The MPT Poets pamphlets series features an extended selection of translated poems by poets and translators first discovered in MPT, whose work the editors feel deserves wider attention.  Rocco Scotellaro, first appeared in MPT 3/10 The Big Green Issue in Allen Prowle's English translations. 

Rocco Scotellaro was born in 1923 in Tricarico, in the impoverished southern region of Lucania. When he died at the age of thirty, he had published poems in regional and national magazines and was beginning to attract significant critical attention and acclaim. In the year after his death a first collection, È fatto giorno, selected by Carlo Levi from over four hundred poems in his possession, was awarded both the Pellegrino and Viareggio prizes. Further selections were edited by Franco Fortini in 1974 and Franco Vitelli in 1978 and 1982. Recognition of Scotellaro’s importance and achievement came in 2004 with Mondadori’s publication in its Oscar Series of the complete poems.

You are invited to enter the first MPT Poetry Translation Competition.  Entries by 1st February 2012. Translate any poem on the subject of FREEDOM into English verse. The poem may be in any language, from any age, and in translation should not exceed twenty lines. The original text should be submitted with your translation. 

First prize: £200. Second prize: £75. Three runners-up: one year’s free subscription to MPT. All winners and runners-up will have their poems published in the Spring 2012 issue of MPT ‘Parnassus’.

Entries (£4 per poem / £3 for subscribers) by 1 February 2012, may be submitted via our website, on payment of the entry fee. Alternatively hard copy of the original poem and translation, and cheque or money order, made payable to MPT, should be sent to MPT Poetry Translation Competition, Queen’s College Oxford, OX1 4AW,UK.

JUDGES
David Constantine
Helen Constantine
Sasha Dugdale

For full rules see our competition page

Readers will be MPT's Editors David and Helen Constantine, Philip Gross, Christopher Pilling, Saradha Soobrayen and Karen McCarthy Woolf.  

Philip Gross’s The Water Table received the T.S. Eliot Prize and his new collection Deep Field will be published by Bloodaxe in November. John Lucas said Christopher Pilling’s Les Amours Jaunes was, ‘a work which nobody who cares about poetry can afford to be without.’ Poetry Editor of Chroma, Saradha Soobrayen received the 2004 Eric Gregory Award and her work has featured in, among others, Wasafari and Poetry Review. Born to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf’s poetry has featured in distinguished journals, anthologies and on the London Underground.

Time: 20:00 to 22:00
Tickets: Standard price: £5.00 / Concession price: £3.00
Concessions are available for students, people on benefit and over 60s. Proof must be provided when collecting tickets.

For more see:  www.lauderdalehouse.co.uk

Come along for an evening of readings from MPT 3:15, Poetry & The State, with discussions on the relationship of poetry to state and poet to state.

The event will begin at 6:30p.m. with readings commencing at 7p.m. Please do be sure to get there in plenty of time.

The event is due to finish at 9p.m.

Readers will be:

Jennie Feldman
Tim Allen
Amarjit Chandan
Zuzanna Olszewska
Carlos Reyez Manzo, The Amnesty Poet in Residence

David and Helen Constantine will also read works and host the evening.

The address is:

Amnesty International UK
The Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard
London EC2A 3EA
Phone +44 (0) 20 7033 1500

Directions are here:
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10151

Modern Poetry in Translation is launching the MPT Summer Reading Challenge which features the very latest titles in world poetry in translation.

Whether you are staying at home or abroad, choose up to two books from the Books Received list and then send us a postcard via the website. Simply share your journey through the book in 100 words or less. No experience of languages or reviewing necessary. 

To take part email Saradha saying which titles you'd like - along with your postal address - and we will send the books to you to keep.

MPT's Editors, David and Helen Constantine had this to say...

"We are as pleased as we are relieved to be assured of Arts Council funding. It removes a great anxiety and will enable us to get on with work that we feel sure we can do well and that we believe to be important. We are grateful to all the people – and they are many – who directly and indirectly helped us to this reassuring outcome. At the same time, as we look down the list of those of our colleagues who have not been successful, we feel in solidarity with them much sorrow and anger. Arc Publications, Enitharmon, the PBS, the Poetry Trust – these are organizations (among others), doing work which is vital to the wellbeing of our country if we understand that wellbeing in terms other than the merely financial. And they are true colleagues – we have friendly and productive dealings with all of them , we exist in collaboration with them and our condition, the condition of poetry in the United Kingdom, is weakened without them. Britain, despite its difficulties, is a rich country. The arts are not a luxury, they belong at the heart of any humane society. Government can’t afford not to help them thrive."

David and Helen Constantine
Editors, 30 March 2011

Reading from 'Polyphony' were Steve Komarnyckyj, Emily Jeremiah, Tim Allen, and MPT's editors David and Helen Constantine. There was also jazz from Tony Baker and Liz Hanaway, which interpreted a number of poems featured in the issue.

Some responses from the audience included:

“Heart warming poems, wonderful music. Thanks.”
“Much enjoyed!”
“Fantastic event - thank you.”

Leading children's poets of Russia and Britain Marina Boroditskaia and Michael Rosen met for a unique discussion of how poetry captures the hearts of children and adults in different cultures. Is poetry the best children's vitamin? A reading by both poets featured new translations of Marina's work. This discussion was chaired by poet David Constantine (co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation).

The event was hosted by Modern Poetry in Translation, and supported by the British Council 

Marina Boroditskaia is a Russian poet and translator. She has published numerous books of children’s poetry in Russia, and translated many English-language children’s writers into Russian, including A. A. Milne, Eleanor Farjeon and Hilaire Belloc. Her most recent translation, the relatively grown-up poets of the Silver Age, appeared in 2010, and she has also translated John Donne, Chaucer and Burns, among others. She is the author of five books of poetry for adults (but dislikes the idea that children’s poetry and adult poetry are somehow different – noting that ‘they’re made of the same stuff’). Marina has received several Russian prizes for poetry and translation and the prestigious children’s literature Kornei Chukovskii Prize. She presents the Russian equivalent of Poetry Please! on Russian radio – called ‘The Literary First Aid Box’, it is inspired by Marina’s idea that literature is the best multivitamin on the market. 

Michael Rosen is the UK’s best loved children’s poet and the former Children’s Laureate. He has spent a lifetime promoting poetry and reading in schools and is passionate about the children’s right to read. His best-known children’s books such as We’re Going on a Bear Hunt are classics and learnt by heart by children all over the country. More recently his ardent defence of the Booktrust’s free books for children saved the scheme from government cuts. Michael has his own website at www.michaelrosen.co.uk

This event was part of the Market Focus Russia 2011 cultural programme at the London Book Fair organised by the British Council with Academia Rossica.  For more information about the full programme of events with Russian writers, please contact Fiona McMorrough at FMCM - FionaM@fmcm.co.uk

James Naughtie, chair of this year's judging panel commented: "The winning story, 'Tea at the Midland', is remarkable for the rich poetry at its heart and the economy with which David Constantine creates a story with fully formed characters and a memorable setting. It has imagination, depth and brevity. What more could you say about a short story?"

'Tea at the Midland' is part of David's collection, Under the Dam, available from Comma Press, here.