Modern Poetry in Translation

Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) is a tri-annual poetry magazine edited by Khairani Barokka that publishes poetry from all over the world in English translation. Founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort it has consistently published the very best of world poetry in the very best translations, and has introduced a number of famous poets and iconic translations to the English-speaking world.

MPT prints work of unsurpassed range and quality. Over the last decade it has featured over 90 languages, 463 poets and 349 translators. Boyd Tonkin in The Independent wrote that MPT ‘has a rare and precious talent’. The Sunday Times called it a ‘necessity’. There is no other magazine that has the same reach and the same consistent quality of poetry.

The trial issue features six poems by Tsvetanka Elenkova translated by Jonathan Dunne, three poems from Aldeburgh by Taha Muhammad Ali and Gabriela Mistral’s poem The Foreigner translated by Arthur McHugh.

Other features include a review by Jo Balmer of classic French and German translations, Charlie Louth examines the work of Don Paterson, Martyn Crucefix and Rilke and Stephanie Norgate presents two haiku versions of Lucretius.

‘Call the Sea a Poet’ highlights Maltese poetry in translation and in English, including work by Nadia Mifsud translated by Miriam Calleja and Luke Galea; Antoine Cassar; Maria Grech Ganado; Leanne Ellul translated by Helena Camilleri; and Immanuel Mifsud, translated by Ruth Ward and Immanuel Mifsud. Adrian Grima contributes both an essay, ‘Of Reach and Richness’, which includes the Maltese language’s connections to various Arabics, and a poem in Albert Gatt’s translation. Also in ‘Call the Sea a Poet’: Adriana Diaz-Enciso’s translation of, an in honour of, the late Mexican poet David Huerta; Siavash Saadlou’s translation of Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou; two sterling prose poems by Aya Nabih in Sara Elkamel’s translation; and, in an interview by Sana Goyal, Meena Kandasamy on internal colonialisms and her feminist translation of the Kāmattu-p-pāl. All in this new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for a poetry magazine belonging to the world, read MPT.