The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation – shortlist announced

The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation – shortlist announced!

A chance to travel beyond British poetry

A shortlist of eight titles has just been announced for the Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation 2009. Selecting the shortlist was not an easy task. Elaine Feinstein, who judged this year’s prize alongside Stephen Romer, explains:
“The quality of submissions was remarkably high: a guided tour of classic poetry from many languages, countries and periods alongside poets altogether unknown to us. We decided our main criterion had to be bringing a new experience to an English reader.”
Fellow judge Stephen Romer was particularly excited by the translations of two strong women poets from Latin America: Gabriela Mistral and Dulce María Loynaz, who he said were “… unjustly neglected, even unknown in English, and now brought to us in all their passionate and classical austerity”.
This year’s submissions have exceeded past years with a total of 85 books entered from 24 countries. The shortlisted books are:
• Mad Women by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Randall Couch.
Spanish / Chile. (University of Chicago Press).
• Unfinished Ode to Mud by Francis Ponge, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic.
French / France. (CB Editions).
• Against Heaven by Dulce María Loynaz, translated by James O’Connor.
Spanish / Cuba. (Carcanet).

• Poems by Oktay Rifat, translated by Ruth Christie and Richard McKane.
Turkish / Turkey. (Anvil).
• Courts of Air and Earth, various, translated by Trevor Joyce. Middle and Early-Modern Irish / Ireland. (Shearsman Books).
• Birdsong on the Seabed by Elena Shvarts, translated by Sasha Dugdale. Russian / Russia. (Bloodaxe).
• Rime by Dante Alighieri, translated by JG Nichols and Anthony Mortimer. Italian / Italy. (OneWorld Classics).
• Selected Poems by CP Cavafy, translated by Avi Sharon. Greek / Greece. (Penguin Classics).
Organised by the Poetry Society and sponsored by the Ratiu Family Foundation, the prize is given biennially to a collection of poetry translated into English from another European language.
The strong shortlist shows the rude health of the British translation scene and provides the opportunity for the curious reader to take a journey beyond their own poetic horizons. “The shortlist is a chance to journey both inwards and outwards, both in the present moment and in those great poets from the past who can still quicken something in us today,” says Stephen Romer.
You can read the shortlist at http://tiny.cc/kDraR
The winner will be announced on the 19 November 2009 at the Ratiu Foundation, Manchester Square, 18 Fitzhardinge Street,
London W1H 6EQ.