For those who like their poetry translated, and missed this last week – the shortlist for the Popescu prize was announced last Friday. The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translated from a European Language into English, to give it its proper (and marvellously baroque) handle, has been going since 1983, is awarded biennially, and has been won in the past by the likes of Tony Harrison and David Constantine, so is worth paying attention to.
It also seems to me to be cause for celebration that this prize is awarded to the translator, rather than the poet (although of course the two things are intimately bound together). Ever since RS Thomas described reading a poem in translation as "like kissing through a handkerchief" (and probably long before that), poetry translators have received a raw deal, both financially and in terms of respect. Back in 2007, James Buchan caused a stramash in the Guardian's Review pages when he questioned the value of translating poetry at all. The case was ably answered by our own Carol Rumens ("Poetry in translation simply adds to the sum total of human pleasure obtainable through a single language") but the argument was symptomatic of the faint suspicion in which the discipline is held. Being of Carol's mind, myself, I'm always cheered when the Popescu prize rolls around.
Anyway, here's the 2011 shortlist, selected this year by the estimable duo of Sasha Dugdale and Jane Draycott:
• Ramsey Nasr, Heavenly Life (Banipal Books) translated by David Colmer
• Harry Martinson, Chickweed Wintergreen (Bloodaxe) translated by Robin Fulton
• Ikinci Yeni, The Turkish Avant-Garde (Shearsman Books) translated and edited by George Messo
• Into the Deep Street: Seven Modern French Poets (Anvil), translated by Jennie Feldman and Stephen Romer
• Toon Tellegen, Raptors (Carcanet) translated by Judith Wilkinson
• Mircea Ivanescu, Lines Poems Poetry (University of Plymouth Press) translated by Adam J Sorkin and Lydia Vianu
You can read more about it on the Poetry Society's website, and the winner will be announced at the Aldeburgh Poetry festival later this autumn.
