
Is this a Marmite book? Or maybe a sour-plum book, given the colour of the cover. My mum spent a large chunk of her childhood in Hong Kong, so she loves them, but they’re too strong for me. My mum…
I’m on the way home from Gdańsk, from the choral festival which my choir achieved silver in the equal-voice category yesterday – we are thrilled. For the competition we had to sing two songs in our own language and two…
New year. Will old rage fuel new hope? Why publish this poem again now? Thirst was translated by Clare Pollard in 2017, but Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf wrote it earlier. After more than two decades in the UK, she has…
The bookseller grinned broadly and actually looked me in the eye. Apparently it’s not often that people looking for books in English go straight for the Dutch literature. But how Dutch is this book anyway? It’s caught between two worlds:…
When you’ve lived away from home for a long time, home can be anywhere. If you move around a lot, the places of transit themselves, airports and train stations, can feel the most homelike of all. People may easily mistake…
Is a pomegranate a grenade-apple, a cluster of garnets, or a something else? Moshen Emadi has some ideas: Emadi’s Standing on Earth, translated from the Persian by Lyn Coffin, is a Phoneme Media production. I love this publisher for its windows on worlds…
After three days of the new year, how are your resolutions shaping up? There’s still time to make a new one, and join the Poetry Translation Centre in translating some amazing poetry from around the world. You can join the PTC…
This is one of the most beloved carols in the Nordic countries, but the tune is from Central Europe and it has travelled across the Atlantic in English translations. So why haven’t you heard of it yet? Maybe it’s because…