{"title":"David Constantine","description":"David Constantine was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1944. He is a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, where he now lives.\n\nHis poetry books include \u003cem\u003eWatching for Dolphins\u003c\/em\u003e, winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award, \u003cem\u003eSelected Poems \u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eCaspar Hauser, The Pelt of Wasps\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSomething for the Ghosts\u003c\/em\u003e.\n\nHis translations include Friedrich Hölderlin's \u003cem\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (1990, revised 1996), winner of the European Poetry Translation Prize. His novel \u003cem\u003eDavies\u003c\/em\u003e won the Southern Arts Literature Prize and his non-fiction book, \u003cem\u003eEarly Greek Travellers and the Hellenic Ideal\u003c\/em\u003e, won the 1986 Runciman Award.\n\nHis \u003cem\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e was published in 2004. \u003cem\u003eUnder the Dam\u003c\/em\u003e, a collection of short stories, was published in 2005.\n\nHe is also co-editor of the literary journal \u003cem\u003eModern Poetry in Translation\u003c\/em\u003e.\n\n[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=E6jj1HqK4EY[\/youtube]\n","products":[{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no12-freed-speech","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.12) Freed Speech","description":"2009 sees the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One of those rights is freedom of speech. This issue of \u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation\u003c\/i\u003e celebrates speech that has been freed. Poetry and translation, working together, have often been the means and the best expression of that liberation. 'Freed Speech' features examples from past and present, from all over the world, from all manner of circumstances, of people being enabled to speak and of their voices being heard. It also explores the repression and harming of those voices, but chiefly shows the triumph of the will to speak, the freeing, the recovery and the enjoyment of tongues.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eContents\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditorial \u003cbr\u003eSee How I Land: Oxford poets and exiled writers. Poems by Dawood, Jamie McKendrick, Yousif Qasmiyeh and Bernard O’Donoghue \u003cbr\u003eYannis Ritsos, ‘Tombs of our Ancestors’, translated by Sarah Kafatou\u003cbr\u003eYannis Ritsos, four poems, translated by Robert Hull\u003cbr\u003eBerkan Karpat and Zafer Senocak, ‘nâzim hikmet: on the ship to mars’, translated by Tom Cheesman \u003cbr\u003eEdith Södergran, four poems, translated by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003eErnst Stadler, two poems, translated by John Greening \u003cbr\u003e‘Gandhari’s Lament’, from Mahabharata, translated by Carole Satyamurti\u003cbr\u003eAnnemarie Austin, ‘Come the Thaw’ \u003cbr\u003eF. Mehrban, two poems, translated by the author and Helen Smith \u003cbr\u003eSeamus Heaney, three ‘Freed Voices’ from Aeneid VI\u003cbr\u003eArchilochus, ‘The Cologne Epode’, translated by William Heath\u003cbr\u003eSappho, Fragment 58, translated by John Morey \u003cbr\u003eShazea Quraishi, ‘The Courtesan’s Reply’\u003cbr\u003ePoems from Romania, translated by Adam Sorkin and others \u003cbr\u003eMarie Luise Kaschnitz, ‘Unsaid’ and ‘Spirals’, translated by Harry Guest\u003cbr\u003eAmit Chaudhuri, ‘The Writers’\u003cbr\u003eJazra Khaleed, three poems, translated by Peter Constantine\u003cbr\u003eMangalesh Dabral, three poems, translated by Sudeep Sen\u003cbr\u003ePawlo Tychyna, six poems, translated by Steve Komarnyckyj\u003cbr\u003eWojciech Bonowicz, six poems, translated by Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese\u003cbr\u003eDavid Huerta, ‘Nine Years Later – A Poem Dated’, translated by Tom Boll and The Poetry Translation Centre Workshop \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhotos from the launch of ‘Frontiers’\u003cbr\u003eRobert Hull, ‘At the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrecht, ten poems, translated by David Constantine\u003cbr\u003eMichael Foley, ‘Wang Wei in Exile’ \u003cbr\u003eWang Wei, ‘Autumnal Dusk in the Mountains’, translated by Julian Farmer \u003cbr\u003eJennie Feldman, ‘Olive Trees, West Bank’\u003cbr\u003eChris Beckett, six Ethiopian poems \u003cbr\u003ePatrice de La Tour du Pin, ‘Children of September’, translated by Padraig Rooney\u003cbr\u003eIvan Teofilov, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne \u003cbr\u003eLouis Aragon, ‘Lilac and Roses’, translated by Tom Chamberlain\u003cbr\u003eLouis Aragon, ‘Epilogue’, translated by John Manson\u003cbr\u003eHomero Aridjis, six poems, translated by George McWhirter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid and Helen Constantine, A Note on James Kirkup \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBelinda Cooke on David Scott’s Mallarmé \u003cbr\u003ePaschalis Nikolaou on Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke\u003cbr\u003eEmily Lygo on Belinda Cooke’s Tsvetaeva \u003cbr\u003eJosephine Balmer, Further Books: Writing Women \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040744952,"sku":"9780955906428","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_d8dd29cf-4e84-4c0d-a2f6-a33257284a24.jpeg?v=1417533402"},{"product_id":"mpt-22-poets-at-bush-house-the-bbc-world-service","title":"MPT 22: Poets at Bush House: the BBC World Service","description":"The original intention with this issue had been to celebrate the World Service of the BBC to which MPT in its formative years, owed so much. The aim was to produce an issue which would represent a substantial selection of the many languages in which the BBC broadcasts from Bush House. (By the end of WWII the Corporation was already broadcasting in forty-five languages.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen MPT was founded, one of its first ports of call was Bush House. We soon discovered that there were many distinguished writers (including many poets) working there. The journal's aim initially, was to provide a platform for the poetry of the first post-War generation of Eastern Europe poets, like Herbert, Rozewicz, Popa, Pilinszky. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce various contacts had been made, a good deal of advice was forthcoming from Bush House, but the relationship was reciprocal. e.g. Ted Hughes took part in a programme, on the Hungarian Service, together with the poet Janos Pilinszky. In it Ted Hughes discusses his commitment to world poetry and his approach to translation...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040746704,"sku":"9780954536701","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/925_2_08102003_104048.jpeg?v=1417533519"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no8-getting-it-across","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.8) Getting it Across","description":"\u003ci\u003eGetting it Across\u003c\/i\u003e has to do with translation in a very fundamental sense: getting yourself across. It features translations, original poems, essays and anecdotes that treat the many ways in which people communicate with one another. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"contents\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003eCover by Lucy Wilkinson. Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tBernardo Atxaga, two poems, translated by Margaret Jull Costa\u003cbr\u003e•\tGabriela Mistral, ‘The Foreigner’, translated by Arthur McHugh\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e0\"\u003eNiyati Keni, Poetry in Four Dimensions\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tHelen and David Constantine, A Language without Words\u003cbr\u003e•\tAlyss Dye, ‘Word Blindness’\u003cbr\u003e•\tMoniza Alvi, ‘Writing at the Centre’\u003cbr\u003e•\tSaradha Soobrayen, One Foot in England and one Foot in Mauritius\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e1\"\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Slip’\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tPascale Petit, ‘I was born in the Larzac’\u003cbr\u003e•\tAnnemarie Austin, ‘Dysphasias’\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e2\"\u003eGregory Warren Wilson, three poems\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tPedro Serrano, four poems from ‘Still Life’, translated by Anna Crowe\u003cbr\u003e•\tStephanie Norgate, two haiku versions of Lucretius\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e3\"\u003eRobin Fulton, four poems\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tMartha Kapos, two poems\u003cbr\u003e•\tCarole Satyamurti, three poems\u003cbr\u003e•\tHarry Martinson, five poems, translated by Robin Fulton\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tJenny Joseph, An essay and five poems, after paintings by Jaume Prohens\u003cbr\u003e•\tMartti Hynynen, five poems, translated by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003e•\tLucy Hamilton, extracts from a sonnet version of Lalla Maghnia\u003cbr\u003e•\tTsvetanka Elenkova, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne\u003cbr\u003e•\tTugrul Tanyol, four poems, translated by Ruth Christie\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e4\"\u003eJane Draycott, a translation of the first two sections of Pearl\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tNaomi Jaffa, The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry from Aldeburgh\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Taha Muhammad Ali, three poems, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tMichael Hamburger, four poems\u003cbr\u003e•\tRobert Walser, twelve poems, translated by Michael Hamburger\u003cbr\u003e•\tTwo Memorial Notes on Michael Hamburger\u003cbr\u003e•\tBy Anthony Rudolf\u003cbr\u003e•\tBy Iain Galbraith\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tCharlie Louth on Don Paterson, Martyn Crucefix and Rilke\u003cbr\u003e•\tBelinda Cooke on The Translator as Writer (edited Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush)\u003cbr\u003e•\tJo Balmer, Shorter Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e0\" title=\"e0\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNiyati Keni\u003cbr\u003ePoetry in Four dimensions\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the UK, the first records of deaf people using manual signs to communicate date back to the sixteenth century. However, as signers were often geographically scattered, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century, when residential missions for the deaf brought them together in significant numbers, that a national Sign Language began to emerge. In 1880, an international conference of teachers of deaf children met in Milan and voted to ban the teaching of Sign throughout most of Europe as they believed it to be detrimental to the acquisition of spoken and written language in deaf children. The ‘oral’ method of teaching all children, deaf and hearing, remained the standard for almost a century until the late 1970s when it was finally acknowledged that this method was failing large numbers of deaf children who were leaving school with low levels of literacy. \u003cbr\u003eIn the latter half of the twentieth century extensive linguistic analysis was conducted on Sign Language (largely with American Sign Language), heralding a change in perception of Sign from a simple gestural code to a rich and expressive language. This, coupled with the general movement for ‘disability’ rights, has led to a shift in consciousness within both deaf and hearing society which has had two important results. Firstly, in the UK, British Sign Language (BSL) was finally recognised as an official national language in March 2003. Secondly, there has been an explosive evolution in Sign arts since the 1960s – notably in areas that have traditionally been considered ‘text based’, such as theatre and poetry. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn order to understand the impact of Sign on such media, it is necessary to examine the characteristics of the language more closely. \u003cbr\u003eSign languages are unique, in that they are visuo-spatial rather than verbal\/auditory. In the UK, Sign is often thought of as simple, pictorial language that is a transliteration of spoken English. In fact Sign is an evolved language not a devised one, with its own very different syntax and grammar. It shows regional variation in the same way that spoken languages do and is rich in visual metaphor, (e.g. ‘ravenously hungry’ is signed as little fish swimming in the belly).\u003cbr\u003eBSL has a much smaller lexicon than spoken English but achieves greater expressivity by modifying individual signs. Though the basis of a given sign is the handshape, the meaning can be altered by the speed, style, location, direction and repetition of the movement as well as by non-manual aspects such as eye gaze, facial expression, mouth shape etc. This mimetic quality of Sign is easily demonstrated. For example, the same verb can be performed lazily, angrily, jauntily, so that a person can amble, stalk or strut where the basic sign is ‘walk’. Nouns can be similarly modified – ‘tree’ is formed by one forearm standing upright, resting on top of and perpendicular to the other forearm, where the fingers are the tree branches. When the upright forearm sways or the fingers wriggle, the tree is depicted in stormy weather. