Read Jay Bernard’s ‘England Street (Reggae fi Linton)’, commissioned to celebrate Linton Kwesi Johnson winning the 2020 PEN Pinter Prize. Featuring a specially commissioned introduction to the poem from Jay.
Read More
Latinx Letters: An Interview with Leo Boix
Leo Boix discusses bilingualism, British Latinx poetry, and race in Latin America.
Read More
Poetry’s Democracy: An Interview with Anthony Anaxagorou
Anthony Anaxagorou – poet, writer, publisher and educator – discusses spoken word after COVID-19, Cyprus, and poetry in the age of social media.
Read More
Being Seen: Dean Atta in Conversation with Keith Jarrett
As part of our Digital Literary Salon, Dean Atta speaks to Keith Jarrett about queer black British experience, schools, and writing for teens.
Read More
Always Against the Idols: A Conversation with Chus Pato and Erín Moure
Galician poet Chus Pato and Canadian poet and translator Erín Moure discuss collaboration, Francoism, language rights and iconoclasm. PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s magazine for international and translated voices. PEN’s members are the backbone of our work, helping us to support international literature, campaign for writers at risk, and advocate for the freedom to write…
Read MoreNature bubbling out: a conversation with Mahvash Sabet
I never consciously make a decision about what to say in a poem: the poem itself says itself. So the poem happens. It doesn’t happen because I have decided that it should happen. It wasn’t a conscious decision to write about nature. The nature just bubbled out.
Read MoreInstructions Within — Andrew McMillan reads Ashraf Fayadh’s poetry
Andrew McMillan reads the poetry of Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian-born writer and artist imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his work.
Read MoreThe right/write to roam
Inua Ellams discusses how his heritage and his multi-placed identity laid the foundations for his new collection #Afterhours.
Read MoreBards without borders
Two members of the Bards Without Borders poetry collective reveal their split opinions on Shakespeare in the lead-up to the 400th anniversary of his death.
Read MoreMy search for meaning
Femi Martin, founder of Full Circle Projects, discusses the impact of creativity in her own life and in the lives of the people she works with.
Read MoreTalking about home
Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo shares two new poems and comments on the complex relationship between language, identity, family and the concept of home when living in the diaspora.
Read MorePEN Atlas Q&A: Ihor Pavlyuk and Steve Komarnyckyj
The author and translator of A Flight Over the Black Sea (Waterloo Press) talk to PEN Atlas about working together, their inspirations and the power of poetry in times of war.
Read MoreProtest as Dance
Ahead of his appearance at Ledbury Poetry Festival, poet and translator George Szirtes writes on the lyricism and wit at the heart of poetic protest.
Read More
Wole Soyinka’s poetry: the insistence on liberty
Carmen Bugan on Wole Soyinka’s insistence on liberty.
Read MoreThe erotic and revolutionary poetry of Afghanistan
Amid recent election controversies, Bashir Sakhwaraz writes about Afghan women’s poetry
Read MoreMy Literary Form(s)
In the run-up to London Book Fair 2014, where Korea is the market focus, Han Kang writes about women that turn into plants, the intuitive process in choosing between prose and poetry, and what the future holds for her writing
Read MorePoetry in translation – The Popescu Prize 2013
David Wheatley writes about the genius of mistranslation, Finnegans Wake syndrome, and being a judge on The Popescu Prize for poetry translated from a European language into English
Read MoreTadeusz Różewicz and The Struggle for Poetry
For PEN Atlas this week, Basia Howard writes about Tadeusz Różewicz, Poland’s most translated writer. His memoir Mother Departs, published by Stork Press in March, describes the war he survived and that forged his poetic conscience
Read MoreHow international is poetry?
When the projection fails during the Finnish poet Olli Heikkonen’s reading and the slides with parallel Dutch and English translations disappear from the stage, poetry suddenly doesn’t seem that international anymore.
Read More