life extremely difficult for people who come from one of the many minority communities. This state of struggle and in-betweenness is described in the poem ‘Uniform’ – from sc...

Translated by Clare Pollard and Maxamed Xasan 'Alto'. This week’s poem is 'Orphan' by Asha Lul Mohamad Yusuf from Somalia/Somaliland. The poem is read first in English translation by Clare Pollard and then in Somali by Asha. Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is a powerful woman poet in a literary tradition still largely dominated by men. She is a master of the major Somali poetic forms, including the prestig...

Translated by Nukhbah Langah and Lavinia Greenlaw. This week’s poem is by Noshi Gillani from Pakistan. The poem is read first in English translation by Lavinia Greenlaw and then in Urdu by novelist Kamila Shamsie. The candour and frankness of Gillani's highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large po...

Translated by Mimi Khalvati and Choman Hardi Born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish-speaking world. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian and now, for the first time, into English. This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast...

Translated by Jen Hadfield and Canan Marasligil. Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold new women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her people, and yet there is also a mysticism in her writing, a closeness to nature, an embracing of mythology – a dialogue with God. This poem and many others that appear in Bejan's...

Translated by Andre Naffis-Sahely This week’s poem is by Abdellatif Laabi from Morocco. The poem is read first in English translation by Andre Naffis-Sahely and then in French by Abdellatif. The prize-winning Moroccan poet, Abdellatif Laâbi, is widely acknowledged as being one of the most important poets writing today. Laâbi was born in Fez in 1942. He began writing in the mid-1960s, publishing hi...

Translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters & Helen Mort Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. Her poetry has received many prestigious awards and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Born in 1986 in Kutaisi, Salome grew up during the turbulent decade of the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and many new countries emerged from its ruins. In Georgia these years were...

Translated by Sarah Maguire and Sabry Hafez. This week’s poem is by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from Sudan. The poem is read first in English translation by Sarah Maguire and then in Arabic by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi. Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and em...

Translated by Jen Hadfield & Canan Marasligil. This week's poem is by Bejan Matur. The poem is read first in English translation by Jen Hadfield and then in Turkish by Bejan herself. Bejan Matur is the most illustrious poet among a bold women’s poetry emerging from the Middle East. Her poetry engages directly and concretely with the struggles of her Kurdish people, and yet there is also a mysticis...

Translated by Jamie McKendrick. 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 himself. David Huerta's poems frequently turn on images that are experiences in themselves. In an eerie piece, he describes a poem by Gottfried Benn: A flower fell apart in the middle of an autopsy and the doctor who'd cut o...