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Modern Poetry in Translation
@mptmagazine.bsky.social
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Ted Hughes' and Daniel Weissbort's international poetry translation magazine. Edited by Janani Ambikapathy.
modernpoetryintranslation.com
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OUT NOW!

The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus

Guest-edited by Jessica Sequeira

Featuring artwork by Phoebe Giannisi ('Aegis')

Buy this issue: buy.stripe.com/5kQeVedZOgRY...

See full contents: modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/the...
A brown goatskin on a pale background with handwritten black and red horizonal lines of poetry in Greek script. Some sections are upside down. There are also some red curving lines of Greek poetry which follow the ridges and edges of the goatskin which make it look like a map. The image spreads from the front to the back cover. A brown goatskin on a pale background with handwritten black and red horizonal lines of poetry in Greek script. Some sections are upside down. There are also some red curving lines of Greek poetry which follow the ridges and edges of the goatskin which make it look like a map. The image spreads from the front to the back cover.
December 1, 2025 at 12:18 PM
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Cover reveal! ✨

MPT ‘The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus’, guest edited by Jessica Sequeira, posts to subscribers and all pre-orders on 28 November.

Cover image: from the Aigis (goatskin, pen), 2015 by Phoebe Giannisi
November 18, 2025 at 9:18 AM
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Thanks to everyone who joined us at Poetry Library on Wednesday!

We had a full house celebrating 60 years of MPT with Richard Hollis, David and Helen Constantine, Sasha Dugdale, plus a video with Cristina Viti presenting selected poems from our online selection of poetry from Gaza.
October 31, 2025 at 9:16 AM
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The results of our collaboration with @youngpoetsnet.bsky.social are now available to read online!

ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/workshop/div...

Congratulations to Rucha Virmani with the winning poem 'December Heat' (written in response to 'And more' by Felícia Fuster, translated by Marialena Carr.)
August 22, 2025 at 10:48 AM
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OUT NOW!

MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature

With poems by Kenzaburō Ōe, Marina Tsvetaeva, Dalia Taha, Begoña Ugalde and many others.

Guest-edited by Jessica Sequeira

modernpoetryintranslation.com
The cover has a dark blue background with a paler blue image of low hills with flat grassland on the lower third of the page. On the right is a large white and pale-blue image of a long thin plant with five leaves and some small flowers at the top. It reaches about three-quarters of the way up the page, framing the cover. On the left is a similar sized pale blue-and-white image of bent grass, with some leaning towards the centre of the page as if blown by the wind. This image spreads onto the back page where there are also two smaller pale blue images of leaves. the back cover, featuring contributor names to this issue. AKAGI KOBAYASHI ◆ ALAA ALQAISI ◆ ALI AKKOUR ◆ ALI ASADOLLAHI ◆ ALTON MELVAR M. DAPANAS ◆ ANNA YIN ◆ ASHU LAL ◆ BEGOÑA UGALDE ◆ BILL COYLE ◆ CINDY A. VELASQUEZ ◆ CLAUDIA MAGLIANO ◆ DALIA TAHA ◆ DRAGO YURAC ◆ ELENA SALAMANCA ◆ ELLEN CORBETT ◆ EMI MIYAOKA ◆ ERIKA MIHÁLYCSA ◆ GABRIELA RUIVO ◆ GILLES MADAN ◆ GIZELLA HERVAY ◆ HÅKAN SANDELL ◆ HILARY BIRD ◆ JEANNINE MARIE PITAS ◆ JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL ◆ KENZABURŌ ŌE ◆ LAOIGHSEACH NÍ CHOISTEALBHA ◆ MAARJA PÄRTNA ◆ MAGDA SZÉKELY ◆ MARINA TSVETAEVA ◆ MEDIAH AHMED ◆ N.S. SIGOGO ◆ OTTILIE MULZET ◆ PIEDAD BONNETT ◆ RICHARD GWYN ◆ RIFAT ABBAS ◆ RYAN GREENE ◆ SAMPURNA CHATTARJI ◆ SANWAL GURMANI ◆ SARA ELKAMEL ◆ STEPHEN CAPUS ◆ STEPHEN WALSH ◆ SUBHRO BANDOPADHAY ◆ TAUQIR REZA ◆ YAN LI ◆ ZSUZSA BENEY ◆ ZSUZSA RAKOVSZKY ◆
August 22, 2025 at 10:09 AM
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Cover reveal!

