TRANSLATIONS
4 Translated Laia Llobera i Serra Poems
Image courtesy of Time Out Barcelona Untitled And everything that could portend clarity. Ceiba trees, twilights, winged stallions, cities, solstices, citadels … I tot el que pugui anunciar claredat. Ceibes, crepuscles, cavalls alats, ciutats, solsticis, serrals.
5 Translated Eileen Chong Poems
Image courtesy of The Planthunter / Red Room Company. Mid-Autumn Mooncakes It’s nearly mid-autumn. I spy the tins at the Asian grocer—gaudy red peonies unchanged for forty years. Of course I buy the mooncakes with double yolks: here in Australia, …
2 Translated Kim Yideum Poems
Image courtesy of Kim Yideum Wet Book I walk along the street that is filling up with water. The evening outruns me like a truck covered in a dark blue tarp. The dark and narrow alley – is this the …
4 Translated Geng Xiang Poems
Image courtesy of Nichalos Walton-Healy. Translations from Master’s Return Journey: The Fields in Auvers — An Interpretation of 120 Paintings by Van Gogh Prologue For one who pulls someone’s Chestnuts out of the fire, he does not easily voice His …
3 Translated Samuel Trigueros Espino Poems
Image courtesy of Festival de Poesía El Salvador PIGS ‘I have seen friends Circe turned into pigs. Her wheel, her diamond. The pigs don’t know my hideouts, mercenaries of shadows.’ –Edilberto Cardona Bulnes I have beheaded pigs, but Circe insists …
Petrus Augustus de Génestet’s ‘Peaen to the Netherlands’
P A de Génestet lost both of his parents at a very young age. He studied at the Amsterdamse Atheneum and the Seminarium der Remonstrantse Broederschap to become a preacher in March, 1852.
3 Translated Takako Arai Poems
Takako Arai (1966 —) was born into a silk-weaving family in Kiryū city, Gunma Prefecture, on the outskirts of Tokyo. She began publishing poems in the early 1990s, and since 1998 has run a poetry magazine, Mi’Te, which features poems, translations and poetry criticism. Her second poetry collection, Tamashii Dansu (Soul Dance) was published in 2007, and received the Oguma Hideo Poetry Prize.
3 Translated Nguyễn Man Nhiên Poems
Nguyễn Man Nhiên (1956 —) was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam. He has published a number of poetry and essay collections within Vietnam, as well as with the literary magazines.
4 Translated Gerhard Fritsch Poems
Gerhard Fritsch (1924—1969) began publishing poetry and literary criticism after his service in WWII.
2 Translated Borys Humenyuk Poems
Borys Humenyuk was born in Ternopil, Ukraine. He is an award-winning poet and the author of two novels, Lukianivka and Island. He played an active role in Ukraine’s 2013 Revolution of Dignity. Since 2014, he has been involved in anti-terrorist operations in the Ukrainian Donbas region.
2 Translated Nadia Anjuman Poems
Afghani poet Nadia Anjuman (1980—2005) grew up among a small literary community that encouraged her writing even during Taliban times. She was one of the first women to enrol in Herat University after the fall of the Taliban, but her pursuit of a literature degree was cut short when she was killed in an incident of domestic violence on 4 November, 2005, just short of her twenty-fifth birthday.
2 Translated Georg Trakl Poems
Georg Trakl (1887—1914) was born in Salzburg and is considered one of the most important Austrian expressionists. A poet and pharmacist, he first gained attention through the Innsbruck based avant-garde journal Der Brenner.
Alyosha Wiengpong, Untitled and Translated
Untitled Bound and syntaxed, threads of words in books transfix me Create their own being, slither like snakes Leave a crust of slough upon the flat dry tussock grass The skin thrilled, covered with tired letters Only the backbone precarious, …
3 Translated Nikos Nomikos Poems
The following poems are excerpted from Nikos Nomikos’s Σημειωμένες Διαφάνειες (Noted Transparencies), a collection of thirty poem-vignettes originally published in Greek in 2003. This translation is the first installment of a larger translation project aimed at bringing Nomikos’s poetry to the attention of the wider English-speaking literary community in Australia.
4 Translated Reagan R Maiquez Poems
Image courtesy of Reagan R Maiquez That Moment when an Owl Watches over Love At that moment when an owl watches over love, your sleep becomes my heart’s waking up. The wind cradles the disquiet of your departure in the …
3 Translated Ester Naomi Perquin Poems
Ester Naomi Perquin (1980 —) is a prize-winning Dutch poet. The Hunger in Plain View, her first collection in English, will be published in early 2017 by White Pine Press (USA). Perquin put herself through writing school by working in the Dutch prison service, and this experience informs her poetry, particularly the 2012 collection Cell Inspections from which these three poems are drawn.
2 Translated Edith Södergran Poems
Edith Södergran (1892-1923) is one of the greats of Swedish-language modernist literature. She died at the age of thirty-one, before her genius had the chance to be truly appreciated. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1909, her eventual death in 1923 was anticipated for the entirety of her short adult life. It is largely due to this consumptive fate, along with the loss of her large fortune during the October Revolution of 1917 (and, in part, her gender) that Södergran is often unfairly remembered as meek victim, isolated from the world, suffering and alone.
Santiago Vizcaíno’s ‘Porn Verse’
Santiago Vizcaíno (1982 —) was born in Quito, Ecuador. He studied degrees in Literature at the Catholic Pontifical University of Ecuador (PUCE) and the University of Málaga, and currently serves as the Director of the PUCE Center for Publications. He has published three books of poetry, one short story collection, and a book-length study on Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik.
3 Translated Péter Závada Poems
These three poems by Hungarian poet Péter Závada are taken from his second collection, Mész, published in 2015. The title itself is a play on words, as mész can mean either ‘limestone’ or ‘you are going.’
3 Translated Mardonio Carballo Poems
Image by Francisco Cañedo, courtesy of SinEmbargo Mardonio Carballo (1974 —) is a Mexican poet, actor and journalist from Chicontepec, Veracruz. He writes in both Nahuatl and Spanish. His published works include Tlajpiajketl o la Canción del Maíz (2015), Las …
3 Translated Rajathi Salma Poems
Salma’s language contains a primal boldness that she wishes the many worlds of the marginalised could possess. It is her courage of conviction and starkness of expression that make Salma one of the most influential Indian writers of our time. Her story has inspired women across the world, encouraging her sisters – modern-day Tamil women – to explore a new place of freedom and creative articulation.
6 Poems by Najwan Darwish
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Najwan Darwish has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as ‘one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation’. Nothing More to Lose, superbly translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is his first …
10 Poems by Joan Brossa
Born in Barcelona into a family of artisans, Joan Brossa (1919-1998) first began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish civil war. During the forties he was introduced to surrealism thanks to meeting Joan Miró and Joan Prats. This …
3 Self-translations in 3 Languages by Marilyne Bertoncini
Souvenir – Ricordo – Memory The grey Deûle flows inside its greyish banks. Dreams are reflected within the water grass, and changing fates sketch and mirror fleeting drafts beneath the water clouds where the sun hides with the sparrows in …
