Arc Translations – serie

A Fine Line: New Poetry from Eastern and Central EuropeArc Publications Translations Series (parallel-text)A bilingual anthology, with a preface by Václav Havel, published by Arc Publications in association with the UK-based international organisation Literature Across Frontiers, presenting the new poetic talent from ten Eastern and Central European countries.The poets included in the anthology are as follows:Georgi Gospodinov and Nadezhda Radulova (Bulgaria)Petr Borkovec and Katerina Rudcenkova (Czech Republic)Kristiina Ehin and Akso Künnap (Estonia)János Térey and Krisztina Tóth (Hungary)Karlis Verdins and Sergeij Timofeyev (Latvia)Daiva Cepauskaite and Rimvydas Stankevicius (Lithuania)Agnieszka Kuciak and Edward Pasewicz (Poland)Emilian Galaicu-Paun and Ioana Nicolaie (Romania)Katarina Kucbelová and Martin Solotruk (Slovakia)Primoz Cucnik and Taja Kramberger (Slovenia)"This is wonderfully sovereign poetry. These writers were mostly students or even at school when their Communist regimes perished; the war and the post-war Stalinist terror happened to their grandparents. Their poise and their self-possession are startling; they seldom lament and have no interest in preaching. The encounter with Western abundance gives them fresh imagery, but also grounds for amusement and irony.""From their part of Europe, they bring a special joy in the natural and physical world, and also glittering metaphysical brilliance. This is a poetry of wit and complexity, never raw but always glowing with human feeling. As for the translators, it's impossible to praise them too highly. Imaginative, sensitive and yet loyal to the texts, it is they who have delivered this treasure intact to new readers."- Neal Ascherson

'Salvatore Quasimodo was born-and lived-through historical tragedies which impressed his mind for ever. What one hears in his lines are the tears of mankind and its wail. Sonzogni and Dawe have captured the singular strength of Quasimodo and heard the penetrating voices of humanity. Their translations of this particular poet are a beautiful work of rendering history in rhyme and do more than justice to the art and the feelings of Salvatore Quasimodo. "The Night Fountain" should be read and re-read, learned and re-learned, and must be at hand to every reader who can only gain from its penetrating elegy' - Allen Mandelbaum, Kenan Professor of Humanities, Wake Forest University, USA.'"The Night Fountain" discloses a great poet in the making, now veering into Expressionism, now surreal, but always with an imaginative prosody and a voice that admits us into its intimacy. There is at once abundance and refinement here, and many of the elements that go into his great work. The translations are resourceful and inventive, keeping faith with the movement of the originals' - Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry, University of Glasgow.

Although the Austrian poet Georg Trakl was born over a century ago, the mesmerising imagery and haunting visions of his highly sensitive and morbidly introspective poetry are as powerful today as they were when he poured forth his extraordinary and unclassifiable volume of work. A source of inspiration for artists, musicians and writers throughout the Expressionist period and beyond, Trakl's poetry – bleak, yet full of tenderness and hope, nightmarish yet eeriely beautiful – has steadfastly defied any coherent critical analysis.Will Stone's outstanding new translation, complete with contextualizing essays, promises to rekindle interest in the work of this seminal poet.GEORG TRAKL (1887-1914) was one of the most influential poets of his time. Born in Salzburg, Austria, he died at the tragically early age of 27 from an overdose of cocaine whilst being held for psychiatric observation in a military hospital in Krakow, Poland. WILL STONE is a poet and translator, whose translations of the work of Nerval, Rodenbach, Baudelarie, Verhaeren and Egon Schiele have been published in books and literary journals. He has published several pamphlet collections of poetry, and reviews by him have appeared in the TLS, Guardian and Independent on Sunday and in various literary magazines.This title is also available from Amazon as an eBook.

Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the towering literary figures of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, speaking as much to the working man as to other poets. His fascination with sound and form, linguistic metamorphosis and variation made him a sort of 'poet's poet', the doyen, if not the envy, of his contemporaries, (Pasternak among them). His poetry is strangely akin to modern rock poetry in its erotic thrust, bluesy complaints and cries of pain, not to mention its sardonic humour. It is often aggressive, mocking and yet tender, and can be fantastic or grotesque.That's What is a long love poem detailing the pain and suffering inflicted on the poet by his lover Maria and her final rejection of him. But as well as being an agonising parable of separation and betrayal, it is also a political work, highly critical of Lenin's reforms of Soviet Socialism. The publication of That's What is something of a landmark as this the first time that this seminal work has appeared in its entirety in translation. Included also are the 12 inspired photomontages that Rodchenko designed to interleave and illuminate the text, illustrations which inaugurate a world of new possibilities in combining verbal and visual forms of expression and which are reproduced in colour for the first time. "Arc have produced a handsome Russian-English edition of this personal epic of the early years of the Revolution, first published in the LEF journal (Left Front of the Arts) in 1923. George Hyde adds a lively note on 'Translating Mayakovsky's That's What'. His co-translator, Larisa Gureyeva, is the granddaughter of V.M. Molotov-Skryabin, co-signatory of the notorious pact with Germany of 1939. Hyde writes of the 'permissive' 1920s in the early Soviet Union. Following the recent splendid exhibition of Rodchenko and Popova at the Tate Modern, there are increasing signs of a growing interest in the early, tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution."The Spokesman Vladimir Mayakovsky was born in Georgia in 1893, but moved with his family to Moscow after his father's sudden death. By the time he was 20, he was a well-known literary figure, having toured Russia in the winter of 1913-14 with the Futurists (with whom he had identified). He made several trips abroad during the 1920s, including a long visit to America in 1925. A prolific writer, he still remains a popular poet among present-day Russian readers. He died in 1930 by his own hand, killing himself playing Russian roulette with a single bullet. Aleksander Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor and photographer and one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution.This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.

TRANSLATED BY PETER ORAMOn the Century of Anna Akhmatova's Birth(Joseph Brodsky, July 1989)The page and the fire, the millstone, the grain,the blade of the axe, the hacked crop of hair –God cares much for these, yet, as were they his own,for two words – Love, Forgiveness – still fonder's his care.In them beats a broken pulse, cracking of bones,the knock of the spade; and even-paced, soft(since life comes once only), more clear ring their tonesfrom the dead's mouths than from soundproofedheavens aloft.Great soul, over oceans my reverence I'm sendingfor finding them for us; to you, your remainsin our native soil sleeping, I give thanks for findingthe blest gift of speech in earth's deaf-mute domains.An anthology of poems by the major literary figures in Russia, writing to, about, or in memory of other poets, following a tradition which started in the early years of the twentieth century and continued through the subsequent decades, more or less until the millennium.With the great names of Russian poetry represented – among them Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Bloch, Nabakov and Brodsky – this is a unique approach and promises to be a publication of great significance both in the UK and in Russia.Peter Oram is known both as a translator (from Russian and German) and as a poet, novelist and short story writer. He has had two novels published – Maddocks (Gomer Press), and The Rub (Starborn Books) and a collection of poems, White (Starborn Books).

Midnight and Other Poems is the first full-length poetry collection to be published in the UK by this remarkable Palestinian writer, previously known to English-language readers for his highly-acclaimed autobiography I Saw Ramallah (Bloomsbury, 2004). "Midnight and Other Poems is the most powerful and interesting collection I have read for a very long time."R.V. Bailey"Never mind that I speak not a word of Arabic. Mourid Barghouti's poetry shines through the translation. There are arresting images on almost every page."Raymond HumphreysMourid Barghouti has spent many years in exile, and his long poem 'Midnight' is a rich montage of images of the land of his birth and the strong emotional responses to which these images give rise. Here, anger, frustration and despair are juxtaposed with yearning and tenderness in Barghouti's powerful and evocative account of occupation, violence and oppression. The shorter poems which comprise the second half of the book are, by turns, dramatic and hard-hitting, contemplative and reflective, and together present an equally powerful and graphic picture of the poet's homeland.In Radwa Ashour's excellent translation, and with a helpful introduction by Guy Mannes-Abbott who recorded a number of conversations with the poet over a period of several weeks, this selection of Mourid Barghouti's poems marks an important addition to the body of Arabic literature available to English-language readers world-wide. Mourid Barghouti was born in July 1944 in Deir Ghassana near Ramallah, Palestine. He has published twelve books of poetry, the last of which is Muntasaf al-Layl / Midnight, Beirut, 2005. His Collected Works came out in Beirut in 1997. A Small Sun, his first poetry book in English translation, was published by The Aldeburgh Poetry Trust in 2003. In 2000, he was awarded the Palestine Award for Poetry. He lives in Cairo.About the translator:Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian writer and scholar, currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Ain Shams University, Cairo. Well-known as a novelist and writer of short stories, she has also co-edited a major work on Arab Women's literature. As a translator, she has translated into English much of the poetry of Mourid Barghouti, to whom she has been married for many years. In 2007, Radwa Ashour was awarded the Constantine Cavafy International Prize for Literature. About the introducer:Guy Mannes-Abbott has written about writers and thinkers from across the world for The Independent, Guardian, New Statesman and other publications. He has written catalogue essays on contemporary Indian art, speculative essays about London and taught at the AA School of Architecture in London. He is the author of a series of widely published texts – poems, stories and aphorisms called e.things.

