Translations from other languages

Translated from Persian by W.N. Herbert, with the author. English only.

Published 2021. Paperback, 108pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848617704 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Alireza Abiz is a multi-award-winning Iranian poet, literary scholar, and translator. Born in South Khorasan, Iran in 1968, Abiz studied English Literature in Mashhad and Tehran universities and received his PhD in Creative Writing–Poetry from Newcastle University in the UK. Abiz has written extensively on Persian contemporary literature and culture. His scholarly book Censorship of Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Politics and Culture since 1979 was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury. He has so far published five collections of poetry in Persian, the latest of which (2017) 2017 was awarded the most prestigious independent poetry award in Iran, the Shamlou Award. His sixth collection The Desert Monitor will be published this year.

Translated from Dutch by Donald Gardner. Published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Published 2025. Paperback, 108pp, 9 x 6ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848619319

Maria Barnas’ witty and subversive poetry can be seen as a quest for an identity that always just eludes her: ‘The floors / are buckling and the windows and doors / show cracks. These are the hinges / of an existence I call my own.’ Nothing is what it seems for her and appearances are indeed just that — appearances. In another poem, she points out that, ‘The corner of an eye can contain many things’, and this could almost be taken as a mission statement. 

       Barnas is an artist and critic as well as a poet. In her poetry she asks how adequate language is to grasp what we see. Is one’s native language a ‘home’? How reliable is it and is it equal to the task of representing reality, above all the reality of our interaction with each other, that is undermined by ambiguity, personal history, as well as the secret passages of Freudianism. This enquiry comes to a peak in her most recent collection, Diamond without r, in which she investigates her Polish roots as well as her adolescent years spent in Swindon. Polish words and scenes are held up to the prism of her lines, and there are also fragments of English, which may comprise flashbacks of her English experience. 

       For the reader this poetry has an unstable character; it expresses an urgency to belong as well as a sense of rejection, a desire sometimes to say two, contradictory things at once. It is at times quizzical, defiant and mocking.

Translated from Italian by Peter Robinson

Published 2022. Paperback, 186pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848617988 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Pietro De Marchi was born in Seregno, Milan, in 1958, and has lived and worked for much of his life in Zurich. A widely published critic and editor of scholarly editions, he is the author of two volumes of imaginative prose and three extensive collections of poetry, from which Reports after the Fire: Selected Poems generously draws, adding a section of uncollected work. The two key poles of De Marchi’s life place him firmly within the tradition of the so-called Lombard Line, including poets such as Vittorio Sereni and Luciano Erba, whose work is characterised by an acute attention to their immediate surroundings, settings evoked with strong affective bonds and acutely turned historical ironies. De Marchi has affinities, too, with Giorgio Orelli and Fabio Pusterla, poets from the Italian-speaking area of southern Switzerland who share aesthetic principles with their Milanese allies. The poems translated in Reports after the Fire are distinguished by a clear-focused attention to the lives of others, especially children, to the intersections of language and identity, location and sensibility, clarifying and sharing experiences of displacement and survival which De Marchi evokes with a finely tuned ear for idiom, allusion and cadence, poems in which, as Giorgio Orelli put it, ‘the soul seems to expand into all that we look at and are looked at by, in a sort of strange holiday.’

 —Fiona Sampson

Translated from Bulgarian by Jonathan Dunne

Published 2023. Paperback, 110pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £12.95 / $20. English only.

ISBN 9781848619005 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

"These miraculous poems of everyday matter magnified by forty reveal our world in all its pristine glory – reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s household odes, but stranger. Her sketches of waterfalls are extraordinary, as if we are witnessing the birth of water and every inch hallucinatory. Her magnifying eye probes the roots of matter and spirit, where they intertwine and dance with light. Tsvetanka Elenkova has a mystic’s eye, an inventive vision honed with surgical precision." —Pascale Petit

"In Magnification Forty, Tsvetanka Elenkova turns her piercing poetic intelligence upon the small things of the world. She lifts them up to us in all their revelatory and spiritual power. Elenkova is a visionary, who makes quietness speak and who reminds us that the miracle of embodiment is realised not only in the exceptional but in what’s humble and quotidian. This deeply mindful book is a call for us to pay attention to what we experience. It’s also a masterclass in the lucid and economical poetics that have made Elenkova into a leading European poet." —Fiona Sampson

Published 2012. Paperback, 130pp, 9x6ins, £12.95 / $20. English only.

ISBN 9781848612617 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]



At the End of the World: Contemporary Poetry from Bulgaria is an anthology of seventeen Bulgarian poets writing and publishing from the middle of the twentieth century to today. Rather than being a collection of emblematic poems, it is a thematic book which reflects the searching and original, distinctive styles of contemporary Bulgarian poetry, itself reminiscent of the city and landscape.

