Modern Poetry in Translation
97 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 months ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsWhen Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded MPT in 1965 they had two principal ambitions: to get poetry out from behind the Iron Curtain into a wider circulation in English and to benefit writers and the reading public in Britain and America by confronting them with good work from abroad. They published poetry that dealt truthfully with the real contemporary world. For more than 50 years MPT has continued and widened that founding intent.
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Episodes
Mona Kareem: The Room of Darkness
October 02, 2017 20:15 - 8 minutes - 12 MBABOUT THE POET: MONA KAREEM Mona Kareem is a poet-writer-translator based in New York. She is the author of three poetry collections. Her translations include Ashraf Fayadh's Instructions Within and an Arabic selection of Alejandra Pizarnik’s poems. ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: ROBIN MOGER: Robin Moger is a freelance translator of Arabic with a particular interest in twentieth-century and contemporary prose and poetry
Sumerian Tablets as 'Iraqi Haiku' - Dunya Mikhail reads 'Tablets III' and talks about her work
August 14, 2017 13:55 - 10 minutes - 14.5 MBDUNYA MIKHAIL was born in Iraq and left for the United States in 1996. Her books include The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea, and The War Works Hard. She also edited a pamphlet of Iraqi poetry titled 15 Iraqi Poets. She was awarded the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, and UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing.
Translation Duel at Ledbury Poetry Festival! Olivia McCannon vs Susan Wicks
July 16, 2017 16:37 - 52 minutes - 24 MBTwo poet-translators rattle their sabres for a duel of words and French poetry! Listen to MPT's translation duel which took place at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Sunday 9 July 2017. Olivia McCannon and Susan Wicks went head-to-head with their translations of a poem by Ariane Dreyfus. *No poets were harmed in the production of this event*. About the translators: Olivia McCannon is a translator of Balzac and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Susan Wicks’ translations of Valé...
Two poems by Ján Gavura, read by the poet and translator James Sutherland-Smith
July 16, 2017 16:26 - 15 minutes - 34.5 MBIn Gavura’s work the poetic persona has a strong empathy with nature, seeing it as an example of both a non-human otherness and as part of God’s creation. As a theologian Gavura regards nature and humanity as part of a post-lapsarian existence. Gavura’s natural world and the animals which inhabit it are true to themselves and the savagery they express is an aspect of the innocence they retain. His poems draw on everyday feelings of doubt, fear, disillusionment, anger, weakness or even evil th...
Siddhartha Bose: ‘Elegy, Father’s City’
June 09, 2017 14:49 - 10 minutes - 23.4 MBABOUT SIDDHARTHA BOSE I was born in Calcutta and spent the first five years of my life there. This city, which was once the second city of the British Empire, was where English literature was fi rst introduced as a discipline of study, to civilise the natives. I spent the next eight years in Bombay, and returned to the city of my birth for another five before moving to the USA on my own when I was eighteen. After seven years in America, I moved to London in 2005 on a British government schol...
Two poems by Han Kang: read by Han Kang and translator Sophie Bowman
May 02, 2017 15:38 - 13 minutes - 30.8 MBThis podcast includes readings of two poems by award-winning Korean author Han Kang, 'Pitch-Black house of Light' and 'Winter Through a Mirror'. SOPHIE BOWMAN is a literary translator and student of Korean literature. She won the 2015 Korea Times Translation Award for her translation of poems by Jin Eun-young and her prose translations can be found in Koreana magazine. HAN KANG is a novelist, poet, and a professor of creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. She received the 2016 M...
Denise Riley and Don Mee Choi read at the launch of MPT The Blue Vein
April 03, 2017 13:01 - 1 hour - 178 MBIn this podcast: 00:00 - Introduction to Denise Riley 02:50 - Denise Riley reading begins 33.05 - Sasha Dugdale introduces Don Mee Choi 42.12 - Don Mee Choi reads translations of Kim Hyesoon 54:00 - Don Mee Choi reads translations of Kim Yideum 1:05:48 - Don Mee Choi reads from her book ‘The Morning News is Exciting’ This podcast features Denise Riley and Don Mee Choi. It was recorded at The Print Room, London, for the launch of Modern Poetry in Translation's winter issue 'The Blue Vein', ...
The Memory of Now: read by Geet Chaturvedi and Anita Gopalan
October 18, 2016 19:14 - 4 minutes - 9.48 MBWith a career spanning over two decades and six books to his credit, Geet Chaturvedi is one of the most widely read contemporary Hindi authors. His poetry delights the reader with its inner lyrical beauty and playfulness, as well as its sensitivity and sensibility of ideas and imagination. This recording is read by the author, and translator Anita Gopalan.
European Voices: with Tara Bergin, Jane Draycott, Jan Wagner and Iain Galbraith
October 09, 2016 14:59 - 1 hour - 140 MBThree distinguished poets with international perspectives read their work at Winchester Poetry Festival 2016. Hear new poems by Jan Wagner in Iain Galbraith’s prizewinning translations and a new long poem by Jane Draycott which was written in response to the Dutch modernist poem ‘Awater’. Tara Bergin’s reading includes the response poem she wrote for MPT’s new first issue website, ‘Bachmann’s Warbler’.
Greetings to the People of Europe! Alemu Tebeje and Chris Beckett
August 07, 2016 16:47 - 2 minutes - 6.75 MBALEMU TEBEJE is an Ethiopian journalist, poet and web-campaigner based in London. His poems have been published in the anthologies Forever Spoken and No Serenity Here, featuring 26 poets from 12 African countries. His website is: www.debteraw.com * CHRIS BECKETT grew up in Ethiopia and his translations of contemporary Amharic poets such as Bewketu Seyoum and Zewdu Milikit have appeared in MPT, Poetry Review and Wasafiri. His collection of praise shouts and laments, Ethiopia Boy, was publish...
One Night I Will Return to My Birthplace: Read by the poet, Majid Naficy, and Elizabeth T Gray Jr
July 15, 2016 15:50 - 3 minutes - 8.92 MBMAJID NAFICY Majid Naficy was born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1952 and currently lives in West Los Angeles, California. Raised in a large and well- educated family, his first poems were published in a literary journal in Isfahan when he was just 13. After studying at the University of California at Los Angeles, Naficy returned to Tehran University, abandoned writing poetry, and joined political groups working to overthrow the Shah. After the 1979 Revolution, when Khomeini began to crack down on di...
The Voronezh Variations: seven translations of an Osip Mandelstam quatrain, by George Szirtes
June 28, 2016 14:22 - 6 minutes - 14 MBGeorge Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and Ágnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe’s Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English ...
'In Lampedusa' by Ribka Sibhatu: read by Niyat Remedy Asfaha, translated by André Naffis-Sahely
June 05, 2016 10:47 - 6 minutes - 14.6 MBThis poem is published in MPT ‘The Great Flight’ focusses on refugee poetry – poetry by refugees and about the plight of refugees and migrants. Read more: http://bit.ly/1r8dsmK This issue introduces us to a range of new work by renowned poets, including Eritrean Ribka Sibhatu and Ethiopian Hama Tuma. South Korean poet and translator Don Mee Choi writes about her experiences of migration and we’ve commissioned a new translation of important work by Syrian poet Golan Haji. Carmen Bugan writes ...
Centres of Cataclysm - launching the MPT anthology
May 30, 2016 16:26 - 1 hour - 168 MBThis recording was made on 5th May 2016 at Kings College London, at an event celebrating the launch of MPT's anniversary anthology, Centres of Cataclysm, published by Bloodaxe Books.
Alexander Hutchison reads his Scots translation of Ernesto Cardenal
December 08, 2015 12:14 - 2 minutes - 6.25 MBALEXANDER HUTCHISON'S most recent collection, Bones & Breath (Salt, 2013) won the inaugural Saltire Award for Poetry Book of the Year.
It's all in the nuances: a reading and discussion with Mexican poet Pedro Serrano
November 25, 2015 20:48 - 10 minutes - 24.3 MBPEDRO SERRANO has published five collections of poems. He co-edited and co-translated the groundbreaking anthology The Lamb Generation which brought together translations of 30 contemporary British poets in 2000. He has also translated Shakespeare’s King John into Spanish. His collection Peatlands was published by Arc Publishing in 2014 in Anna Crowe’s translation. * ANNA CROWE is a poet, translator and co-founder and former Artistic Director of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festi...
Choman Hardi - 'Homeland, what shall I do with you?'
November 25, 2015 20:45 - 10 minutes - 23 MBChoman Hardi, interview at The Queens College Oxford. CHOMAN HARDI was born in Iraqi Kurdistan. She came to England as a refugee in 1993. She has published collections of poetry in Kurdish and English. In 2010 four poems from her English collection, Life For Us (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), were selected for the English GCSE curriculum. Her forthcoming collection, Considering the Women, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015.
