Biography

Write Out Loud’s prime aim is to create opportunities for anyone who has a mind to to share their writing with other people. Three years ago, this aim was extended to trying to remove language barriers – not easy with poetry.

The usual approach is for a translator to take on the work of translating into their native language, endeavouring to understand the poet’s intentions. Obviously this is the only approach with dead poets, short of a séance.

In France we worked on translating English to French, and vice versa. Out of that grew our desire to open up the nights and the website, not just to poetry in translation, but to the discussions that can take place around that; the cultural understandings – and misunderstandings - that emerge, as well as the challenges it gives to the poet to try and explain the subtext of their own work.

Sometimes these are subtexts of which the poet was previously unaware. We are seeking funding to be able to extend that work, and hope to bring it to the website. In the meantime, we have decided to post some examples, and welcome any suggestions or poems.

The best example here, of the projects we have undertaken so far, is the work we've been doing with Fatima Al Matar the Kuwaiti born poet currently residing in Coventry.

Recently, Paul Blackburn approached Fatima Al Matar and, after discussion, two blogs have been produced, which should be seen as linked, to highlight cultural differences between the English and Arabic worlds, approaches to poetry as well as problems with translation.

For the first translation, Fatima worked with English poet, Fred Holland, to produce a version of one of his poems in Arabic. She then writes about the translation process.

For the second blog, she took a poem, 'I wish I can live life' by Abu Al Qassim Al Shabbi, a Tunisian Poet (1909 – 1934), and translated it into English. She used this translation to develop some of the themes previously identified in the earlier blog.

We have worked with the Gujarati Writers’ Guild UK and have participated in two of their Mushairas (poetry festivals). For now, some poems by Bolton-based Gujarati poet, Siraj Patel are included in the blogs associated with this profile.

Our work with Francophone, African poets has resulted in translations of their work, too. Oh Ma Ville Natale (Oh town of my birth)a poem by Wenceslas-Kapesa Chanda (translated by Julian Jordon & David Andrews) is also included in the blogs associated with this profile. Julian will shortly be adding notes on the translation process.

Please feel free to add comments to the blogs but if you have any specific questions and/or ideas for developing this project further email info@writeoutloud.net with a subject line of Cross Cultural Poetry.

Samples

The sample poems will appear in blogs in both the original language with English translations or vice versa

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.