MPT’s autumn issue ‘In a Winter City’ marks the 20th anniversary of our co-founder Ted Hughes’ death, with responses to his translations by Tara Bergin, Zaffar Kunial and Polly Clark. We also fulfil his plan to have a Hungarian focus, with new translations of work by Krisztina Tóth, Agota Kristof and András Gerevich, as well as Margit Kaffka’s forgotten feminist masterpiece ‘While We Wait for Sunrise, 23rd May 1912’. Also in this issue: a stunning translation of Simone Atangana Bekono by David Colmer, poems by Mona Arshi after the Mahabharata, and Chris McCabe brings Villon into the 21st Century. 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
Simone Atangana Bekono, from How the First Sparks Became Visible
Translated by David Colmer
Yasuaki Inoue, five haiku, Translated by Katrina Naomi
Maria Teresa Horta, two poems
Translated by Lesley Saunders
Bertolt Brecht, seven poems
Translated by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn
Christopher Whyte, ‘The Chinese Beetle’ Translated by D Syme-Taylor
Mona Arshi, poems aft er the Mahabharata
Fouad M. Fouad, three poems
Translated by Fouad M. Fouad and Norbert Hirschhorn
François Villon, from The Legacy
Translated by Chris McCabe
Martha Mega, ‘Border’
Translated by Manzanares de la Rosa
Verena Stefan, from Shedding
Translated by Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer
Samira Negrouche, ‘Between Scrawls and Sketches’
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Editorial
- Hungarian poetry has had a huge impact on my writing life. My first attempts at translation were at The Hungarian Translators’ House near Lake Balaton, when the British Council paired me with a young Hungarian poet, Anna T Szabo. We have been friends ever since, and during her years editing poetry for The Hungarian Quarterly she would oft en send me literals to work on - from Miklós Radnóti to Tamás Jónás – giving me an education in Hungarian literature. Aila József is one of my great poetic loves, as is János Pilinszky in Ted Hughes’ ferocious co-translations with János Csokits, ‘burning | In the glass cabinet of the present tense.’...Read full editorial
Focus
Ferenc L. Hyross, ‘Weak’
Translated by JL Williams and Ferenc L. Hyross
Margit Kaffka, ‘While We Wait for Sunrise, 23rd May 1912’
Translated by Mary-Jane Holmes
Endre Ady, ‘A Stone Thrown Up, Up’
Translated by Attila Tárnok
Krisztina Tóth, two poems
Translated by Christopher Whyte and George Szirtes
Kinga Fabó, ‘Mirror Image’
Translated by George Szirtes
András Gerevich, two poems
Translated by Andrew Fentham
András Petőcz, two poems
Translated by Andrew Fentham
Júlia Lázár
Ted Hughes’ Nuclear Syllables in Hungarian
Júlia Lázár, three poems
Translated by Christopher Whyte and Brian McClean
Péter Závada, ‘Crimson’
Translated by Mark Baczoni
Agota Kristof, two poems
Translated by George Szirtes
Zita Izsó, two poems
Translated by Tímea Balogh
Márton Simon, ‘Season of Empty Tastes’
Translated by Tímea Balogh
Mónika Mesterházi, two poems
Translated by Jim Tucker
Sándor Petőfi, ‘I Would Be a Branch’
Translated by Gabi Reigh
Three Responses to the Translations of Ted Hughes
Polly Clark, ‘Marina’
Tara Bergin, Pronounced Chockitch
Zaffar Kunial, ‘Whose’
Reviews
Dzifa Benson, Am I Just a Traveller Who Writes Poetry?
Azita Ghahreman’s multiple meanings
Chrissy Williams, The Liberatory Potential of Writing
Collections from Christine Marendon and Uljana Wolf
Clarissa Aykroyd, Sight Lashed By Vision
The poetic journey of Benjamin Fondane