NAJWAN DARWISH
Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
When Spring Comes
I told you I saw the land being led to the slaughter.
These are nightmares, you said,
they’ll end when spring comes
to the door of your home.
Spring was running late, so late
that my nightmare became
the spring itself.
I can’t bring the land
down from on high,
and I don’t know who hung her there,
and all I can find is my own self
to take my vengeance on:
‘You were the one
who hung her…. You were the one’.
Convinced it hung the land, my self
refuses to wake
from the throes of remorse.
'A girl is a peculiar kind of instrument: the harder
you hit, the softer her voice. Her body shrinks.
See the fine bones slip into their cells,
see the backbone wilt, the hesitancy
in those cutesy legs.'
Ester Naomi Perquin, tr. David Colmer https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/care-advice/
The Garden Must Tend Me
By Abdullah O. Jimoh
Translated by the poet from Yoruba
Last week, I did not attend jumu’ah
because overthinking numbed my strength.
Today, I flush tablets of hope down my throat
with water and attend jumu’ah. I must not allow
the chain of the past tether me like an anchor
clasping a ship. I must rise up everyday with
daybreak in the garment of the sun. I must shine
to light up my dark world. I must burn the shrub
of my aches and play with the cinders. My worries
are feces, each time I visit the toilet, I flush them
down the closet. Henceforth, I will not be
the only one tending the garden, the garden must
tend me too. I deserve joy, warmth of sunlight,
and the coolness of water too. I deserve weeding
away my sorrows to let in fresh breeze into my
presence. I must make care scent in my ambience.
New issue alert! We are thrilled to share a first look at our forthcoming issue: MPT ‘Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care’.
🖼️ art by carer-artist Liliana Dmitrovic
Posting to subscribers early May 2024
'All Roads Lead to Rome’ captures the slippery nature of time: its relentless onward propulsion; its infinite circularity. Immersed in impermanence, we craft our own illusions of control—for better or for worse. Who has not heard the footfall of present-day gladiators ‘ready for blood’? Malta, like Rome, has seen its own millennia of change. Towers and traffic jams smother swathes of what was once fertile soil. Rome fell. What have we learned?
– From the introduction in MPT Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta
'The Wave' – Maria Grech Ganado, translated by the poet
https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-wave/
A number of times I’d set out to search
for the wave that sweeps us all away.
It was because of this I stripped you naked
then threw your clothes haphazardly
upon a rock with mine—
and on tiptoe under the moon
whispered to you between our kisses
of a salt door within the wave.
You pulled me close but waited in vain
and, feeling cold, you dressed and left
while I remained, licking the salt
around my mouth with a dry tongue,
still waiting for the wave
that sweeps us all away.
Cover reveal video! Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta
Cover illustration by Daniela 'iella' Attard. Subscribe from £29 https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/subscribe/
VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
A glitching illustration of line-drawn sparrows, emerging from wavy sea, similarly line drawn. Interspersed with these glitchy sparrows are frames of bold text, white on bright red background that spell out 'CALL THE SEA A POET FOCUS ON MALTA COMING SOON'
The video then pans out to reveal the full magazine cover against a background of the glitching sparrow illustrations.
The magazine is an illustration in black pencil, with a bright red background. The illustration shows a group of sparrows emerging from an endless sea, seemingly singing their song, while a traditional Maltese boat known as a Luzzu emerges from the waves. The sparrow in the foreground thinks about l-għajn, a motif seen on Luzzu intended to protect fishermen from harm.
COVER REVEAL VIDEO!
Our Focus on Vietnam Issue comes out this month, look out for it, and subscribe at https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/subscribe/
This video is of Tea Nguyen's fantastical cover, featuring a blue landscape of plants native to Vietnam, and a woman in a red áo dài resting on a giant leaf. Gentle music plays as close-ups of the cover turn into the cover reveal, with the text 'MEASURELESS MELODIES: FOCUS ON VIETNAM | Posting to subscribers mid-April 2023'. The next frame says 'Read the best of world poetry | Subscribe from £23', then 'MPT | Modern Poetry in Translation | The best of world poetry'.
Cover reveal!
We're very excited to share the first glimpse of MPT No.1 2022, THE FINGERS OF OUR SOUL: THE BODIES FOCUS
Guest edited by Khairani Barokka and Jamie Hale. Cover artwork: Priyanka D’Souza
Subscribe from £23 at www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
Did you know you can subscribe to the digital edition of MPT via Exact Editions? Access our digital archive wherever you are via your phone or laptop – and read issues going back decades!
https://www.exacteditions.com/mpt
(Thanks Exact Editions for producing this gif!)
