“Poems for the wall” has began some collaborative work with two organisations : “Modern Poetry in Translation” and “The Reader.”
On the face of it, these organisations, or projects, are quite different. But they have in common a belief in, and a commitment to, honest words of high quality and integrity, true witness, in whatever language and whatever form ; and to a need for those words to reach out to people far and wide and find them where they are.
It is unclear, as yet, quite where this exploratory work will go. So far, it has brought the material available on this site to the attention of the large numbers of people in The Reader’s “constituency” ; and has resulted in an agreement with Clare Pollard of MPT that I might reproduce here some of that organisation’s work over the years, re-formatted as bilingual posters. This enterprise will be slow but infinitely rewarding. Here is a link to the first product, an early Chinese poem by Du Fu, grieving over the loss of his world. I am grateful for the help of Paul Harris, the translator.
I also want to thank Chris Meade for his suggestion that “Poems for…the wall” might do some work with MPT. He is presently Chair of the latter. Over twenty years ago, he was Director of the Poetry Society, and in that capacity was instrumental in getting “Poems for…the wall” up and running. So there he still is, fruitfully.