Shillong, Jan 18: Poets Translating Poets is a pioneering project by the Goethe-Institut Mumbai along with the Goethe Institutes in South Asia, and in collaboration with the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, now called Haus für Poesie and in cooperation with German Commission for UNESCO, with an aim to create a platform for poets from South Asia and Germany to translate each other’s works.
Contemporary poetry from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka has been translated into German, while German poetry was similarly translated into South Asian languages during the course of the project. Initiated by the director of Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai, India, Dr. Martin Wälde; so far this project has brought together 51 poets from 20 languages since 2015.
It has stimulated many new literary networks and opened new avenues for trans-cultural understanding.The culmination of this project was a celebration of all things poetry at the Poets Translating Poets Festival in November 2016.
This is the first time that contemporary German poetry has been translated into South Asian languages at such a scale and vice versa. The results of these ‘poetry encounters’, the original poems and translations, as well as photos and audio recordings, are available online, in this extensive website in order to make the work available freely and in the public domain www.goethe.de/ptp. An anthology was published by Draupadi Verlag in two volumes.
In this forthcoming edition of the project in January 2019, they bring together contemporary poets writing in Assamese, German and Khasi along with translators, in a ‘poetic encounter’ among the pine and mist in the hills of Shillong. The week will culminate in programmes including language, poetry, music, theatre and dialogue on 18thJanuary in Shillong. The project and the poems, will be documented by a photographer.
As part of this upcoming edition, two essays were commissioned to provide insights into the contemporary poetry scene in Shillong and in Assam, the essays have been written by Lalnunsanga Ralte (aka Sanga Says) a poet, teacher and PHD scholar from Shillong and Shalim M Hussain a poet, writer, translator and PHD scholar in Guwahati. The essays are available online.
