Modern Poetry in Translation

From the archive: Ana Luísa Amaral translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa - Modern Poetry in Translation Beth Hickling-Moore writes on Ana Luísa Amaral translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

Our latest 'From the Archive' feature is now online!

Beth Hickling-Moore writes on Ana Luísa Amaral translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

modernpoetryintranslation.com/from-the-arc...

As ever, the article includes a link to read this issue online in full, for free – until 30th Nov!

Thanks to everyone who joined us at Poetry Library on Wednesday!

We had a full house celebrating 60 years of MPT with Richard Hollis, David and Helen Constantine, Sasha Dugdale, plus a video with Cristina Viti presenting selected poems from our online selection of poetry from Gaza.

Podcast: The Early Days of MPT | Richard Hollis speaks to J.S Tennant - Modern Poetry in Translation In this special edition, celebrating the magazine's 60th anniversary, we return to its earliest days with one of the founding members, the graphic designer of Richard Hollis

New podcast!

In this special edition, celebrating the magazine’s 60th anniversary, we return to its earliest days with one of the founding members, the graphic designer Richard Hollis – interviewed by J.S. Tennant.

modernpoetryintranslation.com/podcast-the-...

YouTube video by MPT Magazine Launching MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

New online!

Watch our conversation with Ottilie Mulzet and Sara Elkamel as we celebrate MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

Chaired by issue Editor, Jessica Sequeira

🌿 Now on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Yd...

@ottiliemulzet.bsky.social

Page reads: Mulberries Have you ever seen mulberries, how their red juice stains the earth where they fell? Nothing is as painful as falling. I've seen so many workers fall from buildings and become mulberries. (God) (God) is a worker too. Welder of welders he must be. In the evening light his eyes are red; at night his shirt is full of holes. Gun If they had not invented the gun there would be fewer people killed at a distance, lots of things would be easier. It would be easier to force them to realize the workers' power.

Page text reads: (God) is a worker too. Welder of welders he Must be

Two pages from Scorched Glass @mptmagazine.bsky.social (see my previous post) with poems by Sabeer Haka, tr. by Nasrin Parwaz & Hubert Moore. The translators indicated censored words with brackets.

Portrait poster announcing that early-bird registration for IPCITI 2025 is open until 24 October. On the right side of the bottom half of the poster, there is a QR code to register. MODALITY MUTABILITY MOBILITY: Currents of Change in Translation and Interpreting. Confirmed Keynote: Dr Pauline Henry-Tierney (Newcastle University)Contact: IPCITI@warwick.ac.uk

Registration for #IPCITI2025, the 18th International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting, is now OPEN!! 🎉🎉🎉

🗓️ Register before 24 October to get our special early-bird fee.

🧠 We have a packed two-day programme with plenty of opportunities to network and decompress.

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This is so good to read as this Iranian @mptmagazine.bsky.social issue was one of my very favourite and Farrokhzad is one of the most exciting poets we published. I think she may appear in @poetclare.bsky.social new @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social collection?

Thrilled to have Clare Pollard write our latest #FromTheArchive piece for September!

(Includes free access to the whole of our Iran focus issue. Link inside the article 👀)

What's on - Winchester Poetry Festival events in 2025 Details of our forthcoming events and collaborations. Winchester Poetry Festival runs 2-12th October

Winchester Poetry Festival is approaching. online events are so important for accessibility, but they’re also costly to run & we haven’t sold many online tickets yet. Just wanted to shout that our headline events are
live-streamed and BSL interpreted! 1/3 www.winchesterpoetryfestival.org/what-s-on

Atmosphere - Modern Poetry in Translation · Repeatedly October descends On villages     deep rivers     jungles Waiting and silence Asphyxia and union Repeatedly the sky’s autumn turns its head Towards the meat of greed Village roots     bodi...

'Atmosphere', by Subhro Bandopadhyay – 📘 🎧 read & listen online

Translated from Bengali by Sampurna Chattarji

Published in the latest MPT – Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/atmosph...

And guest editing the forthcoming issue, too! (Janani Ambikapathy is back from leave after that, and picking back up with the first issue of 2026)

Atmosphere - Modern Poetry in Translation · Repeatedly October descends On villages     deep rivers     jungles Waiting and silence Asphyxia and union Repeatedly the sky’s autumn turns its head Towards the meat of greed Village roots     bodi...