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e1\" title=\"e1\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOliver Reynolds\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\t \u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eSlip\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn writing the word Fräulein\u003cbr\u003einstead of putting the umlaut\u003cbr\u003eabove the a\u003cbr\u003ehe had put it above the u\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe more she looked\u003cbr\u003eat that double-stroke\u003cbr\u003eabove the open letter\u003cbr\u003ethe more Freudian it grew\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e2\" title=\"e2\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGregory Warren Wilson\u003cbr\u003eThree Poems\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Opacity of Strangeness\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs soon as the April hailstorm ended\u003cbr\u003emy new Somali neighbour\u003cbr\u003ecrunched to the middle of his lawn\u003cbr\u003egathered up a handful of granules\u003cbr\u003eand took them back indoors\u003cbr\u003e. . . to pierce with a hot needle\u003cbr\u003eand thread on fuse wire like seed pearls.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWe only ever meet in passing,\u003cbr\u003echoosing limes in the corner shop,\u003cbr\u003epicking over the star anise, deferential\u003cbr\u003eas students at an evening class\u003cbr\u003epractising idioms, turns of phrase\u003cbr\u003e. . . hailstones in the ice-cube tray,\u003cbr\u003ematching pairs like moonstone earrings.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eToday, clipping the privet hedge,\u003cbr\u003eI felt his gaze on the nape on my neck,\u003cbr\u003ethat subtle sense the hairline has\u003cbr\u003e. . . how would topiary translate?\u003cbr\u003ebut the moment I turned he dissolved\u003cbr\u003elike sugar into milk, like shadow into dusk.\u003cbr\u003eWhenever he smiles something escapes me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e3\" title=\"e3\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRobin Fulton\u003cbr\u003eFour poems\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eWood Anemones\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDays lengthen, spaces between trees\u003cbr\u003eare wide, long before being filled in.\u003cbr\u003eAs if to tremble is to live\u003cbr\u003ewindflower petals tremble, half in\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ehalf out of last year's grass tangles.\u003cbr\u003eYou'd think they'd arrived from far off\u003cbr\u003ebefore place has been made for them.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThey are small voices, are so small\u003cbr\u003ethey know they have nothing to say,\u003cbr\u003eare wise enough not to say it.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEach is too white to make much mark\u003cbr\u003eon the spreading landscape, too cool\u003cbr\u003eto give way as far as pastel.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThat's the one place in the landscape\u003cbr\u003ewhere rhetoric is quite absent,\u003cbr\u003ewhere the landscape if it had things \u003cbr\u003eto say could find ways of saying them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eWords like trout\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ein glassy pool, abruptly\u003cbr\u003enot-there as I stare at their backs.\u003cbr\u003eI don't own words but I lose them.\u003cbr\u003eWords don't own me but they lose me.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e‘Arbitrary’ is a migrant,\u003cbr\u003eerratic, follows no seasons,\u003cbr\u003emost of the time hides somewhere else.\u003cbr\u003e‘Nutmeg’ is wary and jealous.\u003cbr\u003eIf ‘Muskat’ comes near me, ‘nutmeg’\u003cbr\u003egets lost in the air for ages.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThey have their habits, belong\u003cbr\u003e(wouldn't they say?) to the Fifth Day,\u003cbr\u003ewill inherit the earth when we\u003cbr\u003estep off, not one word in our mouths.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040750524,"sku":"9780954536787","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e79db839-f4fd-4fd6-ac0a-96f556e05271.jpeg?v=1752237543"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no3-metamorphoses","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.3) Metamorphoses","description":"\u003ci\u003eMetamorphoses\u003c\/i\u003e seeks to extend the very idea of translation, and features texts which translators have transformed from a foreign original into something that is peculiarly their own. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHighlights include versions of Akhmatova done by outstanding contemporary poets for Poetry International at the South Bank in 2004, as well as Ingeborg Bachmann’s War Diary, a moving document of her early life in terrible times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis volume of MPT gives a voice to the unheard and creates living connections across frontiers, cultures, genres, mediums and ages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"contents\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003eCover by Lucy Wilkinson. Typesetting by Paul Dunn. Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eContents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cb\u003e Akhmatova on the South Bank \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cli\u003eRuth Borthwick: Anna of all the Russias: Translating Akhmatova \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eElaine Feinstein: An Evening for Akhmatova\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e0\"\u003eColette Bryce: Six poems \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSasha Dugdale: Five poems\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJo Shapcott: Three poems\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e1\"\u003eGeorge Szirtes (with Veronika Krasnova): Six poems \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarilyn Hacker: ‘For Akhmatova’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Greening: ‘Coming Soon. Remastered from the Old Norse’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e2\"\u003eNeil Philip: ‘Twenty-one glosses on poems from The Greek Anthology’ \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaul Howard: Versions of four sonnets by Giuseppe Belli\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTerence Dooley: A version of Raymond Queneau’s ‘La Pendule’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKathleen Jamie: Hölderlin into Scots. Two poems\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e3\"\u003eJosephine Balmer: The Word for Sorrow: a work begins its progress \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cb\u003e Ingeborg Bachmann \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cli\u003eKaren Leeder: Introduction\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e4\"\u003eMike Lyons: ‘War Diary’ \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePatrick Drysdale and Mike Lyons: Five Bachmann poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSean O’Brien: A version of Canto V of Dante’s Inferno\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCristina Viti: Eros Alesi’s Fragments\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSarah Lawson and Malgorzata Koraszweska: Six poems by Ann Kühn- Cichocka\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarilyn Hacker: Guy Goffette’s ‘Construction Site of the Elegy’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBelinda Cooke and Richard McCane: Six poems by Boris Poplavsky\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCecilia Rossi: Poems from Alejandra Pizarnik’s Works and Nights\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTerence Cave: A memorial note on Edith McMorran and a translation of Aragon’s ‘C’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaul Batchelor: An essay on Barry MacSweeney’s Apollinaire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cb\u003eReviews\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntony Wood on Angela Livingstone’s Poems from Chevengur\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJosephine Balmer on Cliff Ashcroft’s Dreaming of Still Water and PeterBoyle’s Eugenio Montejo \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaschalis Nikolaou on Philip Ramp’s Karouzos\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFrancis Jones on Jan Twardowski (translated by Sarah Lawson and Malgorzata Koraszweska) and A Fine Line: New Poetry from Central and Eastern Europe\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJosephine Balmer:Books Received.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e0\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eColette Bryce:Two Poems\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eUnder a dark veil she wrung her hands…\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnder a dark veil she wrung her hands...\u003cbr\u003e‘What makes you grieve like this?’\u003cbr\u003eI have made my lover drunk\u003cbr\u003ewith a bitter sadness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'll never forget it. He left, reeling,\u003cbr\u003ehis mouth twisted, desolate...\u003cbr\u003eI ran downstairs, ran into the courtyard,\u003cbr\u003emanaged to catch him opening the gate\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand begged him: ‘It was all a joke, don't leave,\u003cbr\u003eplease... I will lose my mind!’\u003cbr\u003eBut he only smiled, calmly, terribly,\u003cbr\u003eand said to me: ‘Get inside out of the wind.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1911\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHe was young, anxious, jealous…\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was young, anxious, jealous. \u003cbr\u003eHis love was like the heat of the sun\u003cbr\u003ebut he killed my white bird\u003cbr\u003eas he could not bear her singing of the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSunset. Into the room he strides:\u003cbr\u003e‘Love, laugh, write poetry!’ he orders me.\u003cbr\u003eI buried the bird\u003cbr\u003eby the well, near the alder tree.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI promised him I wouldn't cry\u003cbr\u003ebut my heart set to a stone,\u003cbr\u003eand now it seems that everywhere\u003cbr\u003eI turn, I hear her sweet song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1914\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e1\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Szirtes (with Veronika Krasnova): From the Introduction to Six poems \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first and most difficult task of a translator is, as I see it, to understand the poem. I don’t mean the words, but somehow to see the ghost in the machine, to see what it is that gives that particular form of words life. Without this nothing can be done. I am aware that this sounds far too simple, because the process of reading is also the process of translation, so the life in the original begins to kindle, then overlap with, the life of the developing translation. The translator, if a poet, seeks that life and is used to seeing it develop in his or her own work. Nor is that ‘life’, if I may give the word its proper inverted commas at this stage, independent of all the elements that seem to comprise it. There is compromise and conversation throughout.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e2\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Neil Philip’s: ‘Twenty-one glosses on poems from The Greek Anthology’ \u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAntipholos\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Tereina was just a child,\u003cbr\u003eI said, ‘This one will break a few hearts\u003cbr\u003ewhen she grows up.’\u003cbr\u003eEveryone laughed—me too—\u003cbr\u003ebut now it’s all come true.\u003cbr\u003eJust to look at her\u003cbr\u003eburns me up,\u003cbr\u003eand look at her\u003cbr\u003eis all I can do.\u003cbr\u003eWhen I beg her\u003cbr\u003eto put me out of my misery,\u003cbr\u003eall she says is,\u003cbr\u003e‘I’m a virgin.’\u003cbr\u003eThis will be the death of me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBassus\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTurn into a shower of gold, a swan,\u003cbr\u003ea bull, a bird? That’s too hard.\u003cbr\u003eI’ll leave such fancy tricks to Zeus,\u003cbr\u003eand woo Corinna with a credit card.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLucilius\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll this stuff you buy—\u003cbr\u003eexfoliating scrub,\u003cbr\u003emoisturiser,\u003cbr\u003efoundation,\u003cbr\u003ehighlighter,\u003cbr\u003elippy,\u003cbr\u003eeye-shadow,\u003cbr\u003eeye-liner,\u003cbr\u003emascara,\u003cbr\u003ecoloured contacts,\u003cbr\u003ewash-in hair dye—\u003cbr\u003ewouldn’t a new face\u003cbr\u003ework out cheaper?