Translated from Italian by Sarah Stickney.

Published January 2025. Paperback, 196pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23. English only.

ISBN 9781848619616

This volume offers a translation of a large proportion of the author's recent huge selected volume in Italy. Restricted to the English versions in order to save the book from a vast page-count, it offers readers a superb over-view of a lifetime's creativity in Italian, and Albanian — for some of the work began life in the author's native language, before his exile in Italy.

“Gëzim Hajdari’s generous literary, scholarly, and editorial work extends across different countries and languages. Resistance, commitment, social justice, freedom, courage, and solidarity are at the centre of his research. In his own words, ‘Good poetry is an act of life and of ethics. A great life means great poetry.’ An already established poet in Albania, after moving to Italy, the author went through a patient, painful, and empowering reconstruction of his unique poetic voice, which has since developed as translingual Albanian-Italian.

 This edition represents the first English translation of Hajdari’s Poesie scelte, masterfully carried out by Sarah Stickney, who reconstructs the sense of subjectivity and history that is foundational to Hajdari’s poetic career. This book as such presents Anglophone readerships not only with a masterpiece of translingual poetry but also with what I have previously defined as Hajdari’s first self-anthology, that is, a retrospective collection and reorganisation—constructed by the author himself—of a substantial part of his published poetic work, here meticulously re-read and re-interpreted.’’—Alice Loda

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, translating Najwan Darwish

Don Mee Choi, translating Kim Hyesoon

Sasha Dugdale, translating Maria Stepanova

Daniel Eltringham, translating Ana María Rodas

Forrest Gander, translating Coral Bracho

Johannes Göransson, translating Kristina Olsson

Katherine M. Hedeen, translating Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

Meena Kandasamy, translating Thiruvalluvar

Ghazal Mosadeq, translating Akhavan Sales

Erín Moure, translating Chus Pato

Zoë Skoulding, translating Fred Forte

Stephen Watts, translating Ziba Karbassi

Published 2011. Paperback, 114pp, 9x6ins, £10.95. A FEW COIIES STILL AVAILABLE FROM THE PRESS.

ISBN 9781848611344. OUT OF PRINT.



A companion volume to Michael Smith's Maldon & Other Translations (2004), this volume collects his translations from Greek, Latin, Irish and Andalusian Arabic.

Published 2019. Chapbook, 32pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848616530 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Maldon is a version of the Anglo-Saxon epic fragment usually known as The Battle of Maldon , which tells the tale of a battle between the Anglo-Saxons and the invading Vikings which took place ca. 991 AD on the shores of the River Blackwater, almost certainly opposite Northey Island.

"Smith’s version [of Maldon ] preserves nicely a ghost of the alliterative pattern that rumbles through the original, without trying to reproduce it fully in a clog-dance of consonants. It is recognisably the same poem as the original: it has its linguistic density and compelling narrative pull, but it is free from the mildewed quaintness that sometimes hangs around translation from Old English.” —Dr. Alex Davis, U.C. Cork

Published 2015. Paperback, 240pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23 

ISBN 9781848614338 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The poems translated here were, with one or two possible exceptions, written between the 7th and 12th centuries AD, making them the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe. Latin, which arrived with Christianity in the 5th century and brought a script, was the only other language in play, although there are occasional loanwords from Norse and other tongues.

     Scholars can roughly assign the poems to centuries, on the basis of changes in syntax and word forms, but many that were written earlier exist only in later manuscripts. Dating is thus hazardous, and nor do we usually know the author. It is likely that one was written by a druid, six by women and rather more by professional bards; the remainder are probably by clerics or scribes.

Translated from Croatian by Richard Berengarten and Dasa Maric. English only.

Published 2013. Chapbook, 36pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848613164 [Download a sample PDF from this book here (Translations only).]

Tin Ujevic (1891-1955) is regarded in his native Croatia with the same kind of popular affection and respect as Robert Burns in Scotland. His poems appeal to people of all ages and conditions. Under their deceptively simple surfaces lie deep linguistic sonorities and emotional resonances. Born in Dalmatia, Tin lived in Belgrade, Mostar, Sarejevo, Split, Zagreb and Paris. A natural Bohemian, he was always poor. Tin's writings have hardly been translated into English. These versions not only render the meanings of the originals, but also respect their musicality and form. For the first time, they make one of the great lyric poets of the twentieth century available in English.

