The Poetry Translation Centre has been running collaborative poetry translation workshops for 20 years. Everyone is welcome to join us this summer as we set out to translate four more poems from Asia, Africa and Latin America into English.

For this season, we will be meeting in-person at the Deptford Lounge and looking at poems spoken by communities in the Lewisham area including Turkish, Vietnamese, Tamil and Portuguese.

There is no need to know the language being translated. The group works together from a guide translation, and each workshop ends with a magical moment when the translated poem is read aloud in English for the first time. Simply join in.

Each season of PTC translation workshops is led by a poet, in this case, we are delighted to be working with poet, editor, and comic book writer Chrissy Williams. Her writing has been featured on BBC radio and television, and her full poetry collections are Bear (Bloodaxe, 2017) and Low (Bloodaxe, 2021). She edits the online poetry journal Perverse, and has run numerous workshops over the years. She has an Italian mother and English father and was raised bilingually.

This summer we are working with great, experienced translators including Quynh Nguyen, Canan Marasligil, Hari Rajaledchumy and Francisco Vilhena.

The workshops will take place every second Monday in June and July from 6:30pm to 8:30pm:

Monday, June 3
Translating Vietnamese poet Do Trung Quan with Quynh Nguyen

Monday, June 17
Translating Turkish poet Karin Karakasli with Canan Marasligil

Monday, July 1
Translating Tamil poet Sugan with Hari Rajaledchumy

Monday, July 15
Translating Brazilian poet Érica Zíngano with Francisco Vilhena

Dates: June 3rd to July 15th (June 3rd, June 17th, July 1st + July 15th)
Location: Deptford Lounge, 9 Giffin St, London SE8 4RJ
Price: £16 or £10 with concessions or Season pass for all four sessions £52 or £32 with concessions (20% savings)

Booking
Season pass
Individual workshops

Queries? Email: bern@poetrytranslation.org