TRANSLATIONS
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 …
5 Poems by Vahe Arsen
Vahe Arsen (Arsenyan) was born in 1978 in Yerevan. He earned his PhD in American and English literature from Yerevan State University, and is currently assistant Professor of the Chair of World literature at Yerevan State University. He is also …
Danielle Collobert’s Survie
Danielle Collobert’s Survie is a sequence of six sonnetoid poems written and published in 1978 shortly before her suicide. The title is ironic: ‘survie’ means either the state of remaining alive after an event or in an environment that is normally fatal.
6 Poems from Nachoem Wijnberg’s Divan of Ghalib
Since being shortlisted for the Dutch prize for the best poetic debut of 1989, Nachoem M.Wijnberg has won a series of awards in both Belgium and the Netherlands, including the highly prestigious 2009 VSB Prize for the Netherlands’ best book of poetry.
Wijnberg is known for giving each of his poetry collections a distinct identity, both stylistically and in terms of content, and the poems reproduced here are drawn from his Divan of Ghalib, which was published in Dutch in 2009 and is due out in a complete English translation in May 2016 (White Pine Press, Buffalo).
6 Poems from Juan Diego Otero’s Los Tiempos del Ruido
It’s not easy to relate the tumult and commotion of that night; only that prosopopoeia, with which the preachers represent to us the day of judgement, can present us with some explanation of what physically occurred on the night of the terror: all of the people out of their houses, out of fear they would collapse.
2 Poems by Olga Orozco
Cartomancy The dogs that sniff out the lineage of ghosts, listen to them barking, listen to them tear apart the drawing of the omen. Listen. Someone approaches: the floorboards are creaking under your feet as if you will never stop …
from Marosa di Giorgio’s Funeral carriages laden with watermelons
What a strange species is the species angel. When I was born I heard them say “Angel”, “Angels”, or other names. “Spikenard”, “Iris”. Foam that grows on branches, the most delicate porcelain increasing all by itself. Spikenard. Iris.
George Seferis’s ‘On a Winter Ray’
Image courtesy of sefaria.com George Seferis was born 1900 in Smyrna, modern Turkey and died in Athens, Greece, in 1971. He is considered as the most important modernist innovator in modern Greek poetry. His collections include Mythistorema (1935), Book of …
3 Poems by Huang Lihai
Huang Lihai was born in Xuwen and now lives in Guangzhou. He is editor of the poetry magazines Poetry & People.
2 Poems by Chen Yuhong
I’ve Told You I’ve told you my forehead my hair miss you because clouds in the sky brushing through one another my neck my earlobes miss you because of the ennui of hanging bridge, alley grass and the bridge lane …