Published 2023. Paperback, 420pp, 9 x 6ins, £19.95 / $32.50

ISBN 9781848618992 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

We issued the first half of David Hadbawnik's remarkable modern version of the Aeneid in 2015, and followed that with the second half in 2021. Both of those editions were fully illustrated. We now offer a more affordable package, with the entire text between one set of covers, but without the illustrations.

“…Hadbawnik’s ironic wit brings Virgil’s text to life for a contemporary readership even more impatient than its historic counterpart with the potential longueurs of traditional epic. [… his] version is fresh, irreverent, and radical.
      […] In sum, this is a startling and stimulating version of Virgil’s great epic for a twenty-first century readership which will engage student attention and has some interest for Translation Studies. Its lively irreverence reflects the way in which classical reception now (at last) feels able to tackle one of the central texts of Latin and European literature with up-to-date brio and gusto. Its in-your-face tactics will surely bring new readers and enthusiasts to the Aeneid, and has something to say to old ones too.” —Stephen Harrison, Translation and Literature

Published 2015. Paperback, 218pp, 9.25 x 7.5ins, £14.95 / $23. English only. NOW WITHDRAWN. SOME COPIES AVAILABLE.

ISBN 9781848614284 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

With illustrations by Carrie Kaser.

David Hadbawnik’s astonishing modern translation of the Aeneid has been appearing in excerpts in a number of US publications, but this is the first time that a sizeable group of them has been bought together. This handsome volume presents Hadbawnik’s version of the first half of Virgil’s great national epic, with atmospheric illustrations from Carrie Kaser.

Published 2021. Hardcover, 368pp, 9.21 x 6.14ins, £35 / $52.50. English only.

ISBN 9781848617636 [Download a sample PDF from the paperback version  here .]

With over 70 full-colour illustrations by Omar Al-Nakib.
This is the hardcover version of a book also available in paperback with grayscale images. See below.

The first six books of David Hadbawnik’s astonishing modern translation of the Aeneid appeared from Shearsman Books in 2015. He now brings the whole project to a spectacular conclusion in a volume accompanied by Omar Al-Nakib’s dramatic abstract illustrations. 

“Few narrative poems have possessed the Western imagination like Virgil’s twelve-book epic written during Augustus’s triumphant consolidation of the Roman Empire. […] This new volume goes a long way toward moving the narrative into the hands of contemporary readers, drawing out a playful understanding of the ancient story while exhibiting modern preferences for poetic interaction and inquiry into the history and terms of poetic form and translation. Hadbawnik shows the fun to be had in language’s etymological resonance, and he delights in scenes of dramatic fulfillment and failure. His translation distills the essence of the narrative by directing a reader’s perception of the tale." —from Dale Martin Smith's Introduction.

Published 2021. Paperback, 368pp, 9.21 x 6.14ins, £17.95 / $29.95. English only. NOW WITHDRAWN. SOME COPIES AVAILABLE.

ISBN 9781848617803 [Download a sample PDF here .]

With over 70  grayscale  illustrations by Omar Al-Nakib. 
This is the  paperback  version of a book also available in hardcover and in full-colour. See above.

The first six books of David Hadbawnik’s astonishing modern translation of the Aeneid appeared from Shearsman Books in 2015. He now brings the whole project to a spectacular conclusion in a volume accompanied by Omar Al-Nakib’s dramatic abstract illustrations. 

“Few narrative poems have possessed the Western imagination like Virgil’s twelve-book epic written during Augustus’s triumphant consolidation of the Roman Empire. […] This new volume goes a long way toward moving the narrative into the hands of contemporary readers, drawing out a playful understanding of the ancient story while exhibiting modern preferences for poetic interaction and inquiry into the history and terms of poetic form and translation. Hadbawnik shows the fun to be had in language’s etymological resonance, and he delights in scenes of dramatic fulfillment and failure. His translation distills the essence of the narrative by directing a reader’s perception of the tale." —from Dale Martin Smith's Introduction.

Translated from Dutch by Judith Wilkinson. Bilingual volume.

Published 2020. Paperback, 134pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848616615 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Menno Wigman (1966–2018) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Netherlands, with many awards to his name, and his early death sent shock-waves through the Dutch literary world. His work has been placed in the tradition of European Romanticism. At times echoing Baudelaire, and equally preoccupied with the darker sides of urban life, Wigman has been called the dandy of disillusion. But his poems are never indulgent and tend to move from doubt to recommitment, from ironic detachment to passionate engagement. His work is stormy, full of tension, scathing one moment and tender the next, with an uncompromising self-scrutiny implicit in the undertaking. He offers us poetry as ‘divine trauma’: a raw lyricism that refuses any easy coming to terms. Now that his work is increasingly appearing in translation, Wigman is beginning to be recognised as an important voice in European poetry.