MPT’s winter issue ‘The Blue Vein’ focuses on a new wave of Korean poetry, with a selection of new translations of Korea’s foremost poets Kim Hyesoon and Ko Un, poems by Han Kang who won last year’s Man Booker International Prize for her novel The Vegetarian and an interview with Kim Hyesoon on writing in Korea’s current climate and her most recent work, Autobiography of Death. We publish for the first time the entire cycle of ‘Crow’s Eye View’ by Yi Sang, an important modernist and experimental text which has inspired Kim Hyesoon. We feature new translations of Cuban poet Oscar Cruz, Swedish poet Ebba Lindquist and C. P. Cavafy. Canadian novelist Steven Heighton’s discusses his translation of a classic poem by Kostas Karyotakis and we celebrate the life of Eduardo Chirinos with a stunning sequence of late poems. 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
Eduardo Chirinos, ‘Fourteen Forms of Melancholy’
Translated by G. J. Racz
Daniele Bernardi, ‘La Madre’
Translated by Joan Michelson
Salomón de la Selva, eight poems from The Unknown Soldier
Translated by Francisco Larios
Ebba Lindqvist, three poems
Translated by Janice D. Soderling
Thomas Rosenlöcher, ‘The Angel on Roller Skates’
Translated by Ken Cockburn
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
Translated by Barbara Bogoczek and Tony Howard
Constantine Cavafy, five poems
Translated by Ian Parks
Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, ‘The End of the Day’ and ‘Women of the Plain’
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Judita Vaičiūnaitė, three poems
Translated by Rimas Uzgiris
Oscar Cruz, four poems
Translated by Serafina Vick
Kostas Karyotakis, ‘Mikhalios’
Translated by Steven Heighton
Editorial
- The focus of this edition of MPT is on poetry from Korea, and the work I read for the issue startled me, I’ve never read anything like it. The images were raw and gristly, the situations odd and untamed....Read full editorial
Focus
Kim Hyesoon, eight poems
Translated by Don Mee Choi
The Territory of Language Has Shrunk: a conversation between Cho Chae-ryong and Kim Hyesoon
Yi Sang, ‘Crow’s Eye View’
Translated by Jack Jung
Kim Yideum, five poems
Translated by Jiyoon Lee, Don Mee Choi, and Johannes Göransson
Jin Eun-young, seven poems
Translated by Soohyun Yang and Yeram Han
Ko Hyeong-ryeol, three poems
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Hyung-Jin
Ko Un, four poems
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Sang-Wha
Kim Min Jeong, four poems
Translated by Jake Levine
Han Kang, three poems
Translated by Sophie Bowman
Reviews
D. M. Black, Retellings, Rivalries and World-Battles
A Mahabharata for our times
Jen Calleja, Beware of Justice
On a twentieth-century poetry powerhouse
Susan Wicks, Bottling Secrets
Two new introductions to old friends
David Constantine, The Humane Revolt
John Berger’s last collection of poems
On John Berger by David and Helen Constantine