Earlier this week I attended an inspiring Zoom session with Writing West Midlands led by Taiwanese author C.J.Anderson-Wu. It was fantastic to learn more about a writer from a country that I knew embarrassingly little about. Afterwards, I decided I needed to seek out some Taiwanese poetry. Then I thought, hey, I wonder which other countries I haven't read any poetry from, and that's when I had an idea... what a great experience it would be to read a modern poetry book from each country of the world. I started Googling and discovered that a few years ago Ann Morgan read a book from every country in the world but I couldn't find anyone who'd taken on the challenge purely from a poetry perspective. So, why couldn't I?
I like to think that I read quite widely so I took a look at my bookshelves to see which countries I could tick off already, and was surprised (and mildly horrified) to discover that I was slightly deluded about how widely I was actually reading. It turns out that I only own seven poetry books that are translations, mostly anthologies that include a mix of modern and classic poetry from a variety of places. The ones that are one person's work tend to be by writers who are of African or Asian heritage but have spent most of their living somewhere else, often the USA. So, not as wide a reader as I thought.
That decided it, I would start this challenge with fresh books.
A small section of my current poetry book collection:
I popped a few messages on social media to see if anyone had any recommendations. There were no responses to my posts on X (the artist formerly known as Twitter) but a few people on Facebook sent me useful links to organisations focusing on translations as well good luck messages.
The next day, I put together a list of all the countries in the world and began the great search. I started off well by seeking out a couple of the suggested websites and book sellers but then things got tricky... I discovered that quite a few of the African nations appear to have more of a focus on the spoken word rather than the written one and often these are not translated into English. I am currently about 20% of the way through the list and I still haven't found any modern poetry books from Benin, for example (if you have any suggestions then please drop me a line!). I also found myself looking through and feeling slightly panicked - is it even possible to find a poetry book from all of these places? I immediately began praying that the Pope had a not too secret poetry writing fetish and was receiving copies of his latest collection in English at that very moment (no such luck yet...).
So, is it possible? I don't have a firm answer yet but I can often be annoyingly, relentlessly determined so I'm planning on making it work.
Somewhere along the way I decided to make the shame of potential failure even more public by creating this blog about my metaphorical journey across the globe. If you're reading this then, well done, you found a very niche corner of the internet and I hope you enjoy coming on this journey with me. If you're not reading this, and indeed, if no one ever reads this, then I'll still have embarked on an incredible reading journey and that can only be a good thing.
ELJ x
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