Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) is a tri-annual poetry magazine edited by Sasha Dugdale 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.

Latest issue

MPT’s new issue ‘Songs of the Shattered Throat’ focuses on poetry in the languages of India, with a selection of new translations of Tulsidas, Monika Kumar, Kutti Revathi, Joy Goswami, Vinod Kumar Shukla and Anitha Thampi, whose poem is published in partnership with Indian Quarterly. The issue also features new work by Ed Doegar, Daljit Nagra and Siddhartha Bose. The translations are accompanied by an essay by prominent Hindi novelist and poet Geet Chaturvedi about the status of Hindi as a literary language and English language’s corrosive effect on Hindi literary culture. ‘Songs of the Shattered Throat’ also includes selections of poems by Swedish modernist Ann Jäderlund, Lea Goldberg’s exquisite sequence ‘Songs of Spain’, published in English translation for the first time, Bernard O’Donoghue’s new translation of Piers Plowman and a collaborative translation between UK poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and Turkish poet Nurduran Duman. All in this new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.