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e3\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Josephine Balmer’s: The Word for Sorrow: a work begins its progess\u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne rainy spring day I was working on an initial translation from Tristia using the Perseus site’s on-line Latin dictionary, when an electrical storm required me to log off . Turning to an old dictionary, bought at a village fete as a school-student, I noticed by chance an inscription on its fly-leaf which I must have seen many times over the years and yet barely registered: a name in faded ink and a date, early in 1900. Back on-line a few days later, I ran a search on the name, almost on a whim. The results were impressive: First World War documents and diaries relating to 1\/1st regiment of the Royal Gloucester Hussars, posted to Gallipoli in 1915, to the Hellespont, near Ovid’s own place of exile and which, by coincidence, Ovid had just described crossing in the poem I was translating. Following link after link, more and more connections were revealed; old photos of the regiment lined up on Cheltenham Station just before leaving for the east, bringing parallels with Ovid’s famous poem describing his last night before exile. The eye-witness accounts detailing the sickness, deprivations and dangers of the Gallipoli campaign in which 50,000 Allied troops and 85,000 Turkish soldiers died, reminiscent of Ovid’s own powerful laments about his conditions of exile. And so The Word for Sorrow came about, versions of Ovid’s verse alongside original poems exploring the history of the old second-hand dictionary used to translate it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e4\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Mike Lyons' Translation of Ingeborg Bachmann's: ‘War Diary’ \u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e11 June. L. has fallen in love with an Englishman, he is tremendously tall and gangling and is called Bob. She says he is very rich and was brought up in Oxford. He’s all she can talk about. Yesterday she said she had just one wish, to get away from here and go to England. She’s hoping, I think, that he will marry her. But marriage between Austrian girls and Englishmen is prohibited by the military government. She says the hardships here will never end and that she has gone through too much, can’t take any more, and wants a life for herself. I can understand her only too well but get angry with her too, because she thinks I also ought to marry an Englishman and get away from here. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf course I want to get away, but only in order to study, and I don’t want to get married and not even to an Englishman, just for the sake of a few tins of food and some silk stockings. Most of the Englishmen here are very nice and decent, I think. But I am much too young. Arthur and Bill are really very nice and we talk and laugh a lot together. In the garden we often play Tailor, Tailor, Lend Me Your Scissors and Look Behind You . Arthur keeps giving Heinerle chocolate, and a few days ago he called on Mummy, who is still in bed, and put tea and biscuits onto her bedspread. She calls him ‘Redilocks’, because he has such ginger hair, and likes him best. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think he also is in love with L., Bill is too, but Arthur more so, and I think too that Arthur is terribly jealous of Bob. Bob is quite standoffish. We once exchanged a couple of words but never again and even then it didn’t amount to much: it was just to thank him for letting L. have the car so that she could fetch Mummy from hospital.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e14 June. My mind is in a whirl still. Jack Hamesh was here again, this time he came in a jeep. Everyone in the village was gawping of course and S. came across the stream twice to look into the garden. I took him into the garden because Mummy is in bed upstairs. We sat on the bench and to begin with I was trembling again so badly that he must have thought I was mad or had something on my conscience or whatever. And I just don’t know why. I no longer know what we talked about first, but then all at once it was about books, about Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig and Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was so happy, he knows everything, and he told me he would never have thought he might meet a young girl in Austria who in spite of her Nazi upbringing had read all that. And suddenly everything was quite different, and I told him all about the books. He told me that he was taken to England in 1938 in a Kindertransport with other Jewish children. Actually he was already 18 years old at the time, but an uncle managed to arrange it, his parents were already dead. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow I know too why he speaks such good German. Then he joined the British army and in the occupation zones lots of former Germans and Austrians are now working in the offices of the FSS, on account of the language and because they know the conditions in the country better. We talked till evening, and he kissed my hand before he left. Nobody ever kissed my hand before. I am so mixed up and happy, and when he’d gone I climbed the apple tree in our garden, it was already dark, and I cried my eyes out and thought to myself that I would never wash my hand again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack comes every day now, and I’ve never talked so much in my life. We talk mostly about Weltanschauung and history. He’s very good at explaining, and I’m no longer in the least embarrassed by him. I always ask him if it’s something I haven’t yet heard about. At the moment we’re doing socialism and communism (and of course if Mummy were to hear the word ‘communism’ she would faint!), but you must have detailed knowledge of everything and study. I’m reading Marx’s Capital and a book by Adler. I’ve told Jack that I’d like to study philosophy, and he takes me very seriously and thinks that is right for me. But I’ve kept quiet about the poems.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040750824,"sku":"9780954536732","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_9f70c4b0-eb28-488b-b088-4821d55ea06b.jpeg?v=1752237543"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no10-the-big-green-issue","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.10) The Big Green Issue","description":"\u003ci\u003eMigration\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat the very first stirring\u003cbr\u003emy airtight, upright\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esarcophagus breaks \u003cbr\u003einto pieces,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eeach fragment starting to turn green\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eeven as it falls …\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartii Hynynen, translated from the Finnish by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation Third Series, No. 10\u003c\/i\u003e is dedicated to the beauty, abundance and plight of Mother Earth. This autumn MPT will be truly internationalist. Work from all quarters, out of as many languages as possible, will demonstrate an obvious fact: on Planet Earth we sink or swim together. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe arguments will be polemical, saying the things that must be said, but also celebratory, so that we see, yet again, what it is we risk losing. Poetry, translated and original, essays, anecdotes, photographs, and illustrations, all of the highest quality, show up wrong attitudes and the deeds they encourage; but also indicate how we might live better in the living world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFounded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort in 1966 and now edited by David and Helen Constantine – based in Oxford; Modern Poetry in Translation is Britain’s most important poetry translation publication. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMPT publishes translations, original poems, reviews and short essays that address such characteristic signs of our times as exile, the movement of peoples, the search for asylum, and the speaking of languages outside their native home. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditorial\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBewketu Seyoum, poems, translated by the author and Chris Beckett\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartti Hynynen, five poems, translated by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Rosenegg’s Night’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWaldo Williams, ‘Spring 1946’, translated by Jason Walford Davies\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePascale Petit, four poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRocco Scotellaro, poems, translated by Alen Prowle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Saxton, sonnets from Hesiod’s Calendar\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnna Lewis, ‘The Wash-house’, from the Mabinogion \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoão de Jesus Paes Loureiro, two poems, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntônio Moura, three poems, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMary-Ann Constantine, ‘Notre Dame de Port Blanc’, from the Breton ‘Itron Varia ar Porz-Gwenn’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTerry Gifford, Ted Hughes, Translation and Ecopoetics\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePauline Stainer, six poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Nosbaum, ‘Cape Weavers’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiriol Troup, three poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDante, Purgatory, Canto 11, 1-36, translated by Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWulf Kirsten, ‘village’, translated by Dennis Tomlinson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWulf Kirsten, ‘Bleak Place’, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElisha Porat, three poems, translated by Cindy Eisner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnne Cluysenaar, two poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePedro Serrano, ‘Swallows’, translated by Anna Crowe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnna Crowe, ‘The Mysterious Starling’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNaomi Jaffa, Aldeburgh 2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYi Sha, five poems, translated by Simon Patton and Tao Naikan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntjie Krog, ‘the unhomely’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFarzaneh Khojandi, two poems, translated by Jo Shapcott\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRose Scooler, ‘Mica Parade’, translated by Sibyl Ruth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTomas Venclova, three poems, translated by Ellen Hinsey\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhotos from Durham?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFranz Hodjak, six poems, translated by Peter Oram\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZsuzsa Beney, five poems, translated by George Szirtes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCesare Pavese, five poems, translated by David Douglas\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, five poems, translated by Bill Johnston\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJerzy Harasymowicz, four poems, translated by Maria Rewakowicz, with illustrations by Swava Harasymowicz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEugene Dubnov, two poems, translated, with the author, by Vernon Scannell, Anne Ridler and John Heath-Stubbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCecilia Rossi, on translations of Pura López-Colomé, Dulce María Loynaz and Mercedes Roffé\u003cbr\u003ePaschalis Nikolaou on Richard Burns’s The Blue Butterfly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBelinda Cooke on Sasha Dugdale’s Elena Shvarts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Constantine on Poems from Guantánamo and two Hafan Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Balmer, Further Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Extracts \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Rocco Scotellaro, Poems, Translated by Allen Prowle \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rocco Scotellaro never saw his poems published. In 1954, the year after his cruelly premature death from a heart attack at the age of thirty, E Fatto Giorno (Day Break), edited by his friend Carlo Levi, was published by Mondadori, and was awarded the Viareggio prize. He was the gifted son of a very poor family from Lucania, a mountainous and impoverished region of the Italian mezzogiorno. His parents made great sacrifices so that he could enrol at Rome University to study law, but the war and then the death of his father forced him to leave without completing his degree. He was of that young generation which saw the post-war years as a real opportunity to establish a just and egalitarian society, and to improve the material lives of the poor. At 23, he was elected as socialist mayor of his home town, Tricarico, and became actively engaged in the struggle for land reform. Inevitably, this brought him into conflict with the landowners, many of whom had welcomed his election believing that this son of a shoemaker could be easily manipulated. Victim of a political vendetta, he was imprisoned in Matera. The charges of corruption were spurious and he was acquitted after two months. He resigned as mayor and left for Portici, near Naples, where for some three years he studied at a research centre in agrarian economics. It was in Portici that he died.