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.

‘Measureless Melodies’, MPT’s April issue, highlights Vietnamese poetry in translation, in a jam-packed issue including translations spanning centuries of verse, with work by Hồ Xuân Hương, Nguyệt Phạm, Hàn Mặc Tử, Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Chế Lan Viên, and both a poem and essay by Nhã Thuyên, the latter speaking poetically to the resistances and resiliencies of the Vietnamese language. Plus: an interview with Najwan Darwish and Kareem James Abu-Zeid on ‘attunement’ in their collaboration, and winners of the Stephen Spender Trust Prize and the MPT/YPN Young Poets’ Challenge—Jonathan Bastable’s translation of Joseph Brodsky, and Kexin Huang’s poetic self-translation of her name, respectively. We also have a self-translation by Dzifa Benson, coincidentally centred on naming conventions, and translations of César Dávila Andrade by Jonathan Simkins, Barbara Gruszka-Zych by Halina Maria Boniszewska, Fabio Franzin by André Naffis-Sahely. This and much more in our new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for a poetry magazine belonging to the world, read MPT.