Modern Poetry in Translation

Available from 22 April 2011.

A 40 page poetry pamphlet, this is the second in our series of MPT Poets and a worthy successor to the first, very different, but just as compelling. Again we got to know the poet in translations sent to us for the magazine and again we knew how lucky we were. Kristiina Ehin, wonderfully well ‘englished’ by Ilmar Lehtpere, appeared with six poems in MPT 3/9 and a further seven in MPT 3/13. Arc published her The Scent of Your Shadow in their Visible Poets Series last year. She has a high and deserved reputation in Britain already, which we feel sure will be increased with this pamphlet The Final Going of Snow. The acid test when we read poems in translation is always: do they work, do they give pleasure as English poems? These do, no doubt about it. The language of poetry is always in some measure foreign. First-rate translations, which Ilmar Lehtpere’s are, carry that foreignness across, they accent it. Through such strangeness poetry makes its demands on us, it makes us see there is more to life than what we are used to. 

The poems’ subject matter is deeply personal, yet nevertheless universal, expressed in timeless and often startling imagery. The poet’s womanhood and her roots are clearly reflected and indeed celebrated within the context of her holistic view of life. The poems deal with love in the broadest sense of the word in all its manifestations and complexity, and the joys but also pain that inevitably arise – the most fundamental concerns, experiences we all share but very few of us are able to put into words.