'the elephant' by Adelaide Ivánova, looks at how the human body processes trauma, drawing parallels between a mother reacting to the death of her young child and a woman experiencing sexual assault.

In this recording, you will hear Ivánova talk about the origins of this poem in her friendship with an elderly German woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease before she reads her poem in the original Portuguese. Afterwards, you will hear the poet Rachel Long reading the English translation that she prepared collaboratively with the writer and editor Francisco Vilhena.

Adelaide Ivánova and Rachel Long will be appearing together on Saturday, October 19th at the 'Exploring Translation as Disruption' event, part of Poetry International at the Southbank Centre, London.

Book here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/138227-exploring-translation-disruption-2019

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

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 her PTC chapbook 'If This is a Lamnet' were translated by TS Elliot Award-winning poet Jen Hadfield and bridge translator Canan Marasligil.

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Despite the pleasurable excitement and excess of youth that Yoyo shows us, these poems are also laced with the insecurity and fear of growing up on a planet which may not outlast you; and the societal fissures that flow from that. In Yu’s poetic world, nature is necessary and liberating, but it is not the beautiful, timeless vision we see in classical Chinese poetry. Nature offers potential freedom, at the same time that it is full of latent, utterly modern threat and suffering." -Rebecca Tamás, from her afterward to 'My Tenantless Body'

Get a copy of this book of Yu Yoyo's work from the PTC website: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/my-tenantless-body

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.

This week's poem is by Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde. The poem is read first in English translation by Sean O'Brien and then in Portuguese by Corsino Fortes.

Corsino Fortes's first book Pão & Fonema [Bread & Phoneme] which appeared in 1974 made an immediate impact. 1974 was a momentous year for Portugal and its African colonies as it was the year in which Portugal's dictator Salazar was overthrown, an act which began the process that led to the decolonisation of the Cape Verde Islands in 1975.

You can buy a copy of our Corsino Fortes Chapbook from the PTC website:https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/corsino-fortes-chapbook

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.