Modern Poetry in Translation

Metamorphoses, Series 3 No. 3

By David Constantine, Helen Constantine

'Metamorphoses' seeks to extend the very idea of translation, and features texts which translators have transformed from a foreign original into something that is peculiarly their own. Highlights include versions of Akhmatova done by outstanding contemporary poets for Poetry International at the South Bank in 2004, as well as Ingeborg Bachmann’s 'War Diary', a moving document of her early life in terrible times. This volume of MPT gives a voice to the unheard and creates living connections across frontiers, cultures, genres, mediums and ages.

The focus is a concentration on translations in which radical reshaping has been consciously undertaken. In their brief introductions to their translations of Anna Akhmatova – honoured by Poetry International 2004 as a great poet whose legacy continues to inspire – eminent poets and translators Elaine Feinstein, Jo Shapcott, Colette Bryce, Sasha Dugdale, Marilyn Hacker and George Szirtes write about the process of translation and how they strive to give body to the life and experience found in the poems.

Poets John Greening and Neil Philip, working with 13th century Icelandic and Ancient Greek poetry respectively, playfully and ingeniously move the remote past into the forms and language of modern life.

Three other poets, Kathleen Jamie, Paul Howard and Terence Dooley neatly sidestep our expectations of standard English and provide us instead with a feast of Scots, Yorkshire dialect and street slang.

Other contributors include Josephine Balmer with her work in progress, a juxtaposition of Ovid’s poetry of exile and the documentation of wars abroad in a shared location, the Black Sea; Sean O’Brien’s moving translation of Canto V of Dante’s Inferno; and thanks to the generosity of Heinz Bachmann and Isolde Moser, the publication of their sister’s 'War Diary'.

This substantial issue gives weight to the editors’ statement that by ‘modern’ in MPT’s name, they intend “to signal a present liveliness”. Readers who wish to have their own liveliness increased are urged to subscribe.

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In Metamorphoses

Poetry and Features

Editorial  David and Helen Constantine

Akhmatova on the South Bank

(all poems translated from Russian)

Ruth Borthwick: Anna of all the Russias: Translating Akhmatova    

Elaine Feinstein: An Evening for Akhmatova

Colette Bryce: Six poems

Sasha Dugdale: Five poems                                       

Jo Shapcott: Five poems

George Szirtes (with Veronika Krasnova): Six poems

Marilyn Hacker: ‘For Anna Akhmatova’            

John Greening: ‘Coming Soon. Remastered from the Old Norse’

Neil Philip: ‘21 glosses on poems from The Greek Anthology’ from Ancient Greek

Paul Howard: Versions of four sonnets by Giuseppe Belli from Italian

Terence Dooley: A version of Raymond Queneau’s 'La Pendule' from French

Kathleen Jamie: Hölderlin into Scots. Two poems from German         

Josephine Balmer: The Word for Sorrow: a work begins its progress 

Ingeborg Bachmann

Karen Leeder: Introduction

Mike Lyons: Ingeborg Bachmann's 'War Diary' translated from German

Patrick Drysdale and Mike Lyons: Five poems by Ingeborg Bachmann translated from German

Sean O’Brien: A version of Canto V of Dante’s Inferno from Italian

Cristina Viti:  Eros Alesi’s Fragments from Italian

Sarah Lawson and Malgorzata Koraszweska: Six poems by Anna Kühn-Cichocka from Polish

Marilyn Hacker: Guy Goffette’s 'Construction-Site of the Elegy' from French

Belinda Cooke and Richard McCane: Six poems by Boris Poplavsky from Russian

Cecilia Rossi: Poems from Alejandra Pizarnik’s Works and Nights from Spanish (Argentina)

Essays & Reviews

Terence Cave: A memorial note on Edith McMorran and a translation of Aragon’s ‘C’ from French

Paul Batchelor: An essay on Barry MacSweeney’s Apollinaire                                            

Antony Wood on Angela Livingstone’s Poems from Chevengur

Josephine  Balmer on Cliff Ashcroft’s Dreaming of Still Water and  Peter Boyle’s Eugenio Montejo

Paschalis Nikolaou on Philip Ramp’s Karouzos

Francis Jones on Jan Twardowski (translated by Sarah Lawson and Malgorzata Koraszweska) and A Fine Line: New Poetry from Central and Eastern Europe