MPT’s summer issue ‘A Blossom Shroud’ focuses on poets and translators associated with this year’s Shubbak festival of Arab Culture in London and it publishes a selection of new translations of poets appearing at the festival: Mona Kareem, Dunya Mikhail, and a new long sequence of poems by Golan Haji, translated by Stephen Watts. The focus also includes a conversation between Alice Guthrie, Shubbak’s literary producer, and poet, translator and activist Mona Kareem, who has led the campaign to get Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh freed from a charge of apostasy in Saudi Arabia. Also featured are new translations of Hisham Bustani, Najwan Darwish and Syrian actor and activist Fadwa Souleiman. This stunning work from the Arab world appears alongside documentary poems by Chinese poet Shen Haobo on the AIDS villages of China, new translations of Rilke’s French poetry by Paul Batchelor, poet Katrina Naomi’s translations of Mexican poet Yohanna Jaramillo and Golan Haji’s selection of the Kurdish poets we should all be reading. All in this new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.
Inside the Issue:
Contents
Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Orchard’
Translated by Paul Batchelor
Mercedes Cebrián, ‘Floating Population’
Translated by Terence Dooley
Anja Kampmann, five poems
Translated by Anne Posten
Shen Haobo, from ‘Wenlou Village Accounts’
Translated by Liang Yujing
Ron Winkler, ‘Postcards from Territories’
Translated by Jake Schneider
Yohanna Jaramillo, two poems
Translated by Katrina Naomi
János Pilinszky, two quatrains
Translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri
Crìsdean Macillebhàin (Christopher Whyte), three poems
Translated by Niall O’Gallagher
Bakhyt Kenjeev, three poems
Translated by J. Kates
Celestial Brizuela, four poems
Translated by Laura Chalar
Vasalis, six poems
Translated by David Mckay
Editorial
Focus
Golan Haji, nine poems
Translated by Stephen Watts and the author
‘It Rains from Heaven and Earth’: Five Arabic and Kurdish poets Introduced by Golan Haji
Nasr Jamil Shaath, nine poems
Translated by Golan Haji and Stephen Watts
Ziad Abdelkader, two poems
Translated by Golan Haji and Stephen Watts
Ameer Alhussein, ‘The Curtain’
Translated by Golan Haji and Stephen Watts
Reber Youssef, ‘Bombardment Moving From One Branch To Another’
Translated by Golan Haji and Stephen Watts
Ciwan Qado, four poems
Translated by Golan Haji and Stephen Watts
Mona Kareem, four poems
Translated by Robin Moger
Alice Guthrie and Mona Kareem
The Great Spirits of Translation: a conversation
Mohab Nasr, four poems
Translated by Robin Moger
Fadwa Souleiman, two poems
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Hisham Bustani, two poems
Translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes
Najwan Darwish, five poems
Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Dunya Mikhail, ‘Tablets III’
Translated by the author
Highlights
Focus on the poets of Shubbak
A new sequence of poems by Golan Haji
Alice Guthrie interviews poet and activist Mona Kareem
Chinese poet Shen Haobo on the AIDS villages of China
New translations of Rilke by Paul Batchelor
Reviews
Seán Hewitt, Eleven Men in a Court of Women
Eleven translators take on Brian Merriman’s comic poem
Keith Payne, Seeking Poets Along The Songlines
John Taylor rides a poetry-van around Europe
Henry King, Language of Flint and Tongue of Air
Classic and contemporary Mandelstam in two new translations