50 years of MPT: International Translation Day 2015 with Sasha Dugdale, Helen and David Constantine
October 05, 2015 16:27 - 1 hour - 158 MBModern Poetry in Translation Magazine (MPT) celebrates fifty years between July 2015 and July 2016 with a programme of special events and publications. To mark the occasion, MPT is working with Bloodaxe Books to publish an anthology of the most exciting and important work published in MPT over the last 50 years. Speaking at International Translation Day in October 2015, Sasha Dugdale was joined by former editors David and Helen Constantine to discuss the anthology and look back over the mag...
Michael Rosen and Marina Boroditskaya: Out of the Crocodile's Mouth
September 17, 2015 15:46 - 1 hour - 170 MBThis podcast was recorded at the launch of MPT ‘I WISH...' and features Michael Rosen and Marina Boroditskaya in conversaiton with MPT Editor, Sasha Dugdale. Read an interview with Michael and Marina on the MPT Magazine website here: http://bit.ly/1Yge46E Read poems from MPT 'I WISH...' here: http://bit.ly/1KsAmw0
David Constantine: on poetry translation and the cultural habitat
September 09, 2015 21:18 - 15 minutes - 36.3 MBThis podcast was recorded in July 2015 at a special celebration to mark the opening of MPT's 50th year and 12 months of events, publications and special projects. Find out more about MPT's 50th anniversary celebrations: http://www.mptmagazine.com/page/fifty-years-mpt/ About David Constantine David Constantine was born in Salford in 1944. For thirty years he taught German at the Universities of Durham and Oxford. He holds honorary professorships in English at the Universities of Liverpool an...
Scorched Glass: Iranian Poetry at Poetry International 2015
August 02, 2015 09:26 - 52 minutes - 119 MBMPT’s Spring Issue 'Scorched Glass' focussed on Iranian poetry. In July 2015 we held a series of events celebrating Iranian Poetry at Poetry International, produced in partnership with Southbank Centre and the British Council. In this podcast you'll hear readings by Hubert Moore, Nasrin Parvaz, Stephen Watts, Ziba Karbassi, Paul Batchelor, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Pascale Petit.
Launching MPT 'Scorched Glass' with Tedi López Mills at the Poetry Library
April 29, 2015 05:10 - 1 hour - 138 MBTEDI LÓPEZ MILLS Tedi López Mills was born in Mexico City in 1959. She studied philosophy at the Mexican National University and literature at the Sorbonne. She has published ten books of poetry including Muerte en la Rúa Augusta, published in David Shook’s translation as Death on Rua Augusta by Eyewear Publishing in 2014.
Amarjit Chandan: to the fallen soldiers of the First World War
November 27, 2014 11:05 - 10 minutes - 23.6 MBAMARJIT CHANDAN Amarjit Chandan was born in Nairobi in 1946 and studied in India at Panjab University, coming to Britain in 1980 to live in London. He has published five collections of poetry and three books of essays in Punjabi notably Jarhān (poems) and Phailsufiān and Nishāni (essays). He has edited and translated about 30 anthologies of Indian and world poetry and fiction by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Cardenal, Martin Carter and John Berger in Punjabi.
THE SOMALI-ENGLISH POETRY COLLECTIVE: "I am Somali"
October 15, 2014 21:57 - 11 minutes - 27.2 MBThe Somali-English Poetry Collective The Somali-English Poetry Collective is a group of five women: Abyan Cusmaan, Jawaahir Daahir, Karin Koller, Idil Osman and Marilyn Ricci, based in Leicester. They share a passion for poetry and have also produced a Somali-English book: Somalia To Europe: Stories from the Somali Diaspora available through: www.Leicesterquakerpress.org.uk or www.jdsaqal.com.
Nikola Madzirov and Peggy Reid: from the launch of MPT 'The Constellation'
September 18, 2014 11:36 - 6 minutes - 15.4 MBNIKOLA MADZIROV Nikola Madzirov is a Macedonian poet, essayist, translator and editor. His poetry has been translated into over 30 languages. He won the European Hubert Burda Prize for young East European poets for his collection Relocated Stone (2007). A selection of his poetry, Remnants of Another Age, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013. PEGGY REID Graham and Peggy Reid have translated and co-translated many and various texts, including history, novels, plays, film scripts and poetry...
Who knows what Daphne really wanted? Sujata Bhatt, writing after Rilke
September 17, 2014 18:53 - 7 minutes - 17.9 MBSUJATA BHATT Sujata Bhatt’s Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2013) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her new collection, Poppies in Translation, will be published in March 2015, also by Carcanet.
Torso of Polyphemus: Karen Leeder on Durs Grünbein and Rilke at Poetry International
September 17, 2014 18:41 - 8 minutes - 20.3 MBKAREN LEEDER Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford. She has published widely on modern German literature, especially poetry and has been active in translation in the UK and beyond: including a stint on the English PEN Work in Translation Committee, the Steering Committee of the British Centre for Translation and on the Board of MPT. DURS GRÜNBEIN Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in the former...
