At the Marylebone High Street Oxfam shop I snagged two great 2010 Arc Publications releases: Kunwar Narain’s No Other World (£10.99), translated by his son Apurva Narain, and Six Slovak Poets (£10.99), edited by Igor Hochel. Narain’s book is presented in bilingual Hindi-English, translated according to Walter Benjamin’s “words rather than sentences” approach in an effort to achieve transparency. Hochel’s anthology includes work by Ján Buzássy, Mila Haugová, Kamil Peteraj, Daniel Hevier, Peter Repka, and Ivan Štrpka, all born between 1935 and 1955. The entire volume is also presented in bilingual edition, translated by John Minahane. At Blackwell in Oxford I picked up Bloodaxe’s Ten New Poets: Spread the Word (£8.95), an anthology of Black and Asian poets edited by Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra, which features work by Denise Saul, Nick Makoha, and several others. The book includes a thin handful of poems by each poet, with a short critical introduction by highly recognized British poets, from George Szirtes to Michael Schmidt to Molossus interviewees Pascale Petit and Paul Farley. At the Southbank Foyles I purchased two Faber New Poets pamphlets, selected after reading short samples of the seven available, Faber New Poets 4 (£5), by Jack Underwood, and Faber New Poets 8 (£5), by Tom Warner. Both poets represent the best of the young British mainstream, an engagement or at least thorough reading of MFA America but with a decidedly English tone and wit. I look forward to first collections.
DS
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