When Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded MPT in 1966 they had two principal ambitions: to publish poetry that dealt truthfully with the real contemporary world, and to benefit writers and the reading public in Britain and America by confronting them with good work from abroad. (For history and archive visit http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=3021&inst_id=6)

The new editors of MPT continue in that tradition. The real circumstances of the world have changed, but they are every bit as pressing as they were when the magazine began. And as the English language marches towards an apparent hegemony, the need for its readers and writers to be confronted by what is foreign, is greater still.

The Editors, David and Helen Constantine.

To find out more about MPT, read an extract of the Editorial to Diaspora (Series 3, Number 2) or browse the content area for work which has appeared in recent issue

The Next Issue of MPT

The next issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (Third Series, Number 13, spring 2010) will be called ‘Transplants’.

Translation can be thought of as the transplanting of a living thing out of its native time and place into somewhere foreign. There it may thrive or die. We invite submissions that will test and exemplify that idea. We should be especially glad to consider contributions that showed, and perhaps also discussed,  how particular forms of poetry may be transplanted across time and space. Must they be modified? Or can the host culture be induced to accept them as they are?  The Earl of Surrey translated Aeneid II and IV into iambic pentameters, judging that they would serve better than Virgil’s hexameters. With examples from all three genres – epic, dramatic and lyric – we should like to assemble a variety of the ways and means by which  a literary transplant’s chances of survival may be increased. 

Submissions should be sent by 1 February 2010, please, in hard copy, with return postage, to The Editors, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Queen’s College, Oxford, OX1 4AW.  Unless agreed in advance, submissions by email will not be accepted. Only very exceptionally will we consider work that has already been published elsewhere. Translators are themselves responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions. Since we do sometimes authorize further publication on one or two very reputable websites of work that has appeared in MPT, the permissions should cover that possibility.