'Atmosphere', by Subhro Bandopadhyay – 📘 🎧 read & listen online

Translated from Bengali by Sampurna Chattarji

Published in the latest MPT – Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/atmosph...

Kafi - Modern Poetry in Translation · Introduced and read by Mediah Ahmed, with the original poet Sanwal Gurmani     (after Sanwal Gurmani) I sent word to my beloved— a message to return. The forest frets endlessly to own its newborn de...

'This Kafi by Sanwal Gurmani pulses with the rhythms of love, land, and longing. Set against the backdrop of nature—the forest, the deer, the red earth—it weaves the emotional terrain of human connection into the physical landscape'– Mediah Ahmed

Read online:
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/kafi

Ehlobo (‘Summer’) - Modern Poetry in Translation · Read by Stephen Walsh with isiNdebele read by Albert Nyathi   Summer-growth’s green, boundless, stretching free. Stretching my heart’s bounds. Rivers, full, fill it up too.           And sorghum, ne...

NEW ONLINE:

Ehlobo (‘Summer’) by N.S. Sigogo
Translated from isiNdebele by Stephen Walsh

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/summer-2/

Published in the latest MPT: Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

A smiling woman in leopard print top sitting by a window in the sun

Cover image of a new book 'dance as if' by Katrina Naomi which features a silver glitter ball

Here's my 'short & sweet' poetry newsletter for Sept: info on 'dance as if' launch events in Cornwall & London @vervepoetrypress.bsky.social & recommending @mptmagazine.bsky.social Plus an article on how I write @serenbooks.bsky.social See mailchi.mp/10e91fb65935...
#danceasif #poetry #howiwrite

MPT MAGAZINE (2016) ‘For The Voiceless People’ by Gemoraw Of all freedoms, speech is the first, and it is the tongue which allows us to voice our desires and our desiring. If the tongue is tied down and cannot tell what we feel, not only our flesh is tied, but our soul. And if our fellow man is tongue-tied, we must speak for him too! If we find ourselves in a free country, what is the use of freedom, if we do not speak for the speechless? Is it a crime to say I am their fellow man? your tongues are burning, your hunger is raging! blame the drought! say our Authorities. But for all those whose voice is silenced, and who cannot cry help! for themselves: cry help!! TRANSLATION: CHRIS BECKET & ALEMU TEBEJE

By Ethiopian poet and activist Gemoraw (from @mptmagazine.bsky.social) “If we find ourselves in a free country / what is the use of freedom / if we do not speak for the speechless?”

My heart is an active volcano - Modern Poetry in Translation · To learn or try to translate the quiet language of the Andes its paths populated by endemic shrubs whose names I can’t pronounce I go on all fours like a mountain animal seeking to escape from preda...

READ ONLINE:

My heart is an active volcano

Begoña Ugalde, translated from Chilean Spanish by Drago Yurac

🔉Including audio recordings from Begoña Ugalde and Drago Yurac

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/my-hear...

Harmony - Modern Poetry in Translation Listen how the tigers love each other and the jungle fills with their deep panting, and the night splits open with their ferocious lightning. See how the stars revolve in harmony’s eternal dance and t...

'Listen how the tigers love each other
and the jungle fills with their deep panting,
and the night splits open with their ferocious lightning.'

Harmony – Piedad bonnet, translated from Colombian Spanish by Richard Gwyn

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/harmony/

#translation #poetry #poetrycommunity #xl8

From the Archive: Nikola Madzirov translated from Macedonian by Peggy and Graham Reid - Modern Poetry in Translation Lawrence Schimel writes on Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov

'A poet with his feet firmly planted on the blood-stained earth who, not naively but stubbornly, keeps looking toward optimism is a beacon in these fraught times.'

Lawrence Schimel on Nikola Madzirov tr Peggy & Graham Reid in our latest #FromTheArchive

modernpoetryintranslation.com/from-the-arc...

We ran out of characters to tag you in this post, @lawrenceschimel.bsky.social! ❤️

From the Archive: Nikola Madzirov translated from Macedonian by Peggy and Graham Reid - Modern Poetry in Translation Lawrence Schimel writes on Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov

'A poet with his feet firmly planted on the blood-stained earth who, not naively but stubbornly, keeps looking toward optimism is a beacon in these fraught times.'

Lawrence Schimel on Nikola Madzirov tr Peggy & Graham Reid in our latest #FromTheArchive

modernpoetryintranslation.com/from-the-arc...

