“M.’s story, a book for today, speaks eloquently to our own experience, as great literature is supposed to do.”
Kevin M. F. Platt reviews Maria Stepanova’s “intriguing short novel, written in lyrical, magnificently translated prose."
worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/march/d...
Delighted that our very own Sarah Hesketh is leading this course at @poetryschool.bsky.social!
'Transreading Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine at 60'
Find out more:
poetryschool.com/courses/tran...
Would you like to stay and write in a global literary hub? Here are the latest opportunities:
1. Residency in Lyon for French-language poetry (dl 28 Feb)
2. Korean–English translation residency in Norwich (dl 9 March)
3. Norwich–Jakarta circular residency (dl 31 March)
buff.ly/vziVRSz
This sold out over the weekend, BUT we do have a few returns – so the last handful of tickets are now available.
If you're in or near Oxford, we do hope you'll join us for this special lecture with Jeffrey Yang!
This sold out over the weekend, BUT we do have a few returns – so the last handful of tickets are now available.
If you're in or near Oxford, we do hope you'll join us for this special lecture with Jeffrey Yang!
The poem is now available to read for free on our website, to make a month since his arrest.
Please do read and share, and help us raise awareness with the international literary community.
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/i-used-...
A month has passed since the arrest of Ali Asadollahi in Iran, following nationwide protests.
A steadfast voice for freedom and justice, we published his poem, 'I Used to Dream, I Used to Be Safe,' in MPT 'Rhythms of the Land'.
Only 10 tickets remaining now...
Due to popular demand we’ve released 25 additional places for our previously sold-out 60th anniversary lecture with Jeffrey Yang.
Find out more and book your free place via Eventbrite.
We hope to see you in Oxford in a few weeks' time!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mpt-60th-a...
Due to popular demand we’ve released 25 additional places for our previously sold-out 60th anniversary lecture with Jeffrey Yang.
Find out more and book your free place via Eventbrite.
We hope to see you in Oxford in a few weeks' time!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mpt-60th-a...
ICYMI!
You can now re-watch our December online launch for The Antidote to Agony over on YouTube:
youtu.be/sXppBjX57BI?...
Featuring issue contributors Phoebe Giannisi, Brian Sneeden, Dimitra Kotoula and Maria Nazos, chaired by issue editor Jessica Sequeira
Our latest 'From the Archive' piece is now live – chosen by Will Stone
From ‘After Nature’ by WG Sebald, translated from German by Michael Hamburger
modernpoetryintranslation.com/from-the-arc...
We are alarmed to learn that the poet Ali Asadollahi, who featured in recent editions of MPT, has been violently arrested from his home by security forces in Iran.
Please join his supporters in raising awareness.
www.en-hrana.org/ali-asadolla...
We are alarmed to learn that the poet Ali Asadollahi, who featured in recent editions of MPT, has been violently arrested from his home by security forces in Iran.
Please join his supporters in raising awareness.
www.en-hrana.org/ali-asadolla...
Ugh no
Read this poem, and listen to a recording of the poem in English and Greek, on the MPT website: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/i-will-...
I I will not repeat Phryni by stripping myself bare before You — — — — I confess that I possess the Memory that I am descended from a generation of poets The sea buzzes, Homer’s sea foams with an anger—that I inherit—I do not assuage it — nor do I incite it but I let it carry me away: a ravishing and ruthless death I have O Horror of an immoral destiny whose weight I bear on my transparent and anaemic back without promise—nor expectation of light blue horizons— Memory moves through me like a woman in black shouting and cursing: A curse, a curse on Beauty which sucks me up and lightens blue my Black hair fills it with suns that reap and burn me Sickles reap me and I shriek.
My Orphic song that you annihilated and sweetened, You, the ignorant of Proper Sound. The light blue crystals cut me and I deform. II My Eurydical face you redeem with counterfeit gold You, the ignorant of Beauty, my Traders You bought out my Happiness My Hellenic Memory and abandoned me to my fate of traversing and circling like a bird—a Free bird. Who among You will defend, who will kill my Freedom? Who ever killed the Human? the Human I embody the Human of mourning I’m enamoured with her, I surrender to her, I birth her the Earthquakes—my poems— I love her the human that gestates within me, I love—
'I will not repeat Phryni…'
Iliassa Sequin
Translated from Greek by Calliope Michail
From our (now sold-out) issue: The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus
Now SOLD OUT! ❤️
❤️
D'oh!
This should say Thursday 11th December.
Join us!
Reminder!
Online Launch: Thurs 12 Dec
Join us to celebrate the latest issue of MPT, The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus
With Phoebe Giannisi, Brian Sneeden, Dimitra Kotoula, Maria Nazos, chaired by issue editor Jessica Sequeira.
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launching-...
Read & listen on the MPT website:
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/polysyl...
I don’t like polysyllabic words. Railroads originating in the larynx and terminating at the lips, a rolling stock of phonemes tearing up tonsils. Tongue-cutting wire mesh, tongue twisters slurping up vowel after vowel, housing complexes blocking airways. I don’t like polysyllabic words. It’s hard to fit them into my poems, they ooze out of verses, flattening feet. They trip on the tip of my tongue when Ι mumble them, hobbling out of my mouth.