Delighted to share the artwork for the August 2025 issue of MPT, Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of Nature, guest-edited by Jessica Sequeira. This issue will be posting out to subscribers at the end of this week!

Cover artwork by artwork by Estéfani Díaz Azúa
The cover has a dark blue background with a paler blue image of low hills with flat grassland on the lower third of the page. On the right is a large white and pale-blue image of a long thin plant with five leaves and some small flowers at the top. It reaches about three-quarters of the way up the page, framing the cover. On the left is a similar sized pale blue-and-white image of bent grass, with some leaning towards the centre of the page as if blown by the wind. This image spreads onto the back page where there are also two smaller pale blue images of leaves. Contributors names in white text over the predominantly dark blue background.
August 12, 2025 at 8:56 AM
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'I want to be magic kidnapped kisses: dusk’s latening voluptuousness unfurls the mango branches.'

M.P. Bonde, translated from Mozambican Portuguese by Beth Hickling-Moore

Now featuring audio of two poems 🔉

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/five-po...
July 28, 2025 at 10:23 AM
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We are now open for general submissions.

Submit translations of poems from any language into English.

Deadline: 15 August 2025. modernpoetryintranslation.submittable.com/submit/10070...
MPT logo and the text 'submissions now open'
July 15, 2025 at 10:29 AM
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Read this poem on our website here: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/good-mo...
all their farms only, they cannot mechanize the farms the war has ruined all the factories
June 3, 2025 at 7:59 AM
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Read this poem on our website here: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/good-mo...
are starving half-starving in order to rebuild all the factories the peasants must first start growing more food they can do this by mechanizing
June 3, 2025 at 7:59 AM
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good morning bandung (an exercise in deepchandi)

Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, translated from #Hindi by Aditya Bahl

From the latest MPT - Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations
the natives are winning but the war has ruined all the factories they cannot rebuild them the work ers in cities
June 3, 2025 at 7:59 AM
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Ana Cristina Cesar, translated from #Portuguese by Mónica De La Torre.

Published in the latest MPT: Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations

modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/clarice...

#Poetry #PoetryTranslation #Portuguese #PortuguresePoetry
Clarice, my dear: you’re all one and all of a piece you’re all round and all pointy you’re cubic and starry, transparent, opaque. Clarice, you’re a lost case (and a found one too) At times I’ll be thinking you’re a big-eyed and small-mouthed and sparsely wrinkled middle-aged lady And I’ll feel like going into a white cube of a shop To buy a mille-feuille, a tad too sweet Cover it in a wrapper with a thousand question marks Knock on your door And hand you the mille-feuille Being mindful that I can’t call you “you” And that every time I say “you” I ought to correct myself and say “Mrs.” Though in my thoughts it’s “you” And then I’d go over to Av. Atlântica and take a stroll on a humid afternoon And you (sorry) would be eating the mille-feuille sheet by sheet And after three days In your Jornal do Brasil chronicle Instead of a mention, barely an exhaustive PS: “I ate a mille-feuille, I’m foiled and exfoliated.”
May 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM
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Read more: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/from-ku...
More text. further heavily annotated – this time with many hand-drawn lines going between the written lines
May 29, 2025 at 1:19 PM
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'From Kuruntokai' – Vivek Narayanan

Published in MPT Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations
Politics’ Corpse Covered with the Morning Paper, annotated by hand, with phrases including 'the time of day is a failure. Translation is a failure. The bruise of midnight is a failure. Destroyedlike a salt merchant's wares in the rain. The rain that marched like bamboo in his stride. Time to scream AAAAAAAAA. The certainty of not being heard. To read authorship. What was the reason to read Auraiyar's name/ For what to read her name. you said.' But nb this transcription does not fully convey the overlaid sense of the original manuscript vs handwritten notes.
May 29, 2025 at 1:19 PM
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Find more poems by M.P. Bonde on our website: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/five-po...
Coloured Skirt Where does contentment dwell? From droplets of juice that runnel down the table I watch the smiling of children kissing the cusps of cups, the intimate gazes tearing open the walls along the street dancing to distant salty lachrymose skips, I hear sorrow silenced, teeth grinding with dark thoughts hiding sadness inside. I sing out of tune with the cloud rhythms shaping horses, the lights return tired from the asphalt, dulled by the seductive coloured skirt on the corner. 17:06 03.06.17
May 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
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M.P. Bonde, translated from Mozambican Portuguese by Beth Hickling-Moore

