Nicolas Bouvier

Thierry Vernet

Robyn Marsack

Reborn from the ashes of a Pakistani rubbish heap, 'The Way of the World' tells of a friendship between a writer and an artist, forged on an impecunious, life-enhancing journey from Serbia to Afghanistan in the 1950s.

The Way of the World

A wonderfully even insisting on, the reader's participation in the interpretive enterprise. Keyed to the Collected poems, published by Faber and Faber (London, 1981). Distributed by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Sylvia Plath

Peter France

Mikhail Lermontov

Bursting into print with an impassioned poem on the death of Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov attracted unfavorable attention from the authorities while enjoying a high reputation in literary circles and beyond. He was of Scottish descent, and this bilingual volume celebrates him with new translations by 14 translator-poets, mostly Scottish. Although Lermontov declared in one poem that he was “not Byron,” he was greatly influenced by his reading of Byron and of Walter Scott. Having served in the Caucasus and taken part in dangerous engagements against the Chechens, like Pushkin he died in a duel of dubious legality. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Mikhail Lermontov's birth, this book celebrates and showcases not only a great Russian writer, but also his Scottish heritage and the wealth of talent among the poets and translators of the United Kingdom and beyond.

Translations for the Bicentenary

After Lermontov

Iain Galbraith

This anthology brings together the work of nineteen poets from a dozen different countries, with translations from at least seven languages, to provide a rich mix of contemporary voices. Here you can move from the Australian desert to an English coal mine, from the interior world of Grace Darling to the mythic world of the Ramayana, from earthquakes in New Zealand to gardens in France. A common thread is migration, in many senses; another is the beguilements and betrayals of memory. The poets' own reflections on their writing provide insight into the cultural and personal contexts of work that expands the vocabulary of poetry in English.

An Anthology

Oxford Poets 2013

Fifty Fifty

A Book of the Year 2019 in The Morning Star. This is a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a small, ambitious press over a period of radical transformation in publishing. Each of Carcanet's fifty years is marked by an exchange of letters - handwritten, typed, and now emailed - between an author and the editor. Beginning in 1969 with the response to an invitation to subscribe to Carcanet for two guineas, the book traces Carcanet's progress and offers insight into the nature of literary editing. At its heart is the personal relationship of author and editor/publisher, the conflicts, friendships and vicissitudes that occur at the nexus between the work, its creator, publisher and reader. Poets are central, but fiction writers, translators, biographers and critics also contribute to the Carcanet ferment and firmament. Fifty Fifty celebrates the writers', readers' and editor's risks, passions and pleasures.

Robyn Marsack

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