Every Challenge Has It's Limits...

I am well into the first book and will look forward to updating you on that in another post but first some musings on the benefits of a reading challenge like this and as well as the potential limitations...

First, a little update: I am well on the way to locating poetry books for most of the world's countries but there are, of course, a few that are proving problematic so I will continue the search. It would be impossible to take on this challenge alone and people have been very kind, some I have contacted out of the blue asking for help locating books and others have shared my excitement for this endeavour and got in touch with me to let me know. I am grateful to everyone who has shown an interest so far. Where people have helped me out, I will do my best to mention them in the relevant blog articles as we go along.

Before I've even read a word of any of the books I have already learned so much more about the poetry cultures in different countries. Some have fantastic spoken word scenes and don't have the same obsession we poets over here have with seeing our work in written form, others have a rich selection of texts but very few in English, and some poetry communities seem to be held together by the younger generations. I promise to be more insightful and detailed as I delve into the countries one at a time.

When starting this challenge I made a few rules for sourcing the books from each country:

1. The book has to be published in this century (I ideally want to support modern writers and gain a sense of the culture/writing as it is now or in recent history).

2. It should be by a single author

3. It must be translated into English (this last one is for my benefit!)

I am largely sticking to rules 1 and 3 but rule 2 turned out not to be very helpful. I have found some wonderful collections by single authors but equally, I have come across a number of anthologies that excited me. I also felt that being exposed to multiple voices could actually be an even better way to experience the poetry of a country.

I decided to take this on to ensure I was experiencing global poetry. It is my hope to gain an insight into other cultures and different writing styles and poets. I also wanted to do this because the world is bigger than just British and American poetry or Western Literature. To truly know my artform I feel a need to hear and learn from global voices.

Reading one book from every country will achieve the above to a large extent, however there are limits. The first one being that one poet can't possibly represent a whole country. I will gain an insight into their world but it isn't a definitive view and doesn't represent the individuals and micro-cultures within a country.

On the same note, when searching the brilliant Shearsman Books website I realised that for the Spanish books I could choose between many translations of Spanish books but also of books translated from Catalan. So which should I choose? Well both, I thought. These are two distinct languages that deserve to be recognised. And then the realisation hit that this issue was going to come up again. It was, in fact, the owner of Shearsman Books who then reached out to me with this point and generously sent a list of other countries with more than one language . Perhaps the challenge just got bigger, maybe I should read one book from every country and then attempt one from every language within those countries? It still wouldn't offer a complete world view but at least I am venturing off this small island (which, as it happens, is also full of very fine poets).