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‘Poets Translating Poets’ is a project that creates a platform for poets from South Asia and Germany to translate each other. Bringing together fifty poets from approximately twenty different languages (including German, English, Hindi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, Sinhalese, Tamil and Malayalam among others) through literary encounters in several South Asian locations, it promises to stimulate new literary networks and open new avenues for transcultural understanding. Contemporary poetry from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka will be translated into German by well-known German authors in collaboration with our partner, Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, while German poetry will be likewise translated into the languages of South Asia during the course of the project. A dedicated project website will bring together all the threads of the project, which will include readings, literature festivals, book fairs and events in the subcontinent as well as in Germany.

Although the encounter is based on varied cultural, artistic, historical and political differences, we hope to initiate new spaces of interaction and communication with the project leading to the emergence of a vast literary network, as well as a proliferation of works far beyond the cultures in which they originated.

The Goethe-Institut and Literaturwerkstatt Berlin have collaborated with their South Asian partners to assume the role of initiators of poetry translation in this project.