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Poetry series exploring exciting voices from around the world.

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Mother Tongue: Series 1

Mother Tongue: Series 1: Close Encounters

Close Encounters

06/08/2017

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - Mother Tongue, Series 1, Close Encounters

Poetry series in which poet Helen Mort explores exciting voices from around the world.

Helen hears poems in Somali, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese and Polish - and in translation.

The fourth edition of this new globe-trotting poetry series. Poet Helen Mort explores exciting voices from around the world. This week, she hears poems in Somali, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese and Polish - and in translation. 

Reflecting on the phrase "Close Encounters", she explores how the very stuff of being human - relationships, identity, empathy - play a part in the work of these four distinct poets. 

Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf is fast emerging as one of the most outstanding Somali-language poets writing today. Her bold and striking poems are translated by British poet Clare Pollard. They join Helen to talk about the place of poetry in Somali culture and their translation partnership, which came about through the Poetry Translation Centre. With poems from her collection The Sea Migrations.

Helen then travels to Paris to meet the Syrian poet Maram al-Masri and hear poems from her collection Barefoot Souls, which imagines the lives of women who have experienced domestic violence, and from Liberty Walks Naked, al-Masri's response to recent events in Syria. 

There's deadpan humour from Angelica Freitas, a brilliantly wry voice from Brazil. She takes a novel approach to exploring female identity in her poem A Woman Goes, and a bittersweet reflection on being alone in I Sleep With Myself. 

We also hear a lost poem from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It's one of a small number of previously unpublished poems recently discovered among his papers and published in the collection Then Come Back.

Finally, one of the brightest stars in Polish literature - a poet, translator and novelist, Jacek Dehnel. His is an eclectic sort of empathy, with poems about the death of a world-famous musician and a lurid museum exhibit. And we hear his Polish translation of a very famous Philip Larkin poem.

Readers: Raghad Chaar and Alejandro de Mesa
Producer: Caroline Hughes
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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