Tata Literature Live! 2021 (tatalitlive.in)
This session explores poetry as a form of social commentary on issues that affect the everyday life of human beings. This form of expression is all about the cultural spaces which they inhabit and how they are subtly bringing about social reform around them by addressing issues of patriarchy, public spaces, languages, traditions and development through their poetry.
Participants:
Ali Abdollahi, Berlin, Germany
Sabika Abbas Naqvi
Vasantha Surya
Ali Abdollahi
The prolific poet and translator, Ali Abdollahi was born in Birjand, South Khorasan Province in Iran in 1968. He has published seven collections of poetry and written biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke and Gunter Grass, as well as translating more than ninety books on literature and philosophy. A gifted translator from German, Abdollahi has introduced a large number of German poets and writers of the word to Iranians, including Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertolt Brecht, Erich Fried, Franz Kafka, Heinrich Böll, Michael Krüger, Ilma Rakusa, Erich Kästner, Michael Ende, Heinrich Heine, Hermann Hesse, Fernando Pessoa,Janis Ritsos ,David Albahari and others.
In addition, Abdollahi has published collections of ancient Egyptian poetry, ancient Indian poetry, contemporary Japanese poetry and Lithuanian poetry, to which he has contributed substantive and detailed introductions.
Abdollahi has also written poems in German, some of which were recently published in an anthology called Heir ist Iran by Sujet Verlag in Bremen.
Abdollahi's is the Iranian moderator of the German Lyrikline poetry website www.lyrikline.org through which he has introduced Iranian poets to German readers and world poets to the Persian speakers.
His poems have been translated into German, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Dutch, English, Lithuanian, Turkish, Kurdish,Armenian, Serbian and Arabic.
Abdollahi has won many scholarships and awards from literary institutions such as the Goethe Institute in Munich and Ubersetzerhaus Looren in Zurich. He has taken part in the Poesiefestival in Berlin many times and has given readings and lectures in Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Vienna, Cologne ,Ruse(Bulgarien),Vilnius, Ahmedabad Gujarat and New Delhi.
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