In her follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Cold Spring in Winter, Valérie Rouzeau presents a language that is a hybrid of liberty and constraint. There are omissions and contractions, colloquialisms and archaisms, alongside wordplay, child-speak, exploded cliché, and a heightened awareness of the poetic tradition.Also available in limited-edition hardback: ISBN 9781908376176 (£12.99)Valérie Rouzeau was born in 1967 in Burgundy. Her most recent collection, Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009; ISBN 9781904614593), was shortlisted for the 2010 Griffin Prize, the world's largest poetry prize. She lives in Saint-Ouen, near Paris.Susan Wicks also translated Cold Spring in Winter. She is the author of three Faber and three Bloodaxe poetry collections, most recently House of Tongues (Bloodaxe, 2011; ISBN 9781852249069), and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Forward Prizes. She lives in Tunbridge Wells.This title is also available from Amazon as an eBook.

His narrative poems are precise, focusing on what may otherwise be overlooked. Whether fable-like in tone, or ruminating on the familiar such as lying in bed, bathing, drinking water and chatting, Vērdiņš's observation is sensual, often sexy.The erotic is as part of his experience as eating, perhaps the two are inseparable "beautiful as everything that enters your life", just as the world tips into surprising angles, where emotions are upended and light fills every shadow.Kārlis Vērdiņš was born in 1979 in Riga. He is the author of many academic papers and essays on literature, both Latvian and foreign, as well as a prolific literary critic. He has published four volumes of poetry, all to a great critical and popular acclaim and fetching top literary awards. Vērdiņš has also written librettos and song lyrics and has published translations of American Modernist poetry. His own poetry has been translated in many languages, including collections in Russian and Polish.

Hanoch Levin’s poetry stands alone as a single volume in his collected works, which run to fifteen volumes of drama and prose. Levin's poetic voice – mordant, witty, irreverent, erotic and highly satirical, yet also whimsical and delicate – is arresting, distinctive and unusual. When this volume was published in Israel, it proved to be enormously popular and went through three editions in its first year and has continued to be reprinted since. This bilingual edition makes his poetry available to an English-language readership for the first time – to date Levin is only known in the UK as a playwright.

This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.Using true stories from her own family annals, Wioletta Greg makes a literary journey through the last century, from Poland at the outbreak of the First World War to present-day Britain. In her own selection of verse and prose poems, set mostly in the geographical heart of Europe, she charts two world wars, life under Communism and the ensuing liberation, and her own experiences as a migrant living in the Isle of Wight.

In this powerful and moving book, Maram al- Masri, the award-winning Syrian poet who has lived much of her life in Paris, presents us with a chronicle of the lives of others - women and some of their children - who exist unseen and unheard in contemporary France. Many of the characters whose real or imagined lives she discloses are isolated as individuals; they endure their lives in quiet desperation, prisoners in one way or another of a great silence. Writing in Arabic and French, Maram al-Masri has donated her voice to breaking that silence with clarity, brevity and compassion, a voice which now resonates throughout the English-speaking world in this fine translation by the Irish poet, Theo Dorgan.

On the Edge of a Sword is a selection of Kristiina Ehin’s latest work – deeply personal, unflinchingly honest, autobiographical poems which, at the same time, are also a heartfelt defense of the right of the Estonian language to exist and flourish in our increasingly anglicised world.

Celebrated Icelandic writer Gerður Kristný’s Drápa is a novel-poem which takes its form from Old Norse shield poetry and its mood from modern Nordic crime. But the poem is no fiction: it is about a real woman's murder in the city of Reykjavik, and, through this lens, about all women’s deaths. This is Viking poetry at its most contemporary.

The latest in Arc's Translation Series brings poems from Sigurður Pálsson's ten collections written between 1980 and 2008 to a UK audience.Swirling with imagery, they reveal a poet committed to unearthing the joy of living and its connections to the natural world. This is a thrilling sweep across Pálsson's work: chronologies are upset, ideas run amok, views out onto the world close and open.Also available in limited-edition hardback: ISBN 9781906570590 (£12.99)This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.Sigurður Pálsson was born in 1948 in Skinnastadur, Iceland. A writer, translator, professor and film producer, he won the Icelandic Literary Award in 2007, the same year he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite by the President of France. Martin Regal lives in Reykjavik and teaches at the University of Iceland. His translation of Gisli Sursson's Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri was published by Penguin Classics in 2003 (ISBN 9780140447729).