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!
www.modernpoetryintranslation.com/submit
BODIES FOCUS: SPRING 2022
The focus of our Spring issue will be guest edited by Khairani Barokka and Jamie Hale. We would love to read new translations of work that engages with bodies, and the physical and social meanings of inhabiting them. Everyone is welcome to submit, but for this special issue, translators who identify as d/Deaf and/or disabled, and those translating work by d/Deaf and disabled people–encompassing various different terminologies in various languages–are particularly encouraged, especially from people of the majority world.
We are also keen to encourage work that engages with multisensorial, multimodal translation, work in signed languages and transliterated alphabets, and through translational methods including AAC and PECS.
Deadline: 13 December
Malika Booker: To Poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid (From a letter written to America in 2021, in April)
If No One Names us: Focus on Mexico
Read the best of world poetry. The latest issue of Modern Poetry in Translation focuses on Mexico and is out now: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com
'The sea often blows deep thoughts
Over those walking along the beach.'
Today we share the final scene from our digital feature on 'Pure Love...' as part of the #Norwid200 celebrations!
Read the short verse play in full, complete with bespoke animations on the MPT website! https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/pure-love-at-sea-side-bathing/
JULIA
(Biting her pen)
But I would at times carry over to my son
A light explosion of enthusiasm!…
OSMOND
(Suddenly)
Which could destroy the lad!
*
Our week-long focus on Norwid's #verseplay 'Pure Love at Sea-Side Bathing' continues! Read the full illustrated text of this verse play, translated by Adam Czerniawski: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/pure-love-at-sea-side-bathing/
'Pure Love is a comedy of manners set in seaside France, with ferry links to Dover and glimpses of industrialised Britain. As in Grande Dame, Poland is completely absent and this places Norwid apart from the other three masters. Norwid’s reliance on the implied and the half-said anticipates Maurice Maetelinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Henry James’s late novels.'
– From translator Adam Czerniawski's introduction to 'Pure Love at Sea-Side Bathing' by Cyprian Kamil Norwid.
Read the short verse play in full on the MPT website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/pure-love-at-sea-side-bathing/
*
To celebrate Norwid's 200th birthday, in partnership with @polish_culture we've published the illustrated text to the short verse play 'Pure Love at Sea-Side Bathing' in English over on our website!
This animated illustration is one of a series specially commission by Modern Poetry in Translation, created by by Emma Brierley: Temporary Commons, conceived & produced in partnership with Golden Hour Productions
#Poetry #poem #verseplay #polishculture #polishliterature #worldlit #animation #illustration
Day two on our animated feature for “Pure Love at Sea-Side Bathing”, Norwid translated by Adam Czerniawski!
Link: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/pure-love-at-sea-side-bathing/
*
SCENE II
Walter – Osmond – Servant
WALTER
Walking slowly from the sea
No, this would have been common,
Petty, mean and restricting.
Would be – let’s speak honestly – stupid,
If, when seeing one wonderful profile,
One were to imprison his feelings,
And turned others into a blurred background.
A medal may have several profiles,
Which cover each other like clouds
Silvered by the moon at the edges.
That doesn’t harm the landscape,
Rather adds life to nature.”
Read in full - see link in bio!
#Norwid #PolishLit #WorldLit #PureLove #animation #illustration #illustrationart #illustrator #poetry #verseplay
[Read the verse play in full on the MPT website – see link in bio!]
*
Pure Love at Sea-Side Bathing
CYPRIAN NORWID
Translated and introduced by Adam Czerniawski
*
SCENE I
Sea-shore in the distance, on one side, closer, a dairy in an arbour
Julia – Marta
JULIA
Truly, Osmond says justly
(His every word is reasonable)
That humans are ruled by coincidences.
For would I wish to leave
So many days with no reply?
Especially to a letter from lovely Auntie Ola,
Auntie Ola, whom I respect so much!
It’s easy knowing the time and place
Where and when you write letters,
Not knowing how and when they arrive.
If a year ago Auntie had sent me
An oddity like the one she looks after,
I would have found time to take up the request
– though it’s strange and almost frivolous –
But a few days before that day, the eve,
The letter arrived and I welcomed the deliverer,
Who brought Aunt Ola’s most intimate love.
I perform everything and yet I’m guilty
Of not yet replying to her letter.
And so I’m guilty for not finding a moment,
When such moments before tomorrow are vanishing.
So, I don’t remember when I last
Spoke to you.
*
#poetrytranslation #worldlit #Norwid200
Summer – Graciela Saralegui, translated by Laura Chalar
I Have Not Known a Grief Like This: Focus on Extinction