MPT Labs: Embodying Translation: Poetry’s Lea(r)nings – workshop with Erín Moure - Modern Poetry in Translation Online | £10 / £39 | 8th October, 6.30pm-8.30pm BST

Very pleased to annouce the next edition of MPT Labs!

Embodying Translation: Poetry’s Lea(r)nings – online workshop with Erín Moure

Limited to 8 places

£10 for subscribers – or £39 plus a 1 year subscription

modernpoetryintranslation.com/mpt-labs-emb...

Enter Palestinian Love - Modern Poetry in Translation We Palestinians love what we love a little more than we should. Look how we love our universities, our plums, our country’s crisp air, our Za’atar, our poets, our villages blown to pieces. We are alwa...

'Look how we love our universities,
our plums, our country’s crisp air,
our Za’atar, our poets,
our villages blown to pieces.'

From 'Enter Palestinian love', Dalia Taha tr. Sara Elkamel

Read full poem online: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/enter-p...

Memento Poem - Modern Poetry in Translation The little thing that has overcome the inherent violence of birth keeps shut its yet unseeing eyes tight. My first grandchild — I see my likeness in his face, and as I draw closer, sensing the movemen...

NEW ONLINE

Memento Poem by Kenzaburō Ōe, translated from #Japanese by Akagi Kobayashi

Published in the latest MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/memento...

❤️

Extract from ‘Cow’ – six poems by Uruguayan poet Claudia Magliano in @mptmagazine.bsky.social tr. Jesse Lee Kercheval & Jeannine Marie Pitas. Have a look! 🐄

You can also read fabulous poems by the other prizewinners and commended writers:

before we close like eyelids, by Jolyn Lim

polyphony, Aarohi Deshmukh

dog thoughts/fox thoughts, Immy Pridmore

City Fox, Mikala Smee

if your grandpa was made of soap, Madeleine Oliver

The results of our collaboration with @youngpoetsnet.bsky.social are now available to read online!

ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/workshop/div...

Congratulations to Rucha Virmani with the winning poem 'December Heat' (written in response to 'And more' by Felícia Fuster, translated by Marialena Carr.)

The cover has a dark blue background with a paler blue image of low hills with flat grassland on the lower third of the page. On the right is a large white and pale-blue image of a long thin plant with five leaves and some small flowers at the top. It reaches about three-quarters of the way up the page, framing the cover. On the left is a similar sized pale blue-and-white image of bent grass, with some leaning towards the centre of the page as if blown by the wind. This image spreads onto the back page where there are also two smaller pale blue images of leaves.

the back cover, featuring contributor names to this issue. AKAGI KOBAYASHI ◆ ALAA ALQAISI ◆ ALI AKKOUR ◆ ALI ASADOLLAHI ◆ ALTON MELVAR M. DAPANAS ◆ ANNA YIN ◆ ASHU LAL ◆ BEGOÑA UGALDE ◆ BILL COYLE ◆ CINDY A. VELASQUEZ ◆ CLAUDIA MAGLIANO ◆ DALIA TAHA ◆ DRAGO YURAC ◆ ELENA SALAMANCA ◆ ELLEN CORBETT ◆ EMI MIYAOKA ◆ ERIKA MIHÁLYCSA ◆ GABRIELA RUIVO ◆ GILLES MADAN ◆ GIZELLA HERVAY ◆ HÅKAN SANDELL ◆ HILARY BIRD ◆ JEANNINE MARIE PITAS ◆ JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL ◆ KENZABURŌ ŌE ◆ LAOIGHSEACH NÍ CHOISTEALBHA ◆ MAARJA PÄRTNA ◆ MAGDA SZÉKELY ◆ MARINA TSVETAEVA ◆ MEDIAH AHMED ◆ N.S. SIGOGO ◆ OTTILIE MULZET ◆ PIEDAD BONNETT ◆ RICHARD GWYN ◆ RIFAT ABBAS ◆ RYAN GREENE ◆ SAMPURNA CHATTARJI ◆ SANWAL GURMANI ◆ SARA ELKAMEL ◆ STEPHEN CAPUS ◆ STEPHEN WALSH ◆ SUBHRO BANDOPADHAY ◆ TAUQIR REZA ◆ YAN LI ◆ ZSUZSA BENEY ◆ ZSUZSA RAKOVSZKY ◆

OUT NOW!

MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

With poems by Kenzaburō Ōe, Marina Tsvetaeva, Dalia Taha, Begoña Ugalde and many others.

Guest-edited by Jessica Sequeira

modernpoetryintranslation.com