An anti-poet relentlessly, even ruthlessly determined to tell the truth, however painful it may be.--Edward Hirsch

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most prestigious and valuable literary awards. Since 2001 this annual prize has acted as a tremendous spur to interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidable talent of poets writing in English. The judges for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize are Heather McHugh, David O'Meara, and Fiona Sampson. And each year the editor of The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology gathers the work of the extraordinary poets shortlisted for the awards and introduces us to some of the finest poems in their collections. Royalties generated from The 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology will be donated to UNESCO's World Poetry Day, which was created to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard in their communities.

"An anti-poet relentlessly, even ruthlessly determined to tell the truth, however painful it may be."—Edward Hirsch Widely held to be the most influential Polish poet of a generation that includes Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, Tadeusz Rózewicz gives voice in the sