Penguin Modern European Poets

[Eric]

You know how I hate lists. Well, I'm going to be a hypocrite and write a couple myself.

But all for a good cause: European poetry. The word "modern" in the title of this thread is meant to denote the 1970s, i.e. about 35 years ago. This may not be a full list of the poets taken up in the series, but it is a good indication:

Amichai
Blok
Bobrowski / Bienek
Brodsky
Celan
C?saire
Ekel?f
Enzensberger
Guillevic
Haavikko / Transtr?mer
Holan
Yevtushenko
Nezval / Bartu?ek / Hanzl?k
Jim?nez / Machado
Kovner / Sachs
Montale
Neruda
Pavese
Pessoa
Rilke
Ritsos
Rozewicz
Tsvetayeva
Ungaretti
We?res / Juh?sz
Arp / Schwitters / Klee

Translators included W.H. Auden, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Hamburger, Ted Hughes, J.B. Leishman, Christopher Middleton and David Wevill.

These translations had the advantage of being published by a major British publishing house which also had a lot of modern literature, classics and a prestigious non-fiction series (Pelicans, Peregrines). So they were always listed in the same catalogue as these other types of work. One minor disadvantage was that they were not parallel text (i.e. bilingual).


*

Another such series a little earlier in the 1960s, was the Poetry Europe Series published by Rapp & Whiting. Less well-known that the Penguin one, this also had a number of European poets:

Bobrowski
Alberti
de Dadelsen
Saarikoski
Ekel?f
L'Anselme
Rokeah
Campert
Jouve
Bachmann
Fried
Rozewicz

Maybe more, I'm merely listing from the back flap.

Whereas I will admit that I had never heard of some of the poets in this latter series, it also had the aim of bringing to the attention of the British reader not just the odd poem in magazine, but selections of poems by one poet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that such series, with the determination to introduce a good number of major poets to British readers, exist today.

If they do exist, do tell me about them and the poets they include.

[DWM]

Bloodaxe publish one or two foreign poetry translation series, including a bilingual (facing text) "Contemporary French Poets", with selections of work by Char, Bonnefoy, Michaux, Eluard and others - I think there are around 9 or 10 volumes so far, but it's hard to find a listing of the whole series on Bloodaxe's site:

Bloodaxe Books: FRONT PAGE

[Eric]

I immediately had a look at the Bloodaxe website. I had forgotten it in my polemical eagerness.

Out of the 36 poets that are advertised for the year 2010 for the nine months out of twelve that they publish, four poets per month, I found the following translations:

2010

Pia Tafdrup (translator David McDuff) Danish
Sylva Fischerov? (translator Stuart Friebert and the author) Czech
Pablo Neruda (translator Mark Eisner) Spanish /Latin American/
Marina Tsvetaeva (translator Angela Livingstone) Russian
Rabindranath Tagore (translator Ketaki Kushari Dyson and the author) Bengali
Harry Martinson (translator Robin Fulton) Swedish

2009

V?tězslav Nezval (translator Ewald Osers) Czech

2008

Elena Shvarts (translator Sasha Dugdale) Russian
Esther Jansma (translator ?) Dutch

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The trend is clearly upward. But it's not awfully many: only five languages. The translator from Hungarian George Szirtes has published three of his own collections, in which he may have incorporated Hungarian poems.

It is a pity that Bloodaxe doesn't make it easy for you to find the translated poets of the years further back than 2008. But it does have a link. They say you should click on the man with the axe in the top left-hand corner.

By means of a quick flick there I can also see the names Akhmatova (Russian), Bertolucci (Italian), Boye (Swedish), C?saire French), Bonnefoy (French), Enzensberger (German), Dupin (French), Hanzl?k (Czech), Transtr?mer (Swedish), Michaux (French), Tuominen (Swedish), and a few I've probably missed.

***

There is also Arc Publications based in Todmorden, Yorkshire. I'll check them out and write back later.

[Eric]

Looking at the Arc Publications website, I have found collections by the following poets:

* Six Lithuanian Poets (edited by Eugenijus Ališanka with translators Kerry Shawn Keys, Medeina Tribinevicius, Laima Vince and Jonas Zdanys, plus the editor)

* Rosa Ausl?nder (translator Jean Boase Beier. German)

)* Mourid Barghouti (translator Radwar Ashour. Arabic /Palestine/)

* A Fine Line - New Poetry from Eastern and Central Europe (edited by Jean Boase Beier, Alexandra B?chler, Fiona Sampson with poets from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. Various languages)

* Six Czech Poets (edited by Alexandra B?chler)

* Claude de Burine (French)

* Remco Campert (Dutch)

* Cevat Capan (Turkish)

* Maurice Car?me (French - Belgium)

* Jean Cassou (French)

* Bartolo Cattafi (Italian)

* Amarjit Chandan (Punjabi)

* Razmic Davoyan (Armenian)

* Six Polish Poets (edited by Jacek Dehmel)

* Regina Derleva (Russian)

* Arjen Duinker (Dutch)

* Gabriel Ferrater (Catalan)

* Sole?man Adel Gu?mar (Arabic - Algeria)

* Mila Haugov? (Slovak)

* A Balkan Exchange (Eight Balkan poets)

* Dorotea Rosa Herilany (Indonesian)

* Six Slovak Poets (editor Igor Hochel)

* Fran?ois Jacqmin (French - Belgium)

* Fernando Kofman (Spanish - Argentina)

* Anise Koltz (French - Luxembourg)

* Yannis Kondos (Greek)

* Juris Kronbergs (Latvian - Sweden)

* Sabine Lange (German)

* Ewa Lipska (Polish)

* Inna Lisnianskaya (Russian)

* Bejan Matur (Turkish)

* Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian)

* Ernst Meister (German)

* Altered State: New Polish Poetry

* Larissa Miller (Russian)

* Six Slovenian Poets (editor Brane Mozetic)

* Kunwar Narain (Hindi)

* Victor Rodriguez Nunez (Spanish - Cuba)

* Cathal ? Searcaigh (Irish Gaelic)

* Six Basque Poets (editor Mari Jose Olaziregi)

* The Page and the Fire (Editor Peter Oram - Six Russian Silver Age Poets)

* Salvatore Quasimodo (Italian)

* Mikl?s Radn?ti (Hungarian)

* Val?rie Rouzeau (French)

* Tadeusz R?zewicz (Polish)

* Tomaš Šalamun (Slovene?)

* Michael Strunge (Danish)

* New Order: Hungarian Poets (editor George Szirtes)

* Mutsuo Takahashi (Japanese)

* Ell Tolaretxipi (Basque)

* Georg Trakl (German - Austria)

**

This is much more what I consider a series of (mostly) European poets should include. There are a few modern classics but many are contemporary poets writing now. I imagine that they have managed to distribute these collections and anthologies widely in the UK.

This rather impressive list probably makes them the most enterprising publishers of translated poetry in the UK.

[Liam]

* Cathal ? Sercalgh (Irish Gaelic)

It's Searcaigh, Eric, . I know, Irish (& Scottish) Gaelic orthography can seem a bit... strange. Once you get to practice the phonetics of the language, however, it makes perfect sense.

Anyway, I have never heard of this poet, which is weird because he's both Irish AND gay. I mean, WOW. (And translated by Seamus Heaney, to boot, who's my favorite living poet):

Whether writing about the beautiful Donegal landscape, or as a gay man about the intense emotions of love, or about voice and events from the past that resonate in the present, or simply telling a story, Searcaigh is always honest, clear-sighted and unafraid, lyrical, tender and funny: he tells it how it is.

This is the first selection of Searcaigh's poetry to be published by a British publisher and as such will be an introduction, for many English readers, to the startling freshness, energy, candour and inventiveness of this most colourful of poets.

Thank you for this.

[Liam]

* Six Lithuanian Poets

The publishers have uploaded several of the included poems on their website; I particularly enjoyed this one:

In Memoriam of a Mouse

in a blue, not sky blue
bath (I rented it along with
the apartment's cockroaches and the window facing
East) I found a small
grey mouse, we were both alarmed
she ended up here via the ventilation
flue, and I, like everyone,
from the combination of a few chromosomes
this happened on the second day of Easter, in the morning
and in light of the resurrection
the thought of drowning the mouse
seemed sacrilegious
I chased her into a jug, carried her
outside, released her, followed with my eyes
the quick scampering towards the bud-laden
lilacs
already turning away, closing the door
over my shoulder
even now I feel
how a lean cat's shadow
unnerved the awakening grass


Beautiful and full of feeling. (I wonder if the "window facing East" has any political associations).

[waalkwriter]

You know i could have sworn Heaney was dead for some reason. So am I to believe he is a translator of both Russian and Old English? Quite impressive. I've never read any of his poems. Got any suggestions?

[Liam]

You know i could have sworn Heaney was dead for some reason.

Considering that he gave a lecture at my school earlier this month, this would be... quite disturbing, .

So am I to believe he is a translator of both Russian and Old English?

I'm not surprised by the fact that he knows Irish (as does Paul Muldoon, who also translates from Irish and Old English); I only wish that he wrote something in Irish Gaelic every once in a while.

I'm not sure if he actually knows any Russian. He might have been working with a co-translator, like Ted Hughes, who had "translated" things from the Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Latin, and German languages.

Heaney first learned Old English at the university, and kept it up throughout the years, which is quite admirable. Most definitely, read his version of Beowulf as soon as possible. You may also want to look at his recent translation of Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid (ca. 1460-1500), from Middle Scots. (You can read it in just one sitting, it's about 25-30 pages long).

I've never read any of his poems. Got any suggestions?

I hope you can find a copy of Open Ground at your local library. It's over 400 pages long and contains most of his poems from the 1966-1996 period. Flip through it and see if something, anything catches your eye. (The collection also has his Nobel Lecture included in the Appendix: Crediting Poetry).

In terms of individual collections, Seeing Things (1991) and The Haw Lantern (1987) are my favorites. I also quite love The Spirit Level (1996).



Hope this helps,
L.

[Eric]

Liam, I know you know Gaelic. It was half-typo, half-ignorance. But I imagine his name is pronounced something like Carl O'Sharkey. I've heard of all those anorectic and obese vowels in Irish. This basically means that the spelling is padded out with masses of unnecessary letters to soften or otherwise the surrounding consonants.

As I have just captured and released a daddy-longlegs that I found last night and now again into the garden, I sympathise with the mouse & jug incident. Some creatures are very obstinate when frightened and confused. Luckily for it, cats ignore daddies-longleg.

You've got to watch these co-translators who translate from a version provided by somebody else. This "somebody else" is then quietly forgotten, while the already famous poet or playwright basks in the glory of "all my own work".