Shop

World Poet Series III Bundle

£30

Featured poets: Habib Tengour, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Anar, Diana Bellessi, Abdellatif Laâbi

Featured translators: Will Harris, Delaina Haslam, Leo Boix, Hari Rajaledchumy, Fran Lock, Marilyn Hacker, André Naffis-Sahely

The Poetry Translation Centre’s World Poet Series showcases the most exciting living poets from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, in beautiful pocket-sized bilingual editions.

£39 when bought separately, bundle price £30.

This bundle includes:

Consolatio by Habib Tengour [tr. Delaina Haslam, Will Harris]- Written by one of Algeria’s most revered contemporary poets, Tengour’s Consolatio is a journey through cultural identity and memory in post-colonial Algeria. Unsentimental, yet surreal, he writes about the experience of exile, doing so in the French language.

The Water People by Vénus Khoury-Ghata [tr. Marilyn Hacker] - An outstanding figure in contemporary French literature, this collection of Khoury-Ghata’s poetry perfectly illustrates her gift for mesmeric sequences, which often draw from her Lebanese upbringing. She merges immersive landscapes with folkloric narratives in French, curating a melting pot overflowing with sensuous meditations on humans and trees, plants, animals and the elements themselves.

My Mother’s Language by Abdellatif Laâbi [tr. André Naffis-Sahely] - This collection of Laâbi’s poems illustrate his status as being one of Morocco’s foremost contemporary poets. Driven by saying what needed to be said, he has been persecuted for it, being imprisoned in 1972 for 8 ½ years on charges of ‘opinion crimes’. This selection features some of his most powerful shorter poems alongside a long extract from his seminal work 'Casablanca Spleen'.

Leaving by Anar [tr. Hari Rajaledchumy and Fran Lock] - Anar (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem) is one of Sri Lanka's most celebrated poets. This work explores Tamil landscapes, contemporary feminist thought and Koranic imagery to reconcile the aftermath of the civil war and the subtle terrors of living as a woman in Sri Lanka today. This selection draws from her five award-winning collections.

To Love A Woman by Diana Bellessi [tr. Leo Boix] Widely regarded as a trailblazer in South American lesbian & feminist poetry, this collection of Diana Bellesi’s epitomises her the sensuality and directness of her work. Beautiful and lyrical, the translation of Leo Boix superbly brings these love poems to English. It is an essential for every fan of Latin American poetry.