MPT’s spring issue ‘Dream Colours’ focuses on Japan, featuring two of Japan’s most popular post-war poets, Shuntaro Tanikawa and Noriko Ibaragi; new work by Sawako Nakayasu; an essay by Polly Barton on the complications of translating Japanese concrete poetry; and a poetic manifesto regarding dreams from the surrealist Shuzo Takiguchi (1903–1979). Also featured: Chris Beckett introduces the young Ethiopian poet Misrak Terefe; Kit Fan translates Bei Dao’s ‘June’ in the light of Hong Kong’s recent protests; and a tribute to Elaine Feinstein’s translations of Marina Tsvetaeva by Sasha Dugdale. All this and more in the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.
Inside the Issue:
Contents
EDITORIAL
Shlomo Laufer, ‘Shutting Down’
Translated by Betsy Rosenberg
Bei Dao, ‘June’
Translated by Kit Fan
Misrak Terefe, two poems
Translated by Yemisrach Tassew and Chris Beckett
Durs Grünbein, four poems
Translated by Karen Leeder
Chus Pato, five poems
Translated by Erín Moure
Benjamin Fondane, two poems
Translated by Clarissa Aykroyd
Laura Fusco, three poems
Translated by Caroline Maldonado
Efe Duyan, ‘The Verbs of a Language are Forgotten First’
Translated by Tara Skurtu and Efe Duyan
Raymond Queneau, six poems
Translated by Philip Terry
Volha Hapeyeva, two poems
Translated by Annie Rutherford
Aleš Šteger, two poems
Translated by Brian Henry
Axel Schulze, ‘The Tracklayers’
Translated by Steph Morris
Hasan Alizadeh, ‘Mirror’
Translated by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian
Editorial
- Like many readers around the world, I have always been aracted to Japanese culture. Whilst my son pores over Pokémon comics, I glance up at my bookshelves in the next room and can see novels by Murakami, Kawabata, Yoshimoto. Two of my favourite novels of the last year were ...Read full editorial
Focus
Sayaka Osaki, ‘Dazzled by the Morning Light’
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
Sawako Nakayasu, ‘Sink or Swim’
Translated by Sawako Nakayasu, Lynn Xu and Lyoko Yoshida
Noriko Ibaragi, two poems
Translated by Peter Robinson and Andrew Houwen
Polly Barton
Hearing Beyond the Darkness
Kei Okamoto, ‘Our Whereabouts’
Translated by Motoyuki Shibata and Polly Barton
Chūya Nakahara, three poems
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
Itsuko Ishikawa, ‘For You’
Translated by Rina Kikuchi and Jen Crawford
Toshiko Hirata, two poems
Translated by Eric E. Hyett and Spencer Thurlow
Shuzo Takiguchi, ‘The Royal Family of Dreams: A Manifesto or Regarding A-priori Dreams’
Translated by Mary Jo Bang and Yuki Tanaka
Takuji Ōte, ‘Porcelain Crow’
Translated by James Garza
Shuntaro Tanikawa, three poems
Translated by William I. Elliott and Katsumasa Nishihara
Reviews
Sarah-Jean Zubair, Innovation and Testimony
An anthology of contemporary Rohingya poetry
Aviva Dautch, Necessary Communication
Holocaust poetry 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz
Sasha Dugdale, Elaine and Marina
Remembering Elaine Feinstein’s revolutionary translations