In each person there exists a sheer drop: Christine Marendon and Ken Cockburn
September 17, 2014 18:27 - 4 minutes - 10.4 MBCHRISTINE MARENDON Christine Marendon lives in Hamburg where she works with children with special needs. Her poems feature in anthologies including Jahrbuch der Lyrik 2013 (Poetry Yearbook 2013), and she has been widely published in periodicals. KEN COCKBURN Ken Cockburn has published two books of poems, Souvenirs and Homelands (1998) and On the flyleaf (2007). As editor, he worked on several anthologies including The Order of Things: an anthology of Scottish sound, pattern and concrete poe...
What day knits, night forgets: Ana Martins Marques read by Julia Sanches
June 14, 2014 12:29 - 4 minutes - 7.88 MBANA MARTINS MARQUES Ana Martins Marques has published two books of poetry: A vida submarina (Scriptum, 2009) and Da arte das armadilhas (Companhia das Letras, 2011), which won the Brazilian Prêmio Biblioteca Nacional and the Prêmio Alphonsus Guimaraens. JULIA SANCHES Julia is Brazilian by birth but has lived in New York, Mexico City, Lausanne, Edinburgh and Barcelona. She is currently studying Comparative Literature and Literary Translation at UPF in Barcelona. She completed her M.A. in Phi...
Feminism, the internet and Brazilian poetry: Angélica Freitas and Hilary Kaplan
May 28, 2014 18:44 - 9 minutes - 17.9 MBRecorded at the Brighton festival, Angélica and Hilary read two poems in English and Portuguese, and answer questions from two GCSE students. ANGELICA FREITAS Angélica Freitas’s recent poetry collection, Um útero é do tamanho de um punho (Cosac Naify, 2012), was nominated for the Portugal Telecom Prize. Her first book, Rilke Shake (Cosac Naify, 2007), has been translated into English and German. She co-edits the poetry journal Modo de Usar & Co. from her home in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, B...
Paulo Leminski - concretism and counterculture from Brazil
May 11, 2014 12:18 - 2 minutes - 7.08 MBPaulo Leminski (1944-1989) was a writer of prose, poetry, literary criticism and translation. His first publications appeared in Invenção, a journal of the Brazilian Concretist poets. Leminski later engaged with Brazilian counter-cultural movements of the 1960's and 1970's. His extensive body of poetry was collected in 2013's Toda Poesia. Readings by: JAMES DUNCAN Jamie Duncan is currently completing a Ph.D. in Linguistics at Lancaster University. He publishes poetry in English and Portugue...
Kim Hyesoon - reading at the Poetry Library
April 15, 2014 08:10 - 35 minutes - 40.3 MBThis recording was made at the Saison Poetry Library, a public event that formed part of the British Council's Korea Market Focus at the London Book Fair. The event celebrated the publication of Kim Hyesoon's poetry in the mpt 'Twisted Angels', and the launch of 'I'm OK, I'm Pig!', published by Bloodaxe in April 2014. For more information: www.mptmagazine.com http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1780371020 www.britishcouncil.org/KoreaMarketFocus
Ciaran Carson - a reading and discussion from translator and poet Seán Hewitt
December 02, 2013 11:54 - 3 minutes - 6.29 MBIn this podcast, Seán Hewitt reads and discusses his translation of Ciaran Carson's only published poem in Irish. Seán Hewitt was born 1990, read English at Girton College, Cambridge, and is currently studying for an MA Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. He translates from the Irish.
Wojciech Bonowicz gives an introduction to contemporary Polish Poetry
November 24, 2013 16:51 - 5 minutes - 7.65 MBWojciech Bonowicz is a poet, a columnist and an editor and an author of six poetry volumes. The most recent is 'Polish Signs' (2010). His volume 'High Seas' was awarded the prestigious Gdynia Literary Prize (2007). He is also an essayist and literary critic working for one of the most influential Polish weeklies, 'Tygodnik Powszechny'.and for the monthly 'Znak'. In this podcast, Bonowicz discusses trends in Polish poetry and focusses on Krystyna Milobedzka as an example of this. This podca...
