TRANSLATIONS
3 Poems by Cao Shuying
A Letter from International Waters (Love, I’m on international waters lying on the pale blue deck breeze touching the back of my bent knee thinking, ‘I belong to no one’ touching my cheekbones, two hanging cliffs A showing-off of local …
3 Poems by Rogelio Guedea
i’m thinking about my feet, sometimes a country i don’t understand
dwelling on my hands, two islands,
on my knee, remote and lonely city
Nori Nakagami’s ‘Dragon’s Egg’
A dragon lives in your heart. It coils around the man you love. It protects him. It will never release him, not until he meets his end. In time it will birth the world and everything that lives. This world …
Erin Mouré’s ‘Une fois nés’
This is a translation of ‘Une fois nes,’ a poem originally translated by Erin Mouré. It has been excerpted from a small chapbook, À Adan: poems d’Emma M. (Chatte, enr.): traduits par E. Mouré pour les amies et amis d’Emma …
2 Poems by Victor Hugo
At dawn, when the land
whitens, I’ll leave. You see I know
you’re waiting. I’ll go through the hills
Four Poems from Kim Hyesoon’s ‘Autobiography of Death’
Kim Hyesoon is one of the most prominent poets of South Korea. She lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her most recent books in translation are Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014) and I’m OK, I’m Pig (Bloodaxe Books, 2014).
George Vulturescu: What Vision Cannot Stand
A tourist map of key points of interest in the George Vulturescu poetry-scape would feature a number of salient features that his poetry has developed over the course of a quarter-century career of increasing depth and metaphysical complexity. The first …
Farewell Sweet Ladybird: A Manifesto and Three Chronicles by Pedro Lemebel (1952–2015)
Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) | Carla Pinilla | El Mercurio | Taken on 23/01/2015 Pedro Segundo Mardones Lemebel, known as Pedro Lemebel because he rejected his father’s surname in favour of his mother’s maiden name, was born in El Zanjón de …
Horse, Hawk and Cheetah: 3 Arabic Hunting Poems of Abū Nuwās
These three early ninth-century Arabic poems are examples of a genre of hunting poetry popular from the eighth to the tenth centuries. Three animals are described: a horse; a tiercel gos; and a cheetah.
Gu Yanwu: Translations of Letters, Poems and Essays
Gu Yanwu (1613-1682) stands out as one of the more remarkable figures in the history of Chinese letters, even in a landscape replete with remarkable figures.
5 Poems of Ángel González
Photograph courtesy of Susana González Ángel González (1925-2008) was a member of the so-called Spanish Generation of 1950 – perhaps its most celebrated exponent. Having grown up during the Civil War and in Franco’s ensuing dictatorship, González, in his own …
3 Poems from Wojciech Brzoska
Photograph courtesy of Justyna Gorbacz nowhere else they say we always loved each other more during the night than in the morning. when she asked me to draw back the curtain, I cheated on her with the sky and the …
Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Petites Vieilles’
Charles Baudelaire, born in Paris in 1821, was one of the greatest nineteenth-century French poets. He is a key figure in European literature, with a far-reaching influence – an example, in his life and in his poetry, of what it …
3 Poems by Andrei Filimonov
Andrey Filimonov Most of my grannies were teachers, The most ancient being from old Bolshevik throng. From her I got an atlas of Soviet cities. I read it, like a hymn book, testing it with the tongue from West to …
Marilyne Bertoncini’s ‘The Night of Lilac’
Marilyne and I got to know each other when Marilyne very stylishly translated some poems of mine in 2009.When I read Marilyne’s poem ‘Nuit de Lilas’, I was intrigued and moved by the poem’s sensuousness and musicality, its shimmering painterly effect and sheer lift – an earthy immediacy heightened by the exotic. How could I carry across this airy and erotic blend of music, perfume and colour? It was clear that I would need to strive for the patterns of sound,format and image, and also that I might need some background and some botanical advice.
José Kozer’s ‘Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew’ in English and Spanish
Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew To howl out ballads, to hear plainchant up ahead, constantly, right to the end. To tread ears of corn on Judgement Day, and see wholegrain bread emerge from …
2 Translations of Robyn Rowland in Turkish
Gelincikler Meral’e Ne yaşlı erkeklerin kırışık yumuşak elleri – kâğıt gibi kolay yırtılan – ne de park saksılarının buruşuk çiçekleri. Laleler gibi dimdik, kendinden emindir Kırmızı Türk Gelincikleri alabildiğine parlak, kırmızı dört yaprak, bir de gözlerine çekili birer kara sürmedir …
3 Translations of Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas
Photograph from VDU Tenebrae When you arose from Tenebrae, And first opened your eyes You lay in Eden On the river shores of Hiddekel, Looking at your naked body, That had become word, the word I had to tell you. …
3 Poems by Uwe Kolbe
Photograph from BR Bayern 2 The First Encounter Aimless he wandered, that wide-eyed boy beneath the scorching sun the gods controlled. He said, Make summer mine! (They granted it – and how.) He didn’t know what hit him – Who’d …
3 Poems by Rabindranath Tagore
Sraboner dharar mato poduk jhore like the streams of monsoons let it descend this melody of yours upon my face upon my heart along with the light of the east let it arrive every dawn upon my eyes through the …
2 Poems by Alla Gorbunova
Sonata Out of a Tin 1 o lord, I call on thee out of a tin: make it blossom like Aaron’s rod like gardens in tin rays and maples. – I myself am made of tin and everybody around is …
3 Poems by Menno Wigman
Photograph by Dolf Verlinden Menno Wigman combines an almost classical aesthetic with contemporary sensibilities and rock-and-roll subject matter. Dense, metrical poetry about sex and vandalism, death and suburban garden centres. An essentially colloquial vocabulary raised to a higher level by …
5 Poems from Sergej Timofejev
He had a face that was in love, it was already time to admit that he was in love. In his hands was a long umbrella and from the windows the priests were observing him. The little girl was thinking …
2 Translations of Yang Lian
Yang Lian (b. Bern, 1956) grew up in Beijing. Trained in classical poetry by his father from childhood, he wrote classical poetry until the late 1970s when for the first time he encountered Western poetry in translation. He decided to …
