Six Polish Poets is the second bilingual anthology of Polish poetry, published by Arc. It is also the fifth volume in the series ‘New Voices from Europe and Beyond’ which brings contemporary world poetry to the English-language readers. The book features a selection of poets who made their debuts in the past two decades; mostly, […]
Books
Mourid Barghouti, Midnight and Other Poems (Arc Publications)
Mourid Barghouti’s first full length collection to be published in the UK is a wonderful book, sprawling, elegiac and elegant. The translation from the Arabic by Barghouti’s wife, Radwa Ashour, is mellifluous and adept, full of lovely felicities in the English, which make the poems come alive in the language they were not written in. […]
Chris Woods, Dangerous Driving (Comma Press), reviewed by Lynne Taylor
This is the second collection from Chris Woods following Recovery. In Dangerous Driving, he continues to observe, looking inwards as well as out. In his pared-down style, Woods journeys using unassuming vocabulary. The reader is a happy passenger: has a feeling of being in the safe hands of someone who is confident of his vehicle […]
Anne Rouse, The Upshot: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books)
Anne Rouse’s The Upshot comprises poems from her first three books, presented in reverse order of publication. At the front of the book, there is a group of new poems that she has called ‘The Divided’. Rouse has always been a miniaturist; her poems seldom stray over the page, and this tendency has become more […]
Pierre Martory, The Landscapist trans. by John Ashbery (Carcanet Press) £12.95
There’s nothing but a book in a foreign language. Somebody read it and shut it on the table, Forgot it, went away. (‘Without Rhyme or Reason’) In the introduction to this collection of the translations he has been publishing since the mid-sixties, John Ashbery addresses the implied tragedy of this image: “And after I began […]
Elaine Feinstein, Talking to the Dead (Carcanet Press) £9.95
This latest collection from Elaine Feinstein exudes a strangely plaintive sense of calm, perhaps because the author largely eschews melodrama, self pity and regret, therefore avoiding many of the pitfalls less skilfull or experienced poets might stumble into. There is a precision to these poems, manifesting itself in an equilibrium of emotion and intellect. […]