Having travelled – through poems and books – across languages and continents, let’s now start exploring new writing systems too… Today, our Translation Thursday blog’s country focus is Georgia, a country between the West and the East, whose language has... its own script.
Here below are our top three poetry books in translation from Georgian. Get 30% discount on all three titles by taking advantage of our promotional code TRANSLATIONTHURSDAY at the checkout on our website!
#1 A House With No Doors. Ten Georgian Women Poets, translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field (Francis Boutle Publishers, 2016, bilingual Georgian/ English edition) – the first English anthology of contemporary Georgian women poets. It includes the work of Lia Sturua, Rusudan Kaishauri, Maia Sarishvili, Nato Ingorovka, Lela Samniashvili, Tea Topuria, Eka Kevanishvili, Diana Anphimiadi, Lia Liqokeli, and Salome Benidze.
#2 Six Georgian Poets, edited by Gaga Lomidze (Arc Publications, 2016, bilingual Georgian/ English edition) – a collection featuring the work of poets of the so-called ‘Gagarin Generation’ daring to challenge rules and conformism. It features poems by Rati Amaglobeli, Shota Iatashvili, Gaga Nakhutsrishvili, Lela Samniashvili, Maya Sarishvili and Irakli Charkviani, translated by Alexandra Büchler, Nia Davies, Donald Rayfield, Adham Smart, and Stephen Watts with Davit Gabunia mainly in two workshops, held in 2014 in Tiblisi (supported by the Georgian National Book Centre and the British Council) and in 2015 in Aberystwyth (supported by Literature Across Frontiers).
#3 The Dictatorship of Poetry by Zurab Rtveliashvili, translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field (Francis Boutle Publishers, 2018) – the first translation into English of a major collection of work by this Georgian poet, performer and human rights activist, which includes older and more recent poems. Rtveliashvili experiments with language and sounds in his poetry, breaking free from social and language restraints. His poems have been translated in Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Dutch, English, French, German, Iranian, Japanese, Russian, Swedish and Ukrainian.
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