The longest word in the Greek language dates back to antiquity and appears in Aristophanes’s Ekklesiazousai: raysharkskullbitmixlaserwortcrayfishhoneydrizzlethrushblackbirddove- pigeonroastedroosterheadwagtailrockdoveharesyrupcrispywingplatter. In the sixth century AD, Dioscorus of Aphrodito gave us this thirty- eight-letter mouthful: worthybeastlybirdystarlightcosmication. In the thirteenth century AD, John Apokaukos called someone a calculospiriteconomist. The following two words were passed down to us from the ecclesiastical tradition of Byzantium: panhyperprotohonoromagnificent and photoluminoselenophosphorific. I don’t like polysyllabic words. This is the polysyllabic word I like the least: thegreekstate.
Polysyllabic Words by Jazra Khaleed
Translated from Greek by Jason Rigas
Featured in the latest MPT: The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus
Call for applications!
Poet-in-Residence
Villa Waldberta / Lyrik Kabinett, Munich
Applications open until 20th January 2026
www.lyrik-kabinett.de/aktuelles/ne...
The sea’s remorse surfaces every time the waves appear. Not the wild, raging, frightening waves but the other kind sweet and soothing, like lullabies. Ripples of fluid sorrow, tides of guilt and regret. Not for those who were lost in its dark waters nor for those left behind waiting. But for those who remained shipwrecked on land stranded and drowning, living their lives without ever attempting a journey.
'The sea’s remorse
surfaces every time the waves appear.
Not the wild, raging, frightening waves
but the other kind
sweet and soothing, like lullabies.'
*
– The sea’s remorse
Argyris Stavropoulos
Translated from Greek by Gigi Papoulias
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-sea...
Transhumance I Phoebe Giannisi Translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden for Eleonora and Dimitri It was I who sent my treasure by my own free will silently I step upon the earth i. In the beginning was the grazing the pasture, sections of earth gathered extended suffused from rain and the elements eaten by footsteps, the cursive of animals and humans echoing the valleys, streams, and summits beyond brought back voices.
In the beginning was the field. To move out I had to gather. I had to cull the things. The things, the animals, the things, the things. iii. — What do you carry on you when you leave? — My dark. My own piece of dark. — What do you carry when you leave? — The markings on the body. — What do you carry when you leave? — My spell: Forgot –tenacts –forgot –tenwords fragme –ntsof –theform –erlife tokeep –ascharm –tokeep –asnew –redcru –cifix. iv. — To move on I had to cull the things, the fragments my children left behind before leaving me to begin their own lives
v. — Kiatra kraapa omlou nou kriapa (A stone breaks, a man does not break.) vi. — Still the fragments are glass pressed deep under skin traveling in the flesh choosing their own paths, one ascends to the heart, another pierces your abdomen. — What does God cast down that the earth does not swallow? — Wound through and through. I spit it from my mouth like a bitter seed but not a single teardrop touched my cheek, why I had for years now clenched my teeth.
— You cannot eat a stone, mother says instead of you cannot escape your fate. — In order to leave I had to cull the things. That agony lasted months. An entire winter. Heavy and dark, stripping layer by layer the vessels of memory. But what hurt most was what had, for so long, slipped between my fingers like air. What had been forgotten. The missing. What had not happened. — Λεῦσσε δ’ ὅμως ἀπεόντα νόῳ παρεόντα βεβαίως Parmenides says: but see with your mind those who are missing, as if they were present.
'In the beginning was the grazing
the pasture, sections of earth gathered extended
suffused from rain and the elements
eaten
by footsteps, the cursive of animals and humans
echoing'
Phoebe Giannisi, tr Brian Sneeden
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/transhu...
· ‘My name is Odysseas’ he said but no one ever gives their real name. ‘You’re handsome’ he said. He seemed like a well-brought-up boy. When he undressed, his body was unexpectedly beautiful – it didn’t resemble a porn model’s photograph not stacked, perfumed, ready. He wore a pair of nondescript briefs and gave off a faint trace of sweat.
‘How nice, Odysseas—or whatever your name is’ I told him ‘you could be real, a real human someone could hold or fall in love with you one could imagine you writing poems — how difficult these hookups would be then how rare and how colourless.’ ‘You guessed right, I write poems too’ he replied ‘but my name really is Odysseas and I do really want you. Don’t leave, don’t leave me please I want so much to fall in love.’
‘My name is Odysseas’ he said
but no one ever gives their real name.
‘You’re handsome’ he said.
He seemed like a well-brought-up boy.
'Names'
George Le Nonce, translated from Greek by Kostya Tsolakis
modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/names/
Out now!
MPT The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus, guest edited by Jessica Sequeira, features 30 selections of poems translated into English by contemporary poets, expanding the linguistic boundaries of Modern Greek, Bulgarian and Arvanitika, and more.
Brilliant to get @mptmagazine.bsky.social’s latest issue focusing on the poetry of Greece and Cyprus. Since its foundation in the mid-1960s by Ted Hughes & Daniel Weissbort, MPT has been hugely important in bringing Greek poetic voices to an English-speaking readership. Great that this continues.
