
If some of these poems feel like song lyrics, that’s because they are. Pentti Saarikoski’s best-loved work was set to music for the sixties folk group, Muksut. You can watch their original videos in the national treasure trove that is…
If some of these poems feel like song lyrics, that’s because they are. Pentti Saarikoski’s best-loved work was set to music for the sixties folk group, Muksut. You can watch their original videos in the national treasure trove that is…
The last line of the refrain in the Welsh national anthem is O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau (“O may the old language endure” in W.S. Gwynn Williams’ translation). I remember learning it when I was about seven or eight;…
New year, fresh snow. Fresh snow, old words. I first came across Gwerful Mechain this time last year through her most famous poem of all, translated as ‘Ode to My Cunt’ by Zoë Brigley Thompson for Modern Poetry in Translation.…
A fellow queer Christian, from an utterly different context. Indonesian literature has been in the literary news since the country guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015. But now it gets personal: Sergius Seeks Bacchus. This slim…
A voice from Albania, somewhere I’ve never been, seems to know exactly what I’m thinking. This is all the more interesting as for a long time, the poet, Luljeta Lleshanaku, couldn’t go anywhere at all. Born in 1968, she grew…
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…
Lent starts next week, so what better time to get your hands on a book about sinners, in their infinite variety, and where they end up? The gates of Hell open onto what some might consider the worst of the…
I was in London over new year, and there was one place I had to go. The British Library to see the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition. It is stuffed with treasures, including some of the earliest works ever written and translated…
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…
It’s too warm. It should be colder – a lot colder. It’s unseasonable. It’s beautiful, delightful, but it all feels wrong. It’s just all a bit too much, not cosy enough, not delicate enough, perhaps? Things should be the same,…