\u003cbr\u003e One hears in these poems a voice, or rather, voices that had scarcely reached the ears of any public, let alone one given to reading poems. They narrate an archaic rural way of life dominated by the seasons, the harshness of place and weather, the need to feed one’s family, but the sense of timelessness is sometimes disrupted by poems which relate contemporary events, such as the political defeat of 18 April 1948, the discovery that the agrarian reform plan had handed the peasants largely uncultivable strips of rocky ground, the death of his brother-in-law in the Greek expedition, the retreat of campaigning field- hands from the bosses’ bully boys. Scotellaro, political activist that he was, is no populist poet. He lets us share his ambivalence towards a moment in history when the past and the possible future are in contention. He was never able to commit himself utterly to an intellectual environment where reform and political change were debated; emotional ties to an ancestral past, whose limitations and inertia so frustrated him, frequently brought him back from the city. The muleteer’s daughter was ultimately more difficult to leave than the city girlfriend. His poetry is encamped in that border country where Raymond Williams also lived: pitched between attraction and repulsion, affection and irritation. The quarrel with others would have inspired, as Yeats claimed, a discourse of rhetoric, something Scotellaro no doubt kept for the hustings and public meetings. It was out of the quarrel with himself that he wrote many of the most telling poems in E Fatto Giorno.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e The violets are children with bare feet \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe leaves are fresh on the almond trees,\u003cbr\u003espring water rains from stone walls;\u003cbr\u003etrotting lightly, the donkeys choose\u003cbr\u003ethe friendlier of the river’s banks;\u003cbr\u003ethe girls with the darkest eyes\u003cbr\u003eclamber on the squeaking cart, aloof.\u003cbr\u003eMarch is a baby, laughing already, in its swaddling clothes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd you can forget the winter,\u003cbr\u003ewho, bent by bundles of wood,\u003cbr\u003ehave told your beads,\u003cbr\u003emile after freezing mile,\u003cbr\u003eto roast your face by the fire. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow ticks come back to the horses,\u003cbr\u003ein the stables flies stir the air,\u003cbr\u003eand children with bare feet\u003cbr\u003echarge upon clumps of violet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Already you can smell the apples on the air \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlready you can smell the apples on the air\u003cbr\u003eand you can sleep the deepest sleep,\u003cbr\u003eno moth flies in \u003cbr\u003eto flutter round the lamp.\u003cbr\u003eBut I have never heard, in late October,\u003cbr\u003eso many unfamiliar voices\u003cbr\u003ereach me from the street;\u003cbr\u003emy father was strapping up my trunk,\u003cbr\u003emy sister repairing my clothes,\u003cbr\u003eand I was having to leave to study\u003cbr\u003ein a city which I did not know!\u003cbr\u003eI felt my spirit turn to milk\u003cbr\u003ewhen my friends spoke consoling words,\u003cbr\u003enot moving, lonely and shy, from their doors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps now I ought to leave in silence,\u003cbr\u003ewithout a backward glance at anyone;\u003cbr\u003eI’ll seek some trade or other.\u003cbr\u003eHere, a rag flutters on its threads,\u003cbr\u003eand leaves from the apples scenting the air\u003cbr\u003eare settling on my head.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Forlorn cuckoo, your call keeps us awake \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll round the brown mountains\u003cbr\u003eyour colour has crept back,\u003cbr\u003eour old September friend.\u003cbr\u003eYou’ve settled in among us.\u003cbr\u003eWhen, fleeing the burnt stubble\u003cbr\u003eof our fields, castaway crickets\u003cbr\u003escreech at the doors,\u003cbr\u003eour women have heard you quite close.\u003cbr\u003eFrom the vaulted ceilings hang\u003cbr\u003estrings of dried figs and green tomatoes;\u003cbr\u003ethere’s a sack of hard wheat,\u003cbr\u003ea heap of felled almonds. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForlorn cuckoo,\u003cbr\u003eyour call\u003cbr\u003ekeeps us awake:\u003cbr\u003eYes, we’ll trudge back along the paths \u003cbr\u003eand, tomorrow, get down to work,\u003cbr\u003ewhen water streams yellow again\u003cbr\u003eunder the furrows,\u003cbr\u003eand the wind billows\u003cbr\u003eour coats in the cupboards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e To the muleteer’s daughter \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI cannot live beside you any longer,\u003cbr\u003esomething stifles my voice.\u003cbr\u003eYou are the muleteer’s daughter\u003cbr\u003eand you take away my breath.\u003cbr\u003eBecause below us, in the stable,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e‘Oil’\u003cbr\u003eA version of Dante, Purgatory canto xix, 1-36 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDante’s dream encounter with the Siren is a sudden lurch in the otherwise upward progress of the Purgatorio. Standing alone, it captures the nightmarish quality of humankind’s addiction to its own destruction – yet at the same time offers some hope of escape. This version was written alongside similar re-imaginings of several Old English poems. Like many translations, it is an experiment in bringing the perspective and authority of a particular text directly to bear on a modern problem, and vice versa, while keeping the framework of the original vision intact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Oil \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the day had given up the world\u003cbr\u003eto the hard moon, thrashed by Earth\u003cbr\u003eor Saturn, or some other punisher\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe hour that prophets foretell the rising\u003cbr\u003eof great stars out east down roads\u003cbr\u003ethat flare with falling shells\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea woman came staggering to me\u003cbr\u003eeye-pained, foot-bound, hands\u003cbr\u003eyellowed with a cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy gaze upon her membraned flesh\u003cbr\u003ejerked her straight, as from a morgue\u003cbr\u003eher tongue slopping free\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eher body stiff like one about to fall.\u003cbr\u003eHer face washed in a flood of colour –\u003cbr\u003esome lust, or blood, had burst its banks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo her story was released, and she\u003cbr\u003ekeened a note that held me closer\u003cbr\u003ethan any prayer-built hope:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘I the Siren, sweet in my throat,\u003cbr\u003esweet on the sea, bring crude men\u003cbr\u003eto ruin, spilt on rocks and currents.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWandering Ulysses was trapped in my slick:\u003cbr\u003eany man who’s burned for me is caught – \u003cbr\u003eno engine can undo my grip.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt her pause a lady, cold, stepped\u003cbr\u003ebetween us. Her icy breath thinned\u003cbr\u003ethe Siren’s spell to air, invisible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘She’s got him! He’s bending to her lips!’\u003cbr\u003eMy guide was closing in, eyes fixed\u003cbr\u003eon her white shroud. He grabbed the Siren\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand laid her open, the belly slack, \u003cbr\u003estinking, choking me, waking me\u003cbr\u003ewith poisoned air. My eyes fell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eon my guide. ‘Three times I’ve called on you\u003cbr\u003eto wake!’ he said. ‘Now rise: this path\u003cbr\u003ewill take us on to lighter skies.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe mules are restless, though asleep,\u003cbr\u003eand your father, snoring nearby,\u003cbr\u003ehas not yet clambered on his cart\u003cbr\u003eto beat away the stars with his whip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Anna Lewis\u003cbr\u003eThe Wash-house\u003cbr\u003ePoems from the Mabinogion \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNote\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis sequence is drawn from the story of Blodeuedd, found in the Mabinogion, the major collection of Medieval Welsh tales. Blodeuedd is often thought to represent the natural world in human form; connections and tensions between humans and the natural environment run throughout the story. The sequence is told from the imagined perspective of Blodeuedd’s maid. Blodeuedd is created from wild flowers by magic, to be the bride for a young nobleman, but begins an affair with another man, who encourages her to kill her husband and appropriate his land. Their attempt at murder fails when her husband transforms into an eagle, and flies out of sight. Blodeuedd’s husband is later reinstated by his uncle, a magician, who then pursues Blodeuedd, and turns her into an owl as punishment for her disloyalty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e 3 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAutumn shakes into winter,\u003cbr\u003eand we all settle down to our snow-pace:\u003cbr\u003eslow hours under candle-light, patching and darning \u003cbr\u003ethe woollens, salting and curing small game.\u003cbr\u003eI don’t see so much of the girl – \u003cbr\u003eher husband away, she keeps her door bolted,\u003cbr\u003ewon’t meet my eye when we pass in the halls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut we’ve had her pegged, in the wash-rooms and kitchens,\u003cbr\u003esince the first snowdrop came shouldering up through the frost;\u003cbr\u003esince the daffodils, all statuesque and deep blonde,\u003cbr\u003eand the plum trees, scattering petals\u003cbr\u003eover the still-rigid ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt gets no warmer, \u003cbr\u003esunlight shallow and brief on the field.\u003cbr\u003eHer door bangs at midnight, and again before dawn;\u003cbr\u003eshe sleeps later, talks faster, flagrant\u003cbr\u003eas the clematis limbering over her window.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e João de Jesus Paes Loureiro\u003cbr\u003eTwo poems\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Stefan Tobler \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoão de Jesus Paes Loureiro was born in a small town in Pará, in the eastern Amazon region, and is a poet and professor of aesthetics, the history of art and Amazonian culture at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). His first collection Tarefa was published in 1964, just before the military coup that brought a dictatorship to Brazil. Tarefa was confiscated and Paes Loureiro imprisoned for months. A prolific poet, his collections include the trilogy Cantares Amazônicos which has been translated into German and Italian. The focus moves from the Amazon's indigenous culture and history in the first book Porantim (1979), via increasing rural and cultural devastation in Deslendário (1981) to a large Amazonian city, Belém, and the many dispossessed who end up there, in Altar em Chamas (1982), the collection from which 'A Criminal Recipe' and 'Workers' are taken.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e A Criminal Recipe \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLet him be born.\u003cbr\u003eThe bed of poverty\u003cbr\u003e\t\tis a good measure . . .\u003cbr\u003eHe’ll grow up without milk\u003cbr\u003eand without greens.\u003cbr\u003eThe mud below the house’s stilts\u003cbr\u003e\t\tis bound to give him\u003cbr\u003ethe tides’ inheritance of worms.\u003cbr\u003eIt’s a good thing he’s got the samba groove.\u003cbr\u003eHe won’t have schools\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\tnor a childhood.