Translating the Classics: Naush Sabah, Philip Terry

Winchester Poetry Festival 2025

Translating the Classics: Naush Sabah, Philip Terry

Modern Poetry in Translation celebrates its 60th anniversary with a reading by two poet-translators whose work has recently featured in the magazine.

Naush Sabah will perform translations of Arabic poet Al-Būșīrī, and Philip Terry from his version of Dante’s Purgatorio, before a conversation about the pleasures and challenges of experimental translation of classics.

Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a poet and translator. The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020, and Carcanet published his edition of Jean-Luc Champerret’s The Lascaux Notebooks, the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry, in 2022. His version of Dante’s Purgatorio, relocated to Mersea Island in Essex, was published by Carcanet in October 2024.

Naush Sabah is a writer, editor, and educator. She co-founded Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. She was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Sky Arts Writers Award. Her debut pamphlet Litanies (Guillemot Press, 2021) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award in 2022.

Modern Poetry in Translation was founded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort in 1965. It brings together the best new poetry, essays and reviews from around the world. It aims to give voice to the silenced, exiled and excluded, and create a diverse and creative community of translators, poets and readers.

Suitable for: all

Duration: 1 hour

Format: in person event. Poetry readings and conversation

Access: wheelchair accessible venue throughout

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