Modern Poetry in Translation

The Big Green Issue, Series 3 No.10

By David Constantine, Helen Constantine

Migration at the very first stirring my airtight, upright sarcophagus breaks into pieces, each fragment starting to turn green even as it falls … Martii Hynynen, translated from the Finnish by Mike Horwood

Modern Poetry in Translation, Third Series, No. 10 is dedicated to the beauty, abundance and plight of Mother Earth. This autumn MPT will be truly internationalist. Work from all quarters, out of as many languages as possible, will demonstrate an obvious fact: on Planet Earth we sink or swim together. The arguments will be polemical, saying the things that must be said, but also celebratory, so that we see, yet again, what it is we risk losing. Poetry, translated and original, essays, anecdotes, photographs, and illustrations, all of the highest quality, show up wrong attitudes and the deeds they encourage; but also indicate how we might live better in the living world.

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In The Big Green Issue

Poetry and Features

Editorial David and Helen Constantine

Bewketu Seyoum, poems, translated by the author and Chris Beckett from Amharic

Martti Hynynen, five poems, translated by Mike Horwood from Finnish

Oliver Reynolds, ‘Rosenegg’s Night’ from German

Waldo Williams, ‘Spring 1946’, translated by Jason Walford Davies from Welsh

Pascale Petit, four poems

Rocco Scotellaro, poems, translated by Alen Prowle from Italian

Robert Saxton, sonnets from Hesiod’s Calendar from Ancient Greek

Anna Lewis, ‘The Wash-house’, from the Mabinogion (Medieval Welsh)

João de Jesus Paes Loureiro, two poems, translated by Stefan Tobler from Portuguese (Brazil)

Antônio Moura, three poems, translated by Stefan Tobler from Portuguese (Brazil)

Mary-Ann Constantine, ‘Notre Dame de Port Blanc’, from the Breton ‘Itron Varia ar Porz-Gwenn’

Terry Gifford, Ted Hughes, Translation and Ecopoetics

Pauline Stainer, six poems

Jeff Nosbaum, ‘Cape Weavers’

Siriol Troup, three poems

Dante, Purgatory, Canto XIX, 1-36, translated by Mark Leech from Italian

Wulf Kirsten, ‘village’, translated by Dennis Tomlinson from German

Wulf Kirsten, ‘Bleak Place’, translated by Stefan Tobler from German

Elisha Porat, three poems, translated by Cindy Eisner from Hebrew

Anne Cluysenaar, two poems

Pedro Serrano, ‘Swallows’, translated by Anna Crowe from Spanish

Anna Crowe, ‘The Mysterious Starling’

Mangalesh Dabral, two poems, translated by Sudeep Sen from Hindi

Naomi Jaffa, Aldeburgh 2008

Yi Sha, five poems, translated by Simon Patton and Tao Naikan from Chinese

Antjie Krog, ‘the unhomely’ translated by the author from Afrikaans

Farzaneh Khojandi, two poems, translated by Jo Shapcott from Farsi (Tajikistan)

Rose Scooler, ‘Mica Parade’, translated by Sibyl Ruth from German

Tomas Venclova, three poems, translated by Ellen Hinsey from Lithuanian

Franz Hodjak, six poems, translated by Peter Oram from German (Romania)

Zsuzsa Beney, five poems, translated by George Szirtes from Hungarian

Cesare Pavese, five poems, translated by David Douglas

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, five poems, translated by Bill Johnston from Polish

Jerzy Harasymowicz, four poems, translated by Maria Rewakowicz from Polish, with illustrations by Swava Harasymowicz

Eugene Dubnov, two poems, translated, with the author, by Vernon Scannell, Anne Ridler and John Heath-Stubbs from Russian

Reviews

Cecilia Rossi, on translations of Pura López-Colomé, Dulce María Loynaz and Mercedes Roffé

Paschalis Nikolaou on Richard Burns’s The Blue Butterfly

Belinda Cooke on Sasha Dugdale’s Elena Shvarts

David Constantine on Poems from Guantánamo and two Hafan Books

Josephine Balmer, Further Reviews