From the latest MPT, Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations.
Desire I want to be the portal, the open field on the brink of playing silences. It: can-open-air our quenched afternoons colluding. Mystery emerging in corporeal solitude. I want to be magic kidnapped kisses: dusk’s latening voluptuousness unfurls the mango branches. What walking lightness, raven-black, translucent, (…) winter sunset clutching your bedsheets 10:28 18.05.17
May 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
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Cover reveal! ✨

We are delighted to reveal the cover of the forthcoming issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, featuring cover art by Aisha Farr, and featuring Marcella Durand, Sawako Nakayasu, Dong Li, Vivek Narayanan and many others.
The back cover of MPT Presently Proximal Person, with contributor name sin blue against a halftone pattern of blue and red dots. Against a halftone pattern of blue and red dots is a land scape sketch of a scene resembling a construction site. There is a tall vertical structure in the centre that is smudged with brown. It is surrounded by grid like scaff olding coloured in blue. At the base of the tower are smaller structures like machinery. Below this is so shading in cyan blue, suggestive of water.
May 12, 2025 at 1:08 PM
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📣 Calling young poets – take part in a brand new challenge from Young Poets Network + MPT!

Our very own Marketing and Communications Assistant @chloelliott.bsky.social invites you to dive into the MPT archives to find inspiration for your own writing.

ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/workshop/div...
young poets network logo against a teal background
April 29, 2025 at 8:33 AM
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We've just corrected the HTML formatting of this beautiful and intense poem, published in MPT back in 2004.

Ziba Karbassi, 'Death by Stoning', translated by Stephen Watts from Farsi:
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/death-b...

Utterly astonishing piece of writing.
Death by Stoning Ziba Karbassi Translated from Farsi by Stephen Watts early morning star are you here with your star-gaze gone? little wren are you staying in the rocks when you go to the skies? tiny silver coin are you coming up heads when you collapse to tails? my always-greening pine is it winter when it's spring
April 28, 2025 at 2:36 PM
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Born in Seoul, South Korea, Don Mee Choi is the author of the KOR-US trilogy: Hardly War, DMZ Colony, and Mirror Nation. She’s currently based in Berlin.

Published in the UK by the brilliant @andotherstories.bsky.social
photograph portrait of don mee choi, against a pale white and blue background that is patterned with light blue silhouettes of people the front cover of phantom pain wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by don mee choi. it is a minimalist typographic design, black text against pale cream. the front cover of DMZ Colony by don mee choi. it is a minimalist typographic design, black text against pale cream.
April 25, 2025 at 10:02 AM
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Call for Submissions: Rhythms of the Land

Deadline: 15 May 2025

What is the music of the earth? How can poetry listen to the cycles and seasons of nature, the sounds of water and wind?

Featuring Guest Editor, Jessica Sequeira. Find out more: modernpoetryintranslation.com/call-for-sub...
blue grey lichens with a yellow leaf. Featuring text 'call for submissions: rhythms of the land'
April 22, 2025 at 5:19 PM
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'it is after all what humans and animals have in common
in which they’re a perfect match the will to live
and the bitter dying'

