{"title":"Mary-Ann Constantine","description":"\u003cp\u003eMary-Ann Constantine is a research fellow at Aberystwyth, specialising in Welsh and Breton Romanticism. Her short stories have appeared over a number of years in the \u003cem\u003eNew Welsh Review\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ePlanet\u003c\/em\u003e. Her first collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Breathing\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Planet in 2008, followed by \u003cem\u003eAll the Souls\u003c\/em\u003e (Seren, 2013).\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"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":"sing-sorrow-sorrow","title":"Sing Sorrow Sorrow","description":"\u003ci\u003eSing Sorrow Sorrow\u003c\/i\u003e is a chilling collection of supernatural myth and otherworldly horror stories from some of Wales’ most exciting new and established authors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the dark waters of the Styx to the circling birds of the Mabinogion, from the lonely house to cities of the mind, the contemporary stories in \u003ci\u003eSing Sorrow Sorrow\u003c\/i\u003e grow out of European folk, fable, fairy tale and legend – all tales which belong to the domain of the underworld. There are ghosts, murderesses, blood-soaked enchantment, black humour and stories with the darkest twists of the imagination – perfect for reading at Halloween, or rather the eve of its pagan Celtic predecessor Samhain. Draw the chair nearer the fire and enjoy.","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041018452,"sku":"9781854115300","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_fded2229-00d9-434c-bf21-3ab2803b40b6.jpeg?v=1752237669"},{"product_id":"all-the-souls","title":"All the Souls","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on the age-old appeal of folklore (and a good ghost story), this new collection of short fiction is centred around the act of collecting and recovering the past. As the rich, haunting stories unfold, there are dangerous obsessions with iconic, sacrosanct objects, and puzzling and poignant conversations with the other side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen, in the central novella ‘The Collectors’, two doctors and a folklorist meet in northern Brittany in 1898, determined to prove that the scourge of leprosy still exists. But their search soon draws them into a dark, watchful landscape where superstition is rife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A considerable achievement.”\u003cbr\u003eStevie Davies, \u003cem\u003eNew Welsh Review\u003c\/em\u003e on \u003cem\u003eThe Breathing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMary-Ann Constantine\u003c\/strong\u003e is a research fellow at Aberystwyth, specialising in Welsh and Breton Romanticism. Her short stories have appeared over a number of years in the \u003cem\u003eNew Welsh Review\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ePlanet\u003c\/em\u003e, and her first collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Breathing\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Planet in 2008.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041259616,"sku":"9781781720622","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/seren_-_all_the_souls_resized.jpeg?v=1752237286"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/mary-ann-constantine\/pascale-petit.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}