MPT’s spring issue ‘Clean Hands’ focuses on the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, featuring the Stanza/MPT Windowswap Project; a conversation between Simone Atangana Bekono and Jay Bernard about the language of lockdown; and new poems and translations from across the continent including Jan Wagner, Stella N’Djoku, David Harsent, Safiye Can, David Constantine, Agnès Agboton, and many more. Also: an introduction to Uyghur poetry curated by Munawwar Abdulla, Naush Sabah’s version of ‘Qasida Burda’, and climate change poems by Marion Poschmann, translated by Jen Calleja. All this and more in the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.
Inside the Issue:
Contents
Editorial
Marion Poschmann, three poems
Translated by Jen Calleja
Al-Būṣīrī, ‘Uncloaked’
Translated by Naush Sabah
Jimena González, ‘City’
Translated by Charlotte Coombe
Uyghur Poetry
Introduced by Munawwar Abdulla
Chimengül Awut, ‘Cry, Wind’
Translated by Munawwar Abdulla
Abduqadir Jalalidin, ‘No Road Home’
Translated by Munawwar Abdulla
Abdushukur Muhammet Qumtur, ‘An Ear On The Wall’
Translated by Munawwar Abdulla
Fatimah Abdulghafur Seyyah, ‘Longing’
Translated by Munawwar Abdulla
After The Hawaiian, Two Poems
Translated by Alex Wong
Classic Torwali Couplets
Translated by Zubair Torwali
Simone Weil, ‘The Gate’
Translated by Silvia Panizza And Philip Wilson
María Teresa Andruetto, Six Poems
Translated by Laura Chalar
Editorial
- It is hard to know what to write. I have already written a lockdown editorial. When the European Cultural Foundation generously agreed to fund this focus on the European pandemic, we imagined it might be a chance to reopen borders that had been closed; to process a trauma we were emerging from and imagine a hopeful future. Instead, I write this whilst home-schooling again in a second lockdown harder, in many ways, than the first – from a UK that has completed its self-destructive Brexit, and where a mutated strain has emerged, with half of our COVID-19 death-toll in just the last two months. In 2021, it seems, there are unlikely to be travel corridors; no one talks of live readings or festivals anymore. The simple novelty of first lockdown, along with that sense of hopefulness – the cleaner air, community food parcels, clapping for the NHS, rainbows in windows – has dissipated after a year of corrupt contracts and diverted blame. ...Read full editorial
Focus
Giulia Scialpi, ‘Being Tame’
Translated by Rachele Salvini
Safiye Can, ‘Love In Lockdown’
Translated by Martin Kratz
Windowswap
Introduction by Annie Rutherford
Laila Sumpton
Paired with Kateryna Babkina
Translated by Uilleam Blacker
Nabin Chhetri
Paired with Bela Checkurishvili
Translated by Adham Smart
Theophilis Kwek
Paired with Indrė Valantinaitė
Translated by Rimas Uzgiris
Jennifer Wong
Paired with Özlem Özgül Dündar
Translated by Rebecca Dewald
Astrid Alben
Paired with Agnès Agboton
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
From The Greek Anthology, seven poems
Translated by David Constantine
Tatiana Țîbuleac, two poems
Translated by Jozefina Komporaly
Jan Wagner, two poems
Translated by Iain Galbraith
Simone Atangana Bekono and Jay Bernard
Infectious Language: A Conversation
Stella N’Djoku, four poems
Translated by Julia Anastasia Pelosi-Thorpe
Yannis Ritsos, four poems
Translated by David Harsent
Angele Paoli, four poems
Translated by Martyn Crucefix
Immanuel Mifsud, two poems
Translated by Ruth Ward
Andrija Radulović, ‘The Forbidden City’
Translated by Nikola Djukić
Volker Braun, ‘Handshake’
Translated by Karen Leeder
Reviews
Naush Sabah, Between Oppressor And Oppressed
An Anthology of Modern Bengali Poetry
Caroline Maldonado, Fractures And Fissures And Cracks
Franca Mancinelli’s Earthquake Country
André Naffis-Sahely, Mapping The Inferno
Two German Hellscapes