Modern Poetry in Translation

Event: Join MPT at Poetry Parnassus, Southbank Centre, 26th June – 1st July 2012

Tuesday 26th June 

Poetry Parnassus Launch
7pm, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Tickets £8
Kristiina Ehin will launch her MPT Poets pamphlet ‘The Final Going of Snow’, translated by Ilmar Lehtpere, during the opening event of the festival. Zeyar Lynn and Alvin Pang will also launch their new collections, and Simon Armitage will open the festival with an introduction to The World Record, a landmark international anthology with poems from over 200 countries.

Wednesday 27th June

Launch of MPT 3/17 ‘Parnassus’ 
Introduced by David and Helen Constantine
8pm, Saison Poetry Library
Every issue of MPT in the third series has been an anthology of languages, voices, and topics – world-wide and from different ages. Our latest issue ‘Parnassus’ continues that tradition, with the abundant contribution of poets and translators invited to Southbank Centre for the Cultural Olympiad. We are proud to present some of them this evening. This event is the idea and spirit of the magazine in practice.

Admission free but space is limited.
To book your place email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

Sunday 1st July

Ted Hughes Celebration Reading
12 noon, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Tickets £8
Christopher Reid, Simon Armitage and David Constantine celebrate the life and work of Ted Hughes, co-founder of MPT, with readings of his translations, letters and biography, and of his own poems in Belarusian, French, Greek and Turkish. This event is in partnership with Modern Poetry in Translation.

Modern Poetry in Translation Third Series Retrospective
Presented by David and Helen Constantine
3pm, Clore Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall
Free (no need to sign up in advance)
In 17 issues since the launch of the third series of MPT in the summer of 2004 David and Helen Constantine have continued in the spirit of Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, who founded MPT in 1965. With readings by a range of contributors to the third series they will show at least a little of the variety of the publications: the many countries, cultures, languages, different centuries. Also the many ways in which they have understood the word ‘translation’. And something also of their social and political concerns.

Tickets will be available in due course from Southbank Centre Ticket Office: 0844 847 9910
Book online www.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetryparnassus