The diversity site, a PEN Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee project

The idea that advised this poetry blog was and is the dissemination of literature, specifically poetic literature, in non-traditional formats such as web-formatted publication.  The reader can find the kernel of this  idea discussed here.  There are links on the Poethead about page to the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (Barcelona 1996) and to UBUWEB.  The above links comprise the foundation of the blog, and advise the main thrust of the blog’s themes: the importance of translation, and the sharing of ideas in poetry. Poetry is always going to lend itself to derivations including in translation,  film, musical, and theatrical adaptations , to name but a few.

In 2011, I wrote a piece about the wealth of work that is available online for the discerning reader of poetry and of literature. In my view literary writing is undergoing a vast renaissance which is a result of avant-garde web-usage.  This fact appears to annoy the more traditional purveyor of literature who is up against it because publishing houses, poetic-foundations , and avant-gardeists are very embracing of their new audiences, and they are putting time and money into developing tech to reach new readers.

PEN International operates through volunteerism and through committee, the Diversity blog is a project of the PEN International Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee.  The importance of translation in literature was set out again in 2011 in the form of the Girona Manifesto ,which I am linking here .

Genres in the new TLRC  Diversity blog include , Essays, Poetry and Fiction.  Translators and readers are invited to contact the Committee with questions and submissions. I am adding here the link to Women Writers, as it is a special area of concern for me.  It is good to see that the International PEN Women Writer’s Committee is very active in the design and editorship of the blog, Lucina Kathmann and Marija Simokovic were very involved in the creation and launch of the women’s pages. Thanks to both women for their work and for publishing Aluine’s Gardens on Diversity.