Dorothea Grünzweig, tr Derk Wynand
it is after all what humans and animals have in common in which they’re a perfect match the will to live and the bitter dying here they lie together on a layer of moss wilted leaves in the weteli woods shebear and hunter converging the bear riddled by bullets defending herself the hunter mauled here they lie look in mythical twosomeness if seen from afar both still alive clinging to life their breathing laboured eyes closed they smell bear moss bog myrtle pine needles raining down on them they hear the wind whisking the birches and rowan trees paired listening paired affliction blood seeps into the wound bed huntsmen call it sweat instead the hunter feels confident he’ll be rescued that god wishes him well the shebear has no idea what confidence is now and then sighs burst from her as if she were an accordion someone carelessly dropped images run through her mind she is stuck inside her burning body it slowly founders in a lake without foothold her legs no longer want to swim for her she sees bouquets of ants honeycombs ears of corn 1 ‘Wundbe ’ is a euphemism in the so-called ‘Jägersprache’ (hunters’ jargon) denoting the place where an animal wounded by a hunter lies. huckleberries an exposed elk senses maternal lairs her young burrowed into the fur in a wound bed they lie where the hunter’s hope is soon rewarded he hears human voices sees men with a stretcher he’ll be carried home and now their paths diverge man and shebear are sundered just when the bear dashes against the lake bottom her images smash into a splintered black later the bed will be greenwashed by rain it works wonders in the wound bed as though it had never been anything but just a cooling concavity in the veteli woods just a cradle a bed soft undefiled Wundbett’ or ‘Schweissbett’ (wound or sweat-bed) is a euphemism in ‘Jägersprache’ (hunters’ jargon) for the lair in which the bloodied animal lies. In an elaborate sustained metaphor in an essay in her selected poems, Sonnenorgeln (Solar Organs, 2011), Grünzweig likens the creative process to the aurora borealis, the ‘foxfire’ in the sky or heaven-sent foxfire that results when radiation from solar flares collides with the earth’s ionosphere. (The German Himmel means both ‘heaven’ and ‘sky’). Her poems often incorporate snatches of hymns, songs or free-form prayer much heard in the Pietist manse in which she grew up. ‘Ein rein sanft bettelein,’ the final italicised line of ‘wound bed…’, is from Martin Luther’s 1534 hymn, ‘Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her’ (‘From Heaven Above to Earth I Come’). For the Finno-Ugrian Mansi, an indigenous people, some of whose unique songs Grünzweig translated not long after she moved to Finland, the bear too is a sacred, ‘heaven-sent’ animal that comes from and returns to the sky. The guilt of killing the venerated animal because it menaces humans and cattle gave rise to extensive rituals and shaman’s songs. In an essay she recently wrote for her congregation in Helsinki, ‘All You Need Is Love’, Grünzweig makes a case for biocentric ethics, leaning away from man’s dominion over creation mentioned in Genesis and toward the more compassionate stances of Noah, St. Francis and Albert Schweizer. In her latest book Plötzlich alles da (All there in a flash), from which this poem is taken, ‘the pietà of poetry’ (piety, pity, compassion) serves as ars poetica. Here it captures the reverence with which the poet approaches the wounded shebear. By placing her in the same ‘cradle’ or ‘manger’, she heightens the radical difference in value of the ‘worthy’ hunter and ‘worthless’ bear. Dorothea Wynand, photographed seating, one hand on face, surrounded by woodland and dappled light. Image is in black and white.
April 15, 2025 at 2:30 PM
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'The night deep dark, in the small hours
an owl came hooting at the window.
It had rained and the streets echoed the wet.
Farther off, in the foliage of a tree
another hoot rose in reply.'

Josep Checa, translated by Ronald Puppo from #Catalan
Friday, three in the morning The night deep dark, in the small hours an owl came hooting at the window. It had rained and the streets echoed the wet. Farther off, in the foliage of a tree another hoot rose in reply. After a brief chat, the owl took wing flapping in silence the silence of the night. I recalled having lived in the woods some time ago, the sounds that had then brought me peace out by the ancient dreams of tall oaks. I lay awake waiting for the owls, till daybreak, or perhaps it was they who waited in the woods. Josep Checa, translated by Ronald Puppo from Catalan
April 11, 2025 at 8:00 AM
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'We
were the memory we have now. We
were this image. The idols of ourselves
in the submissive faith of afterward.'

Gabriel Ferrater, translated by Adrian Nathan West from #Catalan
Idols Then, when we lay embracing at the window open to the slope of olive trees (two seeds in one fruit split apart by summer, and filled with air) we had no memories. We were the memory we have now. We were this image. The idols of ourselves in the submissive faith of afterward. Gabriel Ferrater, translated by Adrian Nathan West from #Catalan
April 10, 2025 at 8:08 AM
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'Serenity
is time’s
contrary.

Treat this as if it were
fresh rosemary.'

Àxel Sanjosé, translated by Richard Dove from #Catalan
Time, they say… but it’s just the light that’s changing. Once we saw gulls: we imagined the sea. Once no gull: we imagined the sea. Serenity is time’s contrary. Treat this as if it were fresh rosemary. Àxel Sanjosé, translated by Richard Dove from Catalan
April 9, 2025 at 12:01 PM