Poetry matters, and it matters that poetry should be translated and move freely across the frontiers of time and space. These are the premises on which we edit and poets and translators from all over the world contribute to MPT. This issue proves a truth we hold to be self-evident: that poetry is necessary for a humane life. Some states encourage their poets, others ignore them, others imprison and murder them. MPT 3/15 documents the varying but never easy relationship between poetry and the state. Any lyric poem, whether ‘political’ or otherwise, insisting on the value of individual experience, lives in more or less uneasy dealings with the order and the ideology of the state. Does the state allow you the autonomy the poem demands?
Inside the Issue:
Contents
Paula Ludwig, seven poems, translated from the German by Martina Thomson
Primo Levi, ten poems, translated from the Italian by Marco Sonzogni and Harry Thomas
Oliver Reynolds, ‘& c’
John E. Smelcer, three poems, translated from the Ahtna Athabaskan language of Alaska by the author
Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary, translated from the Vietnamese by Timothy Allen
Sándor Márai, Unknown Chinese Poet, translated from the Hungarian by John M. Ridland and Peter Czipott
Cesare Pavese, six poems, translated from the Italian by Martin Bennett
Archilochus, Fragments, translated from the Ancient Greek by William Heath
Yorgos Soukoulis, ‘Rabies’, translated from the Arvanitika by Peter Constantine
Konstantinos Sampanis, two poems, translated from the Greek by Peter Constantine
Osip Mandelstam, ‘The Kremlin Mountain Man’, translated from the Russian by Andrew Mayne
Osip Mandelstam, poems from the Voronezh Notebooks, translated from the Russian by Peter France
Osip Mandelstam, poems from the Moscow and the Voronezh Notebooks, translated from the Russian by Alex Cigale
Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Verses about a Soviet passport’, translated from the Russian by Stephen Capus
Larisa Miller and Boris Altshuler, interviewed by Sasha Dugdale
Poets of ‘The Executed Renaissance’, translated from the Ukrainian by Steve Komarnyckyj
János Pilinszky, four poems, translated from the Hungarian by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri
Tara Bergin, ‘Stag-Boy’
Rachida Madani, from Tales of a Severed Head, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
Vlado Kreslin, six poems, translated from the Slovenian by Urška Charney
Tudor Arghesi, four poems, translated from the Romanian by Anne Beresford
Bertolt Brecht, ten poems, translated from the German by David Constantine
Ludvík Kundera, four poems, translated from the Czech by Ian Hilton
Maria-Mercè Marçal, ‘Ivy’, translated from the Catalan by Anna Crowe
Galina Gamper and Galina Usova, poems, translated from the Russian by Grainne Tobin, Natasha Cuddington, and Ann Zell
Dvora Amir, ‘To the lost’, translated from the Hebrew by Jennie Feldman
Jennie Feldman, ‘Lucretius on Suleiman Street’
Amarjit Chandan, two poems, translated from the Punjabi by the author, Ajmer Rode and John Welch
Olivia McCannon, three translations from the French
François Villon,‘Les Regrets de La Belle Heaulmière’, translated by Jane Tozer
Editorial
- In the Tunisian revolution, and then taken up on the streets in Cairo, one of the watchwords came from a poem by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi, Tunisia’s national poet, who lived no longer than Keats......Read full editorial
Reviews
Miriam Valencia on Francis Jones’s Mak Disdar
Moniza Alvi on Amarjit Chandan’s Sonata for Four Hands
Saradha Soobrayen, Further Reviews
Helen and David Constantine, Notes on Two Books