Transparenting: vanishing in Krystyna Miłobędzka's poetry. (Polish Focus, 'Secret Agents of Sense')
November 08, 2013 22:29 - 6 minutes - 8.06 MBElżbieta Wójcik-Leese reads a six-word poem by Krystyna Miłobędzka in English and Polish, then discusses her arrival at the word 'transparenting' which runs vertically through the centre of the poem. Talking to MPT Editor Sasha Dugdale, Elżbieta then discusses how the poem's typographical layout in MPT's 'Secret Agents of Sense' becomes central to it's translated meaning.
On Justyna Bargielska - reading and conversation with Maria Jastrzębska
November 08, 2013 21:54 - 6 minutes - 9.89 MBA reading of Polish poet Justyna Bargielska's 'Two mirrors, one of which magnifies' from Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese and the English translation from Maria Jastrzębska. Followed by a discussion with Sasha Dugdale on poetry translation, neologisms and the origin of the 'tantrum tour'...
Claudiu Komartin and Stephen Watts
September 30, 2013 22:13 - 10 minutes - 12.5 MBClaudiu Komartin, born in 1983, is a Romanian poet and translator. His fourth book, Cobalt, came out in May 2013. Between 2011–2012 he was resident writer at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London and his extended ‘Poem For Pop’ was published in the UK in Long Poem Magazine in 2011. He edits the review Poesis International. Stephen Watts is a poet, editor and translator. His most recent work is Mountain Language/Lingua di montagna (Hearing Eye 2009). He edited the Punjabi poet Amarjit Cha...
Mihaela Moscaliuc
September 30, 2013 22:13 - 6 minutes - 7.22 MBMihaela Moscaliuc is the author of Father Dirt (Kinereth Gensler Award, Alice James Books in 2010) and co-translator of Carmelia Leonte’s Death Searches for You A Second Time (Red Dragonfly Press, 2003). Her poems, reviews, translations and articles appear in The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, New Letters, Poetry International, Pleiades, Arts & Letters, Absinthe and elsewhere.
Oana Sanziana Marian
September 29, 2013 16:15 - 5 minutes - 6.15 MBOana Sanziana Marian was born in Romania and moved to the Us when she was eight. She has published poems, translations, articles and criticism in Phoned-In, Iron Horse Literary Review, Artforum, Guernica, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, and her translation of Norman Manea’s novel The Lair was published by Yale University Press in 2012.
Shash Trevett
September 06, 2013 15:24 - 5 minutes - 6.25 MBShash Trevett, now living in York, came to the U.K. from Sri Lanka in 1987 to escape the civil war. For many years she stopped speaking and writing in Tamil, a language which she has now started to re-engage with in her poetry.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain reads her translation of Zhang Zao's 'Mirror'
June 04, 2013 21:01 - 3 minutes - 3.64 MBFiona is a poet, translator from Chinese, and a musician. “an extraordinary musician who brings into her zheng music a strong cross-cultural understanding” - Edward W. Said (1935-2003). www.fionasze.com www.mptmagazine.com
Chris Beckett
June 04, 2013 20:57 - 6 minutes - 7.08 MBChris Beckett was born in London but grew up mostly in Ethiopia. His poetry been published in Ambit, Envoi, Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London, Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Stand, The North, The Wolf and Wasafiri. www.mptmagazine.com
Frances Leviston
June 04, 2013 20:55 - 4 minutes - 5.48 MBFrances Leviston’s Public Dream was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. www.mptmagazine.com
Ester Naomi Perquin
June 04, 2013 20:52 - 4 minutes - 4.88 MBEster Naomi Perquin is winner of the VSB Poetry Award in the Netherlands for her recent Celinspecties (Cell Inspections). Translated by the renowned Paul Vincent. www.mptmagazine.com
Menno Wigman
June 04, 2013 20:49 - 4 minutes - 4.91 MBMenno Wigman, shortlisted for the VSB Poetry Prize for his collection Mijn naam is Legioen (My Name is Legion), is one of Holland's most prominent writers. Translated by David Colmer, whose recent translations were shortlisted for the Popescu Prize. www.mptmagazine.com
Toon Tellegen
June 04, 2013 20:48 - 3 minutes - 4.59 MBToon Tellegen is one of the best known writers in the Netherlands. Multi-award winning and with more than 20 collections of poetry to date, he is also a novelist and a popular and prolific children's writer. His Raafvogels (Raptors) in Judith Wilkinson's translation won the Popescu prize in 2011. www.mptmagazine.com
Talking Vrouz: Valérie Rouzeau and Susan Wicks
June 04, 2013 20:46 - 4 minutes - 5.18 MBValérie Rouzeau's latest collection, Vrouz, has just won the prestigious Prix Apollinaire in France. She has published a dozen collections, including Pas revoir, translated by poet Susan Wicks, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize. www.mptmagazine.com