MPT’s summer issue ‘The House of Thirst’ focuses on LGBTQ+ poetry, and includes translations of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Else Lasker-Schüler, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Friedrich Chernyshov’s urgent poems about transgender lives in the Ukraine, 19th Century Kurdish poetry, and Jayan Cherian’s ‘homoerotic big bang’ in a new version by Richard Scott. There is also an essay by Mary Jean Chan exploring ‘Queerness as Translation’. Elsewhere in this issue: the Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, a major new poem by Polina Barskova translated by Valzhyna Mort, and a tribute to Menno Wigman. 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
Inga Gaile, ‘Fog’
Translated by Ryan Van Winkle and Jayde Will
Azita Ghahreman, three poems
Translated by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar
Polina Barskova, ‘A Guide to Leningrad Writers, Veterans 1941–1945’
Translated by Valzhyna Mort
Emmanuel Moses, four poems
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Tsukamoto Kunio, five tanka
Translated by Andrew Houwen and Nihei Chikako
Marzanna Kielar, two poems
Translated by Elżbieta Wójci-Leese
Georg Trakl, two poems
Translated by Will Stone
Ruxandra Cesereanu, ‘The Cave’
Translated by Gabi Reigh
Editorial
- In 2017 the annual report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association found that 72 countries around the world criminalise same-sex relationships, including 45 which outlaw sexual relationships between women. In eight countries, homosexuality can lead to the death penalty....Read full editorial
Focus
Jayan Cherian, ‘Geography’
Translated by Richard Scott
Norman Erikson Pasaribu, ‘A Flyer’
Translated by Tiffany Tsao
Alice Rahon, three poems
Translated by Anna Kisby
Lee Hyemi, two poems
Translated by SO J. Lee
Friedrich Chernyshov, four poems
Translated by Tatiana Retivov
Sheikh Raza Talabani, two poems
Translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse, Shene Mohammed and Srusht Barzan
Kurdi, two poems
Translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse, Shene Mohammed and Srusht Barzan
Nelson Simón, from ‘Itineraries of Forgeing’
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
Edward Pasewicz, two poems
Translated by Maria Jastrzębska and Anna Blasiak
Mary Jean Chan
Queerness as Translation: From Linear Time to Playtime
Andreas Aggelákis, two poems
Translated by Kostya Tsolákis
Maung Saungkha, ‘Who is that Guy?’
Translated by Ko Ko Thett
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, two poems
Translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey
Homoerotic Hebrew Poetry
Translated by Pnina Shinebourne
Julia Szychowiak, five poems
Translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Else Lasker-Schüler, ‘Pharaoh and Joseph’
Translated by Amelia Gorman
Reviews
Helen Mort, The First Snow on Twitter
Four challenging voices from the Baltics
Jennifer Lee Tsai, The Fruit of Summer Drips Like Blood
An anthology of Japanese women poets
Donald Gardner, The Leaps of a Cornered Cat
Paul van Ostaijen’s visual poetry of occupation
Notes on Contributors
W. N. Herbert, On Menno Wigman
Menno Wigman, ‘Sympathy for the Reader’
Translated by Menno Wigman, W.N. Herbert, and Rosemary Mitchell-Schuitevoerder