\u003cbr\u003eAnd youth, would be better it didn’t blossom\u003cbr\u003ebecause the stem of his love\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\t has been castrated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe day on which he goes out\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\t partner of the moon\u003cbr\u003e(revolver in his belt\u003cbr\u003e\t\t and a decision in his eyes)\u003cbr\u003ehe’ll be meat, peppered with bullets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Zsuzsa Beney\u003cbr\u003eFive poems\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by George Szirtes \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZsuzsa Beney, Hungarian poet, essayist and surgeon, was born in Budapest in 1930. Her first book of poems, Tüzföld (Fire-earth) appeared in 1972 with an introduction by Sándor Weöres, one the greatest Hungarian poets of the century. She produced a book of essays the next year and the first of her two novels in 1974. Her 1993 book of essays, Szó és csend között, was published in the UK by Mare's Nest as Between Sound and Silence, translated by Mark Griffiths. The essays in it are mainly philosophical and mystical meditations following the death of her husband. Her poems are contemplative, often preoccupied by suffering and the borders of existence and non-existence. She continued as a surgeon to her seventieth birthday. She died in July 2006.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e The River\u003cbr\u003e(A folyó) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThrough what sluices has it swept\u003cbr\u003ebefore it finally reached my home\u003cbr\u003eof clay soil and carved its crumbling bed?\u003cbr\u003eEternity humming from its dark source.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe non-transparent water shows time\u003cbr\u003eonly its wrinkled silk surface.\u003cbr\u003eMirror images of sparkling light.\u003cbr\u003eWaves sliding one under the other.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBroken tiles in the mirror,\u003cbr\u003ecracking, and still another glass,\u003cbr\u003ebetween was and will be, I became \/ I’ll not be,\u003cbr\u003erunning water’s burning catharsis.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Dust\u003cbr\u003e(Por) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThere’s nothing I hate more than dust\u003cbr\u003ein corners of the room, in understanding.\u003cbr\u003eBut I can no longer clean everything.\u003cbr\u003eI’ve strength enough for work, but not for cleanness.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI live in half-light. Literally half-light.\u003cbr\u003eMy eyes no longer tolerate the sun.\u003cbr\u003eMy heart can’t manage all your empathies.\u003cbr\u003eI don’t look into death’s eyes unafraid.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBecause there are no gates of death, just slow\u003cbr\u003egatherings of dust. Mud and dirt cover our lives.\u003cbr\u003eThey gather in the corners of our souls.\u003cbr\u003eWe can’t step into the light for fear of drowning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Into the spider’s web…\u003cbr\u003e(A pókhálóba…) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGod entangled in the spider’s web\u003cbr\u003ebecomes immobile, a dummy,\u003cbr\u003ewoven into easily-broken\u003cbr\u003eglittering threads of thought.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHis trembling wings drop off, those lights,\u003cbr\u003ethose phosphorescences that reflect each other.\u003cbr\u003eHe sinks into the darkness of our twilight,\u003cbr\u003einto the harbours of despair.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFor just one minute liberate yourself,\u003cbr\u003eerupt from our minds if only for a moment.\u003cbr\u003eLet it be you that leads us through the gates\u003cbr\u003eof death to the unknown far side of being.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751056,"sku":"9780955906404","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e91338ec-5aff-4156-9b4c-3c13882ce590.jpeg?v=1752237542"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no4-between-the-languages","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.4) Between the Languages","description":"\u003ci\u003eBetween the Languages\u003c\/i\u003e is concerned with questions of language and identity. It features work by Itzik Manger, Dimitris Tsaloumas, Gwyneth Lewis … Poets whose mother tongue is itself an issue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso poems by \u003cb\u003eBrecht\u003c\/b\u003e on exile.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBetween the Languages\u003c\/i\u003e focuses on poets who, by choice or by force of circumstances, move among the languages. Must a poet write in the mother tongue? Will a second language serve just as well? We look at poets who translate themselves. Others who might but won’t. Others who defend their mother tongues by refusing all translation. Highlights include the poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas, who moves between Melbourne and Leros, and Itzig Manger (1901-69) who wrote in Yiddish in his wanderings across the world. This volume of MPT asks questions about language and identity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the featured poets are: Bertolt Brecht, Dimitris Tsaloumas, Gwyneth Lewis, Itzik Manger… \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"contents\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003eCover by Lucy Wilkinson. Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e0\"\u003eKapka Kassabova Polyglot Peregrinations \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAmarjit Chandan Inhabiting two Planets\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eItsik Manger Four Poems, with three translations and a literal version, introduced by Helen Beer\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e1\"\u003eMichael Hamburger Afterthoughts on the Mug’s Game\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMary-Ann Constantine ‘To let in the light’: Gwyneth Lewis’s Poetry of Transition. \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGwyneth Lewis Two Poems, translated by Mary-Ann Constantine and the author \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChoman Hardi ‘Switching Languages: a Hindrance or an Opportunity?’\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePoet to Poet The Scotland-China Project. Introduction by Polly Clark\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAntonella Anedda Five Poems, translated by Jamie McKendrick\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDimitris Tsaloumas Four Poems, translated, with an introduction, by Helen Constantine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e2\"\u003eExtracts from Mourid Barghouti’s Midnight, translated by Radwa Ashour\u003c\/a\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"#e3\"\u003e'Dear Fahimeh’, translated by Hubert Moore and Nasrin Parvaz\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eExtracts from Sherko Berkes’s The Valley of Butterfly, translated by Choman Hardi\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIngeborg Bachmann Ten Poems, translated by Patrick Drysdale and Mike Lyons, with an introduction by Karen Leeder\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRimbaud Versions of Three Poems, by Martin Bennett\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBertolt Brecht Ten Poems of Exile, translated by Timothy Adès\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIvan Radoev Three Poems, translated by Kapka Kassabova\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAnthony Rudolf ‘Any Ideas?’ Calling all Poetry Detectives\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJosephine Balmer A Note on Reviewing Translation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReviews\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cli\u003eOlivier Burckhardt on Claire Malroux’s Birds and Bison, translated by Marilyn Hacker\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSasha Dugdale on Ileana Malancioiu’s, After the Raising of Lazarus, translated by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\" color=\"a0a0a0\"\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e0\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eKapka Kassabova\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePolyglot Peregrinations\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA foreign language is a paradoxical escape: it takes you out of yourself, but also back into yourself to places you didn’t know existed. To translate is to travel this unpredictable landscape. To live between languages, as in my case, is to be constantly moving over untrodden territory, negotiating internal and external boundaries of identity and meaning. I was born an escapist and a traveller, which is why I was gripped from the moment my Russian teacher wrote on the blackboard a funny-looking sentence in Cyrillic, then turned her bespectacled face to the class and said: ‘Today, we are going to learn Russian.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was eight. The year was 1981, the place Sofia. Leonid Brezhnev, the last serious Soviet dictator, died soon after. My Russian teacher wept into her black shawl while we stood freezing in the school courtyard, listening to records of Soviet army songs. By then, I understood the songs. I also understood, with a child’s instinct, that something was wrong with us, with these songs blaring out of megaphones, with the way we had to understand them. So, as an unconscious act of protest, I tried to be bad at Russian. I gave idiotic answers in class, infuriating the poor teacher. Being an idiot was unrewarding, but I persevered. But it wasn’t to be. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne day I found myself entertaining my little sister with a slide-show of Russian stories. I had to translate as well as I could for her benefit. My mother came in at one point, and praised me for my translation. I was secretly chuffed. I kept up my slide-shows, ostensibly for my sister. I started looking up Russian words in the dictionary, and that is how I stopped wanting to be bad at Russian – being good at it was much more fun. Around that time, I started writing poetry in Bulgarian – about railway stations and going away. I also read Evgeni Onegin in a bilingual edition, and was transfixed by the miracle of sustained rhyming translation. Gradually, books became the centre of my world. I stopped showing my sister slide-shows because I was too busy reading. It was a way of forgetting what was wrong with us, and travelling to other worlds in the only possible way. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e1\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Hamburger\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAfterthoughts on the Mug's Game\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy first translations may have been my way of bridging the displacement from that country, separation from the relatives and friends left behind, from the open spaces around Kladow to which I owed my first moments of freedom and exhilaration, the diverse animals I had collected and looked after there, and what had been my family’s culture – though it was music, not language, that was my earliest love in the arts, and one practised by my father and mother. Had I been a few years older when the displacement occurred, I might well have had to return to my first language as a writer of poems. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy friend Franz Wurm, born in Prague into a German-speaking family also fluent in Czech, was shipped to England in a children’s transport at the age of thirteen and educated at an English boarding-school, then Oxford. Because, unlike me, he had lost his immediate family, when told by an English friend that he would never make a good English poet, he reverted not to German but to French for his early verse – his German lost to him by association with the more grievous loss. ‘It was only then that I turned to German, which for quite a while came from my reading rather than from the language spoken at home,’ he writes in a letter. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was then moved to re-emigrate to a German-speaking part of Switzerland, a neutral country by association, and became a German-language poet as linguistically inventive and idiosyncratic as his friend Paul Celan – who was even more multilingual by circumstance, but clung to German for poetry when he talked and corresponded with his wife and son in French, out of his very obsession with his mother tongue and the wound inflicted on his family and friends under German occupation. Erich Fried, one of the most widely read German-language poets of his time, came to England at the age of sixteen, remained resident there, but never became wholly bilingual other than as a translator of texts ranging from Shakespeare to Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Many other cases could be cited, each distinct for reasons too intricate to be unravelled here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen towards the age of thirty, I was induced to write unambitious critical pieces in German, they proved acceptable, though my syntax, like my attitudes, tended to be more English than German and my grammar could be shaky; but the attempt to function bilingually, at least in prose, precipitated an identity crisis for a year or two, leaving me stranded in a no-man’s land. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e2\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eMourid Barghouti\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eExtracts from Midnight\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTranslated by Radwa Ashour\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMy grandfather, still harbouring the illusion \u003cbr\u003ethat all is well with the world,\u003cbr\u003efills his countryside pipe\u003cbr\u003efor the last time\u003cbr\u003ebefore the advent of the helmets and bulldozers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the bulldozer’s teeth\u003cbr\u003emy grandfather’s cloak gets hooked.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe bulldozer retreats a few yards,\u003cbr\u003eempties its load,\u003cbr\u003ecomes back to fill its huge fork \u003cbr\u003eand has never had enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwenty times, the bulldozer \u003cbr\u003ecomes and goes, \u003cbr\u003emy grandfather’s cloak still hooked on it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter the dust and smoke\u003cbr\u003ehad cleared from the house that had been standing there \u003cbr\u003eand as I was staring at the new emptiness\u003cbr\u003eI saw my grandfather \u003cbr\u003ewearing his cloak,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewearing the very same cloak,\u003cbr\u003enot one that was similar\u003cbr\u003ebut the very same.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe hugged me and maintained a silent gaze\u003cbr\u003eas if his look \u003cbr\u003eordained the rubble to become a house,\u003cbr\u003erestored the curtains to the windows,\u003cbr\u003ebrought my grandmother back to her armchair, \u003cbr\u003eand retrieved her coloured pills,\u003cbr\u003eput back the sheets on the bed,\u003cbr\u003ethe lights on the ceiling,\u003cbr\u003ethe pictures on the walls,\u003cbr\u003eas if his look brought the handles back to the doors\u003cbr\u003eand the balconies to the stars,\u003cbr\u003eas if it made us resume our dinner,\u003cbr\u003eas if the world had not collapsed, \u003cbr\u003eas if heaven had ears and eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe went on staring at the emptiness.\u003cbr\u003eI said:\u003cbr\u003eWhat shall we do after the soldiers leave?\u003cbr\u003eWhat will he do after the soldiers leave?\u003cbr\u003eHe slowly clenched his fist\u003cbr\u003erecapturing a boxer’s resolve in his right hand,\u003cbr\u003ehis coarse bronze hand,\u003cbr\u003ethe hand which had tamed the thorny slope,\u003cbr\u003ethe hand which holds his hoe lightly\u003cbr\u003eand with ease like prayer,\u003cbr\u003ehis hand which can split a tree stump with a single blow,\u003cbr\u003ehis hand open for forgiveness,\u003cbr\u003ehis hand closed on sweets to surprise his grandchildren,\u003cbr\u003ehis hand amputated \u003cbr\u003eyears ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"e3\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cb\u003eDear Fahimeh\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTranslated by Hubert Moore and Nasrin Parvez\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe poem, originally in Farsi, is for Fahimeh Taghadosi, executed in Iran, 1982. The writer is unknown. Farkhondeh Ashena, who recently escaped from Iran, heard it when she was in solitary confinement, and memorised it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDear Fahimeh\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat day,\u003cbr\u003ethat hot day in July,\u003cbr\u003ewhen the Evin loudspeakers\u003cbr\u003ecalled out your beautiful name and your lips\u003cbr\u003esmiled, your eyes said to your friends,\u003cbr\u003e'So today is the day.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou went and your walk\u003cbr\u003ewas a perfume filling the corridor.\u003cbr\u003eEveryone gasped, everyone asked with their eyes,\u003cbr\u003e'Is today then the day?' The Pasdar\u003cbr\u003eflung back an answer : 'Where is her bag?\u003cbr\u003eWhere are her veil, her socks, her money?'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA rumour went round that you'd given a sign\u003cbr\u003ethat yes, today was the day :\u003cbr\u003e'I don't need my food,' you had said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo tonight is the night.\u003cbr\u003eA silence hangs in the heart of it.\u003cbr\u003eFriends look at friends and tell themselves\u003cbr\u003ethat perhaps you'll come back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFahimeh dear, tell us, spare\u003cbr\u003ea word for your friends. Is\u003cbr\u003ethe sky sad where you are, does it weep?\u003cbr\u003eAnd the wind, does it ruffle your veil?\u003cbr\u003eBack here, the ward sweats for your news.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd a message gets through : \u003cbr\u003ewind-blown breathless dandelion\u003cbr\u003ecomes from the mountains to say that clouds \u003cbr\u003eare massing up there and they're big with child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHead held high, you are standing and waiting for this,\u003cbr\u003efor the clouds to open, for you \u003cbr\u003eto be mother of change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRifles crack.\u003cbr\u003eThe moorland holds its breath\u003cbr\u003eat a star shooting across it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt would be good to sing and go with friends\u003cbr\u003eto face the firing squad, to dance,\u003cbr\u003eto float in the rain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the long sea-silence,\u003cbr\u003ea wave lifts, oars clip at the water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA young fisherman bringing his boat to land,\u003cbr\u003erice-growers trudging home,\u003cbr\u003ethey shape their lips to your name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYour name is beautiful for young girls born in July.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751320,"sku":"9780954536749","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_2491335d-2269-4bf0-bfd6-2a69d98d27d8.jpeg?v=1752237541"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no7-love-and-war","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.7) Love and War","description":"\u003cem\u003eLove and War\u003c\/em\u003e contains translations and original poems on this modern and ancient topic. This volume demonstrates the wealth and variety of interpretations of the theme.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"contents\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003eCover by Lucy Wilkinson. Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAdonis, nine poems, translated by Peter Clark and Sarah Maguire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tJeff Nosbaum, ‘Pride of Ajax’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tYannis Ritsos, twenty-eight of the Monochords, translated by Paul Merchant\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e0\"\u003eGuillaume Apollinaire, seven poems, translated by Stephen Romer\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tPushkin, The Captain’s Daughter, extracts translated by Robert Chandler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tVénus Khoury-Ghata, six poems from Interments, translated by Marilyn Hacker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tGilgamesh, an extract translated by Paul Batchelor\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tFederico Garcia Lorca , ‘Song of the Civil Guard’, translated by Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e1\"\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Kolin’ and ‘Dusty Miller Breaks his Silence’(after Liliencron’s ‘Wer weiss wo’ and ‘Vergiss die Mühle nicht’)\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tStephen Romer, four poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e2\"\u003eDu Fu, two poems, translated by Paul Harris\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tCharles Dobzynski, ‘My Life as a Wall’, translated by Marilyn Hacker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tLucretius, ‘Aulis’, translated by Stephanie Norgate\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e3\"\u003eRobert Desnos, ten poems, translated by Timothy Adès\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAnzhelina Polonskaya, four poems, translated by Andrew Wachtel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e4\"\u003eManuel Rivas, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tGiuseppe Belli, four sonnets, translated by Mike Stocks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tElsa Morante, Farewell, an extract translated by Cristina Viti\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAndrea Zanzotto, four poems, translated by Jo Catling and others\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tElena Shvarts, nine poems, translated by Sasha Dugdale\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews and Comments\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tMichael Hamburger on Assia Wevill\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tRobin Fulton on Robin Robertson’s Tranströmer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tSasha Dugdale on Emily Lygo’s Voltskaia\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tCharlie Louth on Eavan Boland and the Bachmann-Henze correspondence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tBelinda Cooke on translations of Vittorio Sereni and Luciano Erba\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tJosephine Balmer, Shorter Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e0\" title=\"e0\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGuillaume Apollinaire, seven poems, translated by Stephen Romer\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eXxxii (extracts) My Lou I shall sleep tonight…\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy Lou I shall sleep tonight in the trenches\u003cbr\u003eFreshly dug and waiting near our guns\u003cbr\u003eSome twelve kilometers away are the holes\u003cbr\u003eWhere I shall go down in my coat of horizon-blue\u003cbr\u003eBetween the whizzbangs and the casseroles\u003cbr\u003eTo take my place among our soldier-troglodytes\u003cbr\u003eThe train stopped at Mourmelon le Petit\u003cbr\u003eAnd I stepped down as happy as I climbed up\u003cbr\u003eSoon we shall leave for the battery but for now\u003cbr\u003eI’m among the soldiery and shells are whistling\u003cbr\u003eIn the grey north sky and no one thinks of dying…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e……………………………\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd thus we shall live on the frontline\u003cbr\u003eAnd I shall liken your arms to the necks of swans\u003cbr\u003eAnd sing your breasts belonging to a goddess\u003cbr\u003eAnd the lilac shall blossom… I shall sing your eyes\u003cbr\u003eWhere a choir of lissom cherubs is dancing\u003cbr\u003eThe lilac shall blossom in the serious spring!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e1\" title=\"e1\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Kolin’ and ‘Dusty Miller Breaks his Silence’(after Liliencron’s ‘Wer weiss wo’ and ‘Vergiss die Mühle nicht’)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eKolin!\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\t (18.vi.1757)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSoldiers drown in their blood.\u003cbr\u003eWheeling smoke, hoof-churned mud\u003cbr\u003e\t and the sheen\u003cbr\u003eof a thousand spurs catches the sun.\u003cbr\u003eNo one’s springing to attention\u003cbr\u003e\t at Kolin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All the generals and squaddies\u003cbr\u003e who necked bullets like toddies\u003cbr\u003e\t now stand easy.\u003cbr\u003e Death having meant no harm\u003cbr\u003e by his jogging each arm\u003cbr\u003e\t now stands easy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An oblong bump in the shirt\u003cbr\u003e of a corpse feeding on dirt\u003cbr\u003e\t looks like a book.\u003cbr\u003e An adjutant stooped as he grieved\u003cbr\u003e undid the pocket and retrieved\u003cbr\u003e the Gospel of Luke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReturned with Prussian palaver\u003cbr\u003eto the high-ranking father\u003cbr\u003e\t fixed in his chair\u003cbr\u003eit now bears a spidery inscription.\u003cbr\u003eKolin. My son lost in action.\u003cbr\u003e\tWho knows where.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd you who now read that line\u003cbr\u003eare one with its writer: both decline\u003cbr\u003e to see what’s there.\u003cbr\u003eFor each of us will be posted in turn\u003cbr\u003elost in action, to freeze or burn\u003cbr\u003e who knows where.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e2\" title=\"e2\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDu Fu, two poems, translated by Paul Harris\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Scene in Spring\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe state is torn apart, only the mountains and rivers remain.\u003cbr\u003eWeeds and trees run rampant in the city this spring.\u003cbr\u003eDo the flowers sense the times, that they, like me, should weep?\u003cbr\u003eDo the birds feel the emptiness, they seem so fearful?\u003cbr\u003eFor three months on end the garrison beacons have glimmered at night.