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The Ledbury Poetry Festival programme is eclectic and varied poets this year travelled from countries including America, South Africa, India, Norway, Austria, France, Germany and Sweden. Chloe Garner, Artistic Director of Ledbury Poetry Festival says, “Ledbury Poetry Festival’s strong international perspective is reflected in the 35 poems in translation published in Hwaet! 20 Years of Ledbury Poetry Festival, edited by Mark Fisher and the anthology is exceptional because of this. I would urge all aspiring poets to immerse themselves in poetry from different languages, cultures and traditions.”

Kim Moore who is part of Versopolis: A Celebration of Emerging European Poets reflects on her involvement in the project, “Before Versopolis I'd only really read British and American poetry - after coming back from a poetry festival in Croatia, I started to read as much translated poetry as I could get my hands on.” Versopolis is EU funded and brings together 13 European Festivals to promote and translate their most exciting new poets.  According to Fiona Sampson, “International poetry is what stops us writing and reading in a goldfish bowl; it keeps us swimming in the ocean of today’s wonderful and incredibly varied poetry. Translation may be “through a glass darkly” but it’s an awful lot better than shrugging and giving up on work in other languages; or telling readers they’re not allowed to access it unless they know the original language. Imagine how little even a full-time linguist would get to know of world literature if we played by these rules.”

Modern Poetry in Translation is required reading for anyone in the UK interested in international poetry. Sasha Dugdale, the editor says, “This work presents poets here with many new possibilities, new regions of thought and emotion.” She continues, “I noted, for example, the enthusiastic response to the Iranian poet Sabeer Haka (translated by Hubert Moore and Nasrin Parvaz) and the response I had to the recent refugee poetry issue told me that British poets wanted to read and hear this work. ..In some ways we haven¹t been as engaged with the poetry of the outside world since the 1960s. Perhaps we haven¹t been as engaged with poetry altogether since the 1960s.”  

In the light of Brexit the fact that so many young British poets are just awakening to the possibilities of poetry in translation seems very poignant. Ruby Robinson, recently nominated for a Forward Prize for her collection Every Little Sound says,  “It is time to stop thinking in a British silo, relying on the English language, and branch out using the interconnectivity that’s available to us in the 21st Century.”

Fleur Adcock on the other hand takes a different perspective, “having worked as a translator myself I can't help thinking of translations as second-best or at least rather frustrating; I always want to get to the original language and listen to the rhythms. There's no shortage of poetry in English to read. I realise this could be seen as an insular attitude, but so be it: there's a lot I want to pack into my remaining years, with my deteriorating eyesight, and I've decided to be selective. (For similar reasons I no longer read 600-page novels.) However, I greatly admire the editors, publishers and translators who are giving English-speaking readers access to so much poetry from abroad.”

While we are all still coming to terms with the impact the Brexit will have on British cultural life and at times the outlook seems bleak, there is certainly vigour and energy in British poetry at present. A key factor must be the new poetry written by BAME (British Aisan and minority ethnic) poets, such as Mona Arshi who won the Forward Prize for best First Collection and Sarah Howe who recently won the T.S. Eliot Prize. This is alongside a proliferation of means to discover and hear poetry. Festivals are a key contributor, as are small presses, online journals, podcasts, universities and enthusiasts up and down the country organising events and salons. The hierarchies that once existed in poetry are certainly breaking down and this is reflected in the comments made by poets appearing at the Festival.

Deryn Rees-Jones writes, “In the last three years there's been a very real sense of a change in British poetry.  Poetry has found a new momentum and a new way of thinking about gender and race which can open up wider political debate. Perhaps there's a new sense of possibility -- of what might be. I have never quite understood the animosity between avant garde poetries and the mainstream and nor have I understood the divide between spoken word and poetry for the page. I think the younger generation of poets are at ease with a more inclusive aesthetic. It's complex, of course, but maybe the younger generation are also more used to having a public voice because of social media.”

According to Sasha Dugdale editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, “British poetry is alive and kicking. The most brilliant intervention of the last few years has to be the Complete Works Project and resulting Bloodaxe anthologies, a response to the lack of published BAME poets and the brainchild of Bernardine Evaristo. This project has brought a number of poets to the attention of publishers and prize juries and has made some small beginning at the adjusting the balance of published work. I have no doubt that excellent and engaging poets such as Sarah Howe, Mona Arshi, Warsan Shire and Inua Ellams were given confidence and made more visible by the Complete Works, and the project has simply made us more aware of all the different and compelling voices around us. It is critically important that UK poetry is open to all these voices or it will simply strangle itself to death in its own complacency.”

Notes to Editors

For more information please contact:

Please contact Chloe Garner, director@poetry-festival.co.uk or 01531 634 156 / 07415472163