An Afternoon at Snowfall by Dilawar Karadaghi

Thanks to Kurdish poet and translator, Choman Hardi, we translated this wonderful poem by Dilawar Karadaghi over the course of three workshops at the beginning of 2005 when, appropriately enough, it was bitterly cold – though too cold for snow. And, as London faces its first ‘arctic blast’ of this remarkably mild winter, it seems fitting to choose ‘An Afternoon at Snowfall’ for our poem-podcast this week. The poem is read beautifully for us by two poets: in Kurdish by Mohammad Mustafa and in English by W N Herbert.

This is one of my favourite poems that we’ve translated in our workshops, I think because of the way in which Dilawar expresses something so essential about what it means to be exiled through the repeated evocation of every day, almost banal, details.

Book a Season Pass for our upcoming Poetry Translation Workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-translation-centre-winter-spring-workshops-2020-tickets-84139289881

This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.

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