One Moon for All: A Multilingual Poetry Anthology

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural.

                  —“Snow,” Louis MacNeice      

Mark Tredinnick, Shaoquett Moselmane, and Steve Meyrick hosted by Mr Arshad Butt at his restaurant, The Himalaya, in Sydney.

Poetry is a world language. It is how the world declares itself, the reality of things being themselves, the idiom of the heart. Poetry catches (and releases) the world in its other life, the one the daily discourses (of theory and politics and commerce and digital chatter) overlook. No matter which language it finds expression in, poetry speaks for each of us in our deepest hurt and highest aspiration—it catches better than any other literature, possibly any other art, the inner life of the actual world, and the felt sense of what it is to be human. It overhears the music of the intelligence of things and says them as if reminding us of who we really are and what this is all really about.

Poetry has always served these purposes, redeeming language and reminding us of the carnal and sacred nature of things—forgiving us for being human and at the same time holding us to account.

In every culture on the earth, poetry was the first—and in many places it remains the principal, most beloved and valued—literature. It does not so much speak as listen; it does not so much tell as remember; it does not so much declaim as conserve (that which otherwise will disappear beneath the shrillness and banality of things). We do not so much read it, as it reads us. It finds us and remembers us, each and all, in our integrity; it forgives us for being human and asks more of us: to find our face in our enemy’s face, for instance, and never to forget the earth. It writes what otherwise is not written. It recalls deep aspects of our lives on earth, forgetting which neither you nor the earth are fully alive.

It is the wealth of the world (the beauty and the terror, the joy and the despair, the love and the cruelty) that each poem in each language catches. Poetry, the world language, has as many dialects as there are languages, and each of them gives its speakers pride in its uniqueness, the way it, like no other poetry, catches and keeps some unique aspects of human experience. But each of us is poorer, and justice is less adequately served, to the extent that we do not know each other’s poetry.

Australia, for instance, is a land that spoke, before colonisation, five hundred languages, each of them with its own poetry, many of them spoken still. Now in western Sydney alone, apart from the Indigenous languages of that region, 168 languages are spoken and written. How much better might we understand and how much higher would we know to value ourselves, if more of us knew this and shared some, at least of those poetries? We profess ourselves a multicultural country and congratulate ourselves on our achievement, but we’re a long way yet from growing into our “incorrigibly plural,” infinitely various grown-up selves.

So let’s hear each other in each other’s language, let’s listen to each other’s poetry, and find ourselves in it; let’s offer each other a translation of our poems in a language we share (English)—the very best translation we can manage, as much a poem as the original, lovely in English (funny and sad and angry and wise and lyric and abject) as the poem is in its mother tongue. This is what our project envisages. A multilingual anthology of poems—ideally, such an anthology each other year. Several poems in eight or ten of the many languages of Australia, the dialects of that great world language poetry, each published in its mother script, each published also in an English version, a translation that hopes to do justice to the original.

Here's what we have in mind: a Conference of the Birds, a multitrack recital of lyric poetry conducted in many of its tongues at once, a book of poems that catches the “drunkenness of things being various” (MacNeice again). A celebration of the diversity of Australian culture and, in particular, of its poetries, and a chance for readers outside each language community (of readers, in particular, who have only English) to read the poetries of some of the other languages of Australia, and for everyone who has some English—the lingua franca here, for better and for worse—to enter at least a little way into the mysteries of the poetry of a language not their own, and to find, with luck, themselves there. A proof of the diversity, the incredible plurality and wealth of poetries of contemporary Australia.

The idea belongs to Shaoquett Moselmane, who as mayor of Bankstown and as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales (and as the brother of a fine poet), has long championed and supported the diversity of cultures of Western Sydney. I met him first at an event for the Chinese poets of Australia, at which I was asked to speak, and he asked me subsequently to appear at events for Arabic poets and for Panjabi poets and some other groups, all of them passionate about their poetry. It was at one of these events that, in my recollection, Shaoquett floated this idea for multilingual anthologies (including, critically, translations). Since then, with Steve Meyrick, of course, I’ve been running 5 Islands Press, and it’s our honour to be able to work with Shaoquett to make this anthology series happen.

On Wednesday 3 September, perhaps fifty poets from fifteen language communites met at the invitation of Shaoquett at an event, organised by Mr Shahid Malik, Mr Tito Scohel, and hosted generously Mr Arshad Butt at his restaurant, The Himalaya, in Rockdale. Shaoquett and I addressed the poets and pitched the vision I’ve described above; Steve Meyrick outlined the way we see the communities taking responsibility for selecting the poems for the anthology and getting them to us with workable translations and notes and a recording of each poet reading their work. It wasn’t really very hard to elicit support and enthusiasm for the book and eagerness to participate. Once we have sign-on from the participating communities and have one or two governance arrangements in place, we’re up and away, and very excited about it. We plan to publish the anthology, the first of many, we hope, in October 2026.