\u003cbr\u003eA letter from home would be worth a heap of gold to me,\u003cbr\u003eAn old man waiting, whose remaining white hairs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e3\" title=\"e3\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRobert Desnos, ten poems, translated by Timothy Adès\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eSong of the Glass of Wine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the train goes don’t wave your hand,\u003cbr\u003eYour handkerchief, your umbrella,\u003cbr\u003eBut fill a glass with wine,\u003cbr\u003eAnd throw, towards the train whose grab-rails are singing,\u003cbr\u003eThe wine’s long flame,\u003cbr\u003eThe wine’s bloody flame that is like your tongue,\u003cbr\u003eAnd shares with it\u003cbr\u003eThe palate and the couch\u003cbr\u003eOf your lips and your mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e4\" title=\"e4\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eManuel Rivas, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eBallad on the Western Beaches\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe ship settles on the shore\u003cbr\u003eand land birds nest on its mast.\u003cbr\u003eWith the compass I trace routes on maps of tillage,\u003cbr\u003ehurt by the sky’s anger on the seed’s weak ribs,\u003cbr\u003efearful of the flower’s drift before inhumane winds.\u003cbr\u003eThe ship sleeps on the shore,\u003cbr\u003ethe keel’s blue imagination covered in brush and rushes,\u003cbr\u003eand the figurehead has a strolling soul.\u003cbr\u003eIn the binnacle is kept the book of moons and the rains’ needle,\u003cbr\u003ea bottle of old snow liqueur.\u003cbr\u003eA skylark sings on a rusty harpoon,\u003cbr\u003ea blackbird’s sigh lashes the cables\u003cbr\u003eand crows on the rudder glimpse lesser death lying alongside.\u003cbr\u003eAll set, admiral, for the great journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751556,"sku":"9780954536770","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_29d55b0a-dc86-4821-800d-d6dad869e2c0.jpeg?v=1752237541"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no16-the-dialect-of-the-tribe","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.16) The Dialect of the Tribe","description":"The latest issue of \u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation\u003c\/i\u003e takes as its theme the so-called ‘minority’ languages and cultures of our modern, globalised world. It explores a wide variety of viewpoints – translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes, photographs – and a wide range of issues: causes for lament, anger and revolt, but also for celebration, worldwide and perennial.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the heart of the matter lies the struggle for what John Clare called ‘self-identity’, a chief factor in which is language, one’s own peculiar tongue and the dialect of the tribe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn a calm day the gaps, the audible\u003cbr\u003eellipses, become la-la-la-la-la—\u003cbr\u003ethe way that most tongues sing along\u003cbr\u003ewhen we don’t have the words.\u003cbr\u003eI know this in my scant Estonian: that laul,\u003cbr\u003eis song. John, stay in those days,\u003cbr\u003enot the flurries of hard consonants, the ka-,\u003cbr\u003ethe ga-. that come with finger-stabbing\u003cbr\u003eand a hunted look. Lully, lulla... I wish you\u003cbr\u003ethe Coventry Carol, comfort on the edge\u003cbr\u003eof any language, its lully, lulla, lullay\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhilip Gross","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751848,"sku":"9780955906480","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_9708b4e7-5e55-4f60-a8e0-6f7ae595c468.jpeg?v=1752237540"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no11-frontiers","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.11) Frontiers","description":"Every issue of MPT crosses frontiers. Contributions come in from all over the world. Copies go out world-wide. Whatever their subjects, the translations themselves, out of many languages, cross frontiers of space and time. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMPT 3\/11 concentrates on that essential act, and makes connections of many kinds - of going-betweens and crossings-over. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are frontiers between species, countries, creeds, classes and generations; between the sexes, between life and death, between then and now… And poetry has always gone out to these boundaries, to survey them and to cross them. Some passages are customary and welcome; others are more like smuggling and transgression... Some borders are open; others are walled, barb-wired and mined…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContains previously untranslated poems by Bertolt Brecht.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Contents \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditorial\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Curtain’ (after Brecht) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAviva Dautch, ‘Ghazal’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKathryn Maris, variations on ‘Atonement’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Hart, ‘At the Edge’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarol Rumens, five poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhilippe Jaccottet, five poems, translated by Alastair Thomson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHubert Moore, ‘Write-to-Life’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘After 209’, translated by Nasrin Parvaz and Hubert Moore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHubert Moore, three poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSasha Dugdale, ‘At the Edge’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJane Draycott, from Pearl\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOlivia McCannon, ten poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark Leech, ‘Shadow Economy’ (after ‘The Husband’s Message’, anon. 9th-10th century)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStephen Watts, ‘Nonno’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTimothy Adès, three translations\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShinjiro Kurahara, ‘The Fox’, translated by William Elliott and Katsumasa Nishihara \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFitzgerald Kusz, ‘love’, translated by Shon Arieh-Lerer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeinz Ehemann, two poems, translated by Shon Arieh-Lerer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRaymond Foster, ‘The Garden of God’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJennie Feldman, two poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAriel Zinder, ‘Bricks’, translated by Jennie Feldman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas Rosenlöcher, four poems, translated by Ken Cockburn\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReiner Kunze, ‘The Wall’, translated by Robin Fulton\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobin Fulton, four poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Hull, three poems and three translations\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGeorgi Gospodinov, eight poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWilhelm Bartsch, ‘Three leaves from the album of German Romanticism’, translated by Tom Cheesman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJuan Gelman, ‘Nightingales Again’, translated by J.S.Tennant\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJ.S.Tennant, ‘The Sleeper in the Valley’ (after Rimbaud)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrecht, ten poems, translated by David Constantine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Reviews \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBelinda Cooke, on translations of Jean Cassou and Aldo Vianello\u003cbr\u003eCharlie Louth, on the Bachmann-Celan correspondence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Balmer, Further Reviews\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040752720,"sku":"9780955906411","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_b6f13df9-b38b-4b6c-8aca-2afcb177d312.jpeg?v=1752237540"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no14-polyphony","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.14) Polyphony","description":"\u003ci\u003ePolyphony\u003c\/i\u003e deals with the different voices of poetic translation: the local, the foreign, the native, the acquired – and the strange hybrids that come into being when the language of home is crossed with that of abroad. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis issue of \u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation\u003c\/i\u003e is an anthology in celebration of variety, without ever suppressing tones, dialects and utterances it might disturb us to hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePolyphony\u003c\/i\u003e includes a new translation of Pushkin’s \u003ci\u003eYevgeni Onegin\u003c\/i\u003e by D.M. Thomas, along with translations of Valéry Larbaud, Eugene Dubnov, Dorothea Grünzweig. There are also translations out of English: William Blake into Russian, Gerard Manley Hopkins into German, plus a feature on Daniel Huw’s \u003ci\u003eMemories of Ted Hughes 1952-1963\u003c\/i\u003e (Five Leaves, 2010), and an essay that delves into the Voices of Poetry, those very voices that make poetry such a vital, vibrant and unique experience for all concerned.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040753348,"sku":"9780955906459","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_cd3da655-66fd-49c5-af0a-f1c261f1d5a3.jpeg?v=1752237539"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no13-transplants","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.13) Transplants","description":"The aim of \u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation\u003c\/i\u003e, since Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded the magazine, has been to bring foreign poetry into wider circulation in English translation and in doing so, to enrich us all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTranslation can be thought of as the transplanting of a living thing out of its native time and place into somewhere foreign. There it may thrive or die. How can the subjects and forms of poetry be transplanted across time and space? Must they be modified? Or can the host culture be induced to accept them as they are? In this issue of \u003ci\u003eMPT\u003c\/i\u003e we show many of the ways and means by which a literary transplant's chances of survival may be increased. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA most substantial and varied issue - more submissions were received for this issue than for any before - \u003ci\u003eTransplants\u003c\/i\u003e brings together poets in translation from China, Alaska, Albania, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Ancient Greece and Rome, Israel and Estonia. Nor are the forms any less varied: epic poetry, tanka, elegy, ballad, sonnet and ghazal, rhyming and unrhyming poems and prose poems all appear here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmongst many notable poets and translators included here are Marilyn Hacker with her translations of Tunisian Tahar Bekri; Miklos Radnoti translated from the Hungarian by Stephen Capus; Ruth Fainlight with her translations of Peruvian Blanca Varela; and the enchanting Estonian poet Kristina Ehin, whose \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e in English translation was awarded the Poetry Society's Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation, and whose new book, \u003ci\u003eThe Scent of Your Shadow\u003c\/i\u003e, is forthcoming from Arc. Her translator is Ilmar Lehtpere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso: new versions of ballads by Itzik Manger, of the French Grail legend, of the English Sir Orfeo (by Maureen Duffy), and of early Brecht. Plus translations of Rimbaud by James Kirkup and of Alaskan Native American songs by John Smelcer. A very great variety of work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Reviews section is also rewarding: Roger Moulson, whose \u003ci\u003eWaiting for the Night Rowers\u003c\/i\u003e won the Aldeburgh Prize, appraises the great Yang Lian's new collection \u003ci\u003eLee Valley Poems\u003c\/i\u003e (Bloodaxe Books), and Saradha Soobrayen's illuminating reviews include one of the Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh's \u003ci\u003eThe Deleted Part\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by Stephen Watts and Marga Burgui-Artajo.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040753636,"sku":"9780955906442","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_0c05e95b-5039-49ea-b07e-87d3ab2351dc.jpeg?v=1752237538"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no2-diaspora","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.2) Diaspora","description":"Cover by Lucy Wilkinson. Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ca\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarmen Bugan, an essay and two poems\u003cbr\u003eYannis Ritsos, \u003ci\u003efifteen Tristichs\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by David Harsent. \u003cbr\u003eDavid Harsent, three poems from Legion . \u003cbr\u003eGoran Simic, an essay and four prose poems. \u003cbr\u003eForough Farrokhzad, four poems, translated by Gholam Reza Sami Gorgan Roodi. Marzanna Bogumila Kielar, six poems, translated by Elzbieta Wjcik-Leese. \u003cbr\u003eLyubomir Nikolov, six poems, introduced by Clive Wilmer, translated by Miroslav Nikolov. \u003cbr\u003eAdel Guemar, four poems, introduced and translated by Tom Cheesman and John Goodby, with a note on Hafan Books \u003cbr\u003eSandor Mrai, \u003ci\u003eFuneral Oration\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by George Gmri and Clive Wilmer \u003cbr\u003eVersions of Ovid's Tristia, by Paul Batchelor. \u003cbr\u003eOlivia McCannon, three poems. \u003cbr\u003eYvonne Green, three poems. \u003cbr\u003eZiba Karbassi, three poems, translated by Stephen Watts\u003cbr\u003eVolker Braun, nine poems, translated by David Constantine. \u003cbr\u003eWulf Kirsten, ten poems, translated by Stefan Tobler. \u003cbr\u003eKnut Odegaard, \u003ci\u003eTaking out the Hives\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by Kenneth Steven. \u003cbr\u003eEugenio Montale, three uncollected poems, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReviews:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBernard Adams on George Szirtes's \u003ci\u003eAgnes Nemes Nagy\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePaschalis Nicolaou of David Connolly's \u003ci\u003eYannis Kondos\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWill Stone of Antony Hasler's \u003ci\u003eGeorg Heym\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Balmer: \u003ci\u003eFurther Books Received\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExtract from the Editorial to \u003ci\u003eDiaspora\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMuch, though not all, in this issue has to do with what we think of as the hallmark of our age: exile, the search for asylum, the speaking of native languages abroad. But poems by Brecht - leaving Germany for Scandinavia, the Soviet Union and America in 1933 - and by Ovid - leaving Rome for the Black Sea in AD - should site our topic in a long tradition. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe abundance and variety of material we received for Diaspora was astonishing, heartening and alarming in equal measure. What are you to feel when an Iraqi poet sends you his latest volume - in English - from New Zealand? It seemed we put out a receiver and signals came in urgently from round the globe. We took all we could of the best and most characteristic writing, so assembling a very mixed company, from Sarajevo via Toronto, from Sofia via Baltimore, from Algiers via Swansea. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTom Cheesman contributes a note on Hafan Books. They publish, in Swansea, work by asylum seekers from Somalia, Cameroon, Chile, Sudan. They might be set alongside the Mother Tongues issue of MPT as testimony of the packed plethora of voices in the British Isles today. We had no wish to exhaust the topic, which is literally inexhaustible, only to establish it as a fact and a constant presence. This magazine will always be listening for and will try to be a staging post for the world's diaspora. The original application of the word 'diaspora', in the Septuagint, was to the threatened dispersal of the Jewish people: that they should be 'a diaspora in all kingdoms of the earth'. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the New Testament, the dispersal, still grievous, has a hopeful colouring too, in that those going abroad will be the carriers of a new faith. The word itself, in its roots, means 'a sowing abroad'. The two senses - exile and seeding - will be obvious in much of the work collected here. Translation itself is an act of beneficent diaspora. It seeds the countries of the world with words from elsewhere. Poetry, even in its native country, is a more or less foreign language, a language of elsewhere. Translation sends it down the tradewinds, lands it anywhere and everywhere, as vital contraband. The translation and dispersal of poetry throughout the world sustains an old ideal of internationalism. It makes for a global solidarity against all the ideologies and globalisations that reduce humanity. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoetry is an act of truthful speech, and as such, by nature and context, is intrinsically an act of opposition to the ruling packs of lies. It is subversive because essentially intractable and irreducible. Poetry can't be ordered into place. If it tried to obey, it would lose its soul. It would continue an existence like that of the living dead, whose souls go below at the very moment of betrayal, leaving their bodies to shift on earth a while longer. The Republic of Letters is, in Louis MacNeice's phrase, 'incorrigibly plural'. In its plurality it faces and opposes all fundamentalisms. And it is a republic: it concerns itself with the res publica, with what we have in common and need for our common good. Translators extend the writ of the Republic of Humane Letters. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eWhy I do not write in my native language\u003c\/i\u003e by Carmen Bugan\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeople ask me so often why I do not write in Romanian that I think about it long and hard. First, I do not want to write in the language in which my family suffered interrogations, prison visits, threats of all kinds. I certainly do not want to remember all the times when we wrote to each other and burned our words: we were surveyed twenty-four hours a day for the last five years that I lived in my country and everything we said was recorded by microphones set up around the house. I hated subtexts, lies, the fear of words. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow I belong to those people who write in a learned language. And I belong to those who strive to define their responsibilities as people who were born in one country and live quite willingly in another. This might seem to many the kind of thing one 'grows out' of. But the reason why one writes in one's native language, from exile, is that the native language has beauty and truth in it. Poets write in their native language to remember the warmth of their home, the customs of their villages and towns, their happy youth. They want to recreate a sense of home, a warm cocoon around the icy experience of exile. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut my exile is my cocoon. I like it here in English more than I like remembering kids calling me 'daughter of criminal'; in my native language: that never sounded safe or good or home. When I stopped looking behind my back to see if anyone was following me to harm me, I stopped looking at writing poetry in my native language. I think the poems themselves make my choice seem less harsh or less impertinent. In my situation it is not that bad to be on the side of forgetting. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom Ziba Karbassi \u003ci\u003eDeath by Stoning\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by Stephen Watts\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLast night wolves were howling\u003cbr\u003eI heard their voices last night \u003cbr\u003ethey brought me your torn clothes\u003cbr\u003ethe blue shirt your auntie made you\u003cbr\u003eI wish her dear hand had been \u003cbr\u003ebroken \u003cbr\u003eyour blue shirt is red with blood\u003cbr\u003eand I cannot make out its print \t\u003cbr\u003eor pattern \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey said their skirts were filled with stones \u003cbr\u003etheir hands were full of stones, their skirts \u003cbr\u003eeverywhere stones were being rained down \u003cbr\u003ethe world was become a world \t\t\t\u003cbr\u003eof stone \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wish \u003cbr\u003eI wish \u003cbr\u003eI wish \u003cbr\u003eyour mother were dead \t\t\u003cbr\u003eI wish I were \u003cbr\u003eyour sister's skirts \u003cbr\u003eare full with blood \u003cbr\u003eyour brother is burning \u003cbr\u003ethe cradle of wood, can't you \t\t\u003cbr\u003esmell the smoke ? \u003cbr\u003elook, I am not \u003cbr\u003escared any more \u003cbr\u003ethe wolf of my fear is hunted \u003cbr\u003eby the tiger \u003cbr\u003eof my venom \u003cbr\u003eand I've become a fire monster \u003cbr\u003eif I open my mouth\u003cbr\u003ethe whole earth will \u003cbr\u003eburst \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041136948,"sku":"9780954536725","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_6d9a8892-4420-45be-9c2d-2bb3d2cb93e3.jpeg?v=1752237510"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no15-poetry-and-the-state","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.15) Poetry and the State","description":"\u003cp\u003ePoetry matters, and it matters that poetry should be translated and move freely across the frontiers of time and space. These are the premises on which we edit and poets and translators from all over the world contribute to MPT. But we want the next issue to prove a truth we hold to be self-evident: that poetry is necessary for a humane life. Some states encourage their poets, others ignore them, others imprison and murder them. We want to document ñ chiefly in translated poems, but also in statements and short essays ñ the varying but never easy relationship between poetry and the state. That does not mean we are only on the look-out for ëpoliticalí poems. Any lyric poem, insisting on the value of individual experience, lives in more or less uneasy dealings with the order and the ideology of the state. Does the state allow you the autonomy the poem demands? As always, we seek contributions from the present and the past, from near and far.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041180032,"sku":"9780955906466","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_f57f03c1-ca8f-46ba-ae18-4182aba54c88.jpeg?v=1752237487"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no-17-parnassus","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.17) Parnassus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Spring 2012 issue of MPT will be largely given over to a collaboration with Poetry Parnassus – the Southbank Centre’s celebration of the 2012 London Olympics.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e“My hunch is this will be the biggest poetry event ever – a truly global coming together of poets.”\u003cbr\u003eSimon Armitage\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eParnassus was a sacred site for the whole Greek world; Delphi, below that mountain, was ‘the navel of the earth’, and for the duration of the Olympics a truce was declared so that athletes could come and go safely. In this same spirit, poets from all participating countries will be invited to London and MPT will publish a selection of translations of their poems. Poetry Parnassus marks the first time that so many poets from so many parts of the world have converged in one place; it is a monumental poetic happening. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe issue will be enhanced with other translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes and images concerned, in whatever fashion, with the Games (ancient or modern) or with Parnassus, home of the Muses.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041199776,"sku":"9780955906497","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/mpt_-_parnassus.jpeg?v=1752237485"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no-18-transitions","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.18) Transitions","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe autumn issue of \u003cem\u003eModern Poetry in Translation \u003c\/em\u003ewill be one of transition, and not just in the seasonal sense. \u003cem\u003eTransitions\u003c\/em\u003e will be jointly edited by David and Helen Constantine and the poet and translator Sasha Dugdale, who will succeed them as Editor from 2013.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs such, in this issue translated poems, short essays and anecdotes will address the idea of transition in as many ways as possible: from the theory of translation itself, to the life of the translator as someone constantly hovering between the foreign and the native.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e“One of the most original poets of her generation.” \u003cbr\u003ePaul Batchelor on Sasha Dugdale, \u003cem\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy its very diversity MPT has always acted against set minds; \u003cem\u003eTransitions\u003c\/em\u003e will be proof and promise that it always will. It will be a celebration of movement, flux, change, of the eternal possibility of moving on out of forms that have lost their liberating and enlivening force, and into new, revitalised ways of thinking.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041237248,"sku":"9780957235403","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/mpt_-_transitions.jpeg?v=1752237482"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/david-constantine\/terence-dooley.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}