{"title":"Sean O'Brien","description":"Sean O'Brien (b. 1952) is a central figure in the contemporary poetry world - he has won major prizes for each of his five poetry collections, including the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham award, the E.M. Forster Award and, twice, the Forward Prize for Best Collection. He is also the editor of \u003cem\u003eThe Firebox\u003c\/em\u003e, an acclaimed anthology of post-war UK poetry, a professor of Creative Writing in Sheffield, and the author of literary criticism and journalism for several newspapers and journals.","products":[{"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":"the-iron-book-of-new-humorous-verse","title":"The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse","description":"Iron Press is publishing the first anthology exclusively dedicated to contemporary humorous verse, taking into account new fashions in performance poetry. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMore than 100 poems are included and among the contributors are Ian McMillan, Kate Fox, Jacob Polley, Linda France, Andy Croft, David Bateman, John Whitworth, and Paul Groves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll the selections, picked from more than 1500 poems from throughout the world, were originally published post-1990. Subjects include a paeon to a wonderbra, a knitted orgasm, stuffing your husband and the annual shindig for Greenland’s literary elite.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEileen Jones\u003c\/b\u003e (editor) lives in Tynedale. After a career as a social worker in west Newcastle, and as an NHS commissioning manager in Northumberland, she now writes poetry and plays. Her poetry has been published in \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, in magazines such as \u003ci\u003eThe North\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOther Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e and in anthologies. She is well-known for her readings on NE1 community radio and at performance poetry venues like ‘Northern Lines’, ‘Ten by Ten’ and ‘Free as a Bard’. She also helped to establish Carte Blanche, the Newcastle-based group for women writers.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Iron Press","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040824708,"sku":"9780955245091","price":8.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_9484f1f4-b1b6-458f-bc9d-ac179b2b8bbe.jpeg?v=1752237109"},{"product_id":"eye-of-the-island","title":"Eye of the Island","description":"\u003cp\u003ePoet, activist, educator, lawyer and diplomat, Corsino Fortes (1933-2015) was Cape Verde's ambassador to Portugal and Angola. Writing in Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese, his first collection was published to great acclaim in 1974, the year Portugal’s Estado Novo regime collapsed, leading to the decolonisation of Cape Verde and other African colonies in 1975. Corsino Fortes's poems offer vivid and often hallucinatory glimpses of the land, sea and people of his country - word-scapes rooted in the earth and the body. This is a wider selection of this seminal poet's work, translated by Daniel Hahn with the poet Sean O'Brien.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Poetry Translation Centre","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":53965840941441,"sku":"9781738470143","price":9.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/files\/jpg_rgb_1500h_9977396c-346e-4a87-8add-b89a73bb19a2.jpg?v=1752239760"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/sean-obrien\/eileen-jones.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}