An irony of modern times is that while communication goes wild we are hungry for news of what’s really going on in the world; this wonderful event proved that poetry is where truth lies.

Less than a month from the World Cup, football and reports of unrest in Brazil were bypassed to give occasion to intelligent, interesting and thoughtful commentary on life as expressed in poetry and literature. Let’s hope that expressed importance of translation and translators’ promotion of writers gains momentum, too.

Our panel was organiser and editor of Modern Poetry In Translation Sasha Dugdale, translator Danny Hahn giving voice as well to novelist Paulo Scott in absentia, and poet Angelica Freitas with Hilary Kaplan, translator of Rilke Shake and more recent poems in MPT’s newest issue.

One would not have guessed the pair has been appearing for only three weeks together: Freitas read her poems in confident yet softly spoken Portuguese, and Kaplan intoned humour fitting of Perfect Teeth and personal political A Clean Woman.

Whilst sadly under-attended, the quality of questions posed indicated audience value from this event and demand for more like it.