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Poets Translating Poets
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The festival was organised by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan – a first in the Institute’s sixty-year
history. It was the culmination of a two year project where poets from South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and Germany translated each others’ poetry. The process took place in the form of ‘Poetry Encounters’ that were organised in Mumbai, Dhaka, Colombo, New Delhi, Trivandrum, Karachi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Gangtok, though 2015-2016 and in June to October 2016, the poets from South Asia travelled to 12 Cities across Germany to present their poetry and translations.
Poets writing in Bengali, English, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Mizo, Nepali, Odia, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu were part of this project.
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An important component of the Poets Translating Poets project is the website www.goethe.de/ptp which
documents the entire collection of poems, their translations, reportages, essays and the information on all the poets and translators.
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The Festival was organised with the support of numerous partners and supporters including venue partners – National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), St. Xavier’s College and Edward Theatre. The newly formed “Goethe-Institute India German Business Circle“ including nine German companies -Siemens, Volkswagen, Hamburg Süd, Lanxess, TÜV, Rheinland, BASF and Thyssenkrupp, and numerous educational, art, poetry, cultural and community institutions and groups in Mumbai.
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To view the full festival program, and for details on all Poets, Speakers, Performers please visit
WHAT ART X DID
Rashmi Dhanwani was the Festival Curator and was brought on as an Editorial Consultant to commission 30 pieces/essays on aspects related to contemporary poetry in South Asia. This involved researching on and generating ideas for the essays, along with developing an overview of poetry traditions across the Indian subcontinent, and liaising with authors on the article brief, timelines, deliveries and deadlines. As part of reportage writing, Rashmi travelled to different locations in South Asia to document and report on the encounters taking place.
Essays: http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/lp/prj/ptp/mag/enindex.htm
Reports: http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/lp/prj/ptp/rep/enindex.htm