Author: Gerald Cox
Date: 27/09/20

New Contemporary Poets and Translators pages!

Thus far in the Listen to Poetry journey we have concentrated on out of copyright poetry. We are happy to announce a fruitful collaboration with the poet and translator R J Dent who approached us to read some of his work. He has recently completed a new translation of Charles Baudelaire’s famous work Les Fleurs du Mal. These rich and vibrant poems are beautifully translated and given a really fresh and modern feel by R J Dent. Listen to Poetry would like to thank R J Dent for both his poems and translations and also for his very positive cooperation with us.

R J Dent kindly sent us the complete translation and left it up to us to choose which poems to perform. From more than 130 poems our first selection still had 40 titles on it. That got cut to 16 poems and we finally settled on the nine poems we have recorded for Listen to Poetry and we may add more in the future. We then discovered that R J Dent has written many poems himself and so the logical next step was to create a poets page for these as well.

Listen to Poetry wishes to encourage more people to engage with poetry. We also believe that performing and reading poetry out loud is a very important part of that process. While some poets are comfortable reading their own work some are not, this is also the case for poetry translators. So Listen to Poetry would like to expand its mission to include encouraging new poets and translators of poetry. We hope to provide an online platform that will help with the promotion of their work and give more people a chance to read and listen to their poems.

Listen to Poetry is interested in working with contemporary poets and translators of poetry to help promote their work. We can create a poet’s or translator’s page with readings of your poems and links to your websites or publications etc. We also have an efficient social media program on going, that promotes Listen to Poetry on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest and we will be adding YouTube soon. If you are interested in this please be in touch with us and send some of your work. We will then assess whether or not we feel we can help you.