» Sign up for the MPT eNewsletterMPT press and publicity
Download Press ReleaseThe latest issue
THE DIALECT OF THE TRIBE
Modern Poetry in Translation
Third Series, Number 16
Publication date: 18th November 2011
A people’s self-identity springs in large measure from its language. For that reason when one people or nation annexes another, or wishes to homogenize itself, it will control or even seek to exterminate the languages within its frontiers by which difference and variety are signalled and asserted. Stop the language of a people, stop their voice. Without a voice, they are at your mercy.
In this issue of MPT more than 30 ‘dialects’ are represented or discussed, some widespread, some very local, all vitally interesting in their poetic speech. The world’s stock of languages, like its stock of species, is diminishing fast and the human race altogether is diminished by those losses. As so often in MPT, we demonstrate humanity’s abundance and in so doing show just how much there is to lose. In equal measure, this issue celebrates and alerts.
The earth is vast and small, and in all its infinite variety there is much that for good and ill is the same and shared. A poem here in Yoruba bitterly laments what the oil industry has done to the Niger Delta; another in Nenets what it is doing to rivers and livelihoods in Western Siberia. But also here are poems of love, pity and solidarity from Gaelic, Filipino and Urdu. Love for native places is expressed in Romansh, Alsatian and Occitan. There are poems for children from Zapotec and Yiddish.
Karen McCarthy Woolf gives us her grandfather’s Hoxton voice in droll and poignant poems of her own. Philip Gross compassionately picks up the broken bits of language that surface when the mind cannot hold. David Morley tells of his Romani childhood in Blackpool and inducts us into the very lively dialect of his tribe.
MPT 3/16 has in addition essays on the translation of African-language poetry; on shifting between Danish, Polish and English; and on the important work of the Mercato Institute. And reviews of Indian poetry, the Turkish Avant-Garde, and much besides.
Further information: editors@mptmagazine.com
About the next issue
Parnassus
The next issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No. 17) will be called ‘Parnassus’.
The next issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (Third Series, Number 17, Spring 2012) will be called ‘Parnassus’.
This issue will be largely given over to a collaboration with ‘Poetry Parnassus’ – the Southbank Centre’s celebration of the 2012 London Olympics. Poets from all 205 participating countries will be invited to London and MPT will be a place where some translations of their poems can be published. But, to enlarge our contribution, we want translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes and images concerned, in whatever fashion, with the Games (ancient or modern) or with Parnassus, home of the Muses. Parnassus was a sacred site for the whole Greek world; Delphi, below that mountain, was ‘the navel of the earth’; for the duration of the Olympics a truce was declared so that athletes could come and go safely. The modern Olympics are world–wide: we want MPT 3/17 to be just as extensive and various.
Submissions should be sent by 1 February 2012, 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. Contributors should be aware that work published in MPT may also appear on our website and as an e-book, and will be accessible to readers who have subscribed to the digital version of the magazine
Submissions
Before sending your work, it is imperative that you read and follow our Submission Guidelines
Download our logo
Go Digital
Subscribe to the digital edition of MPT for access to all back issues and to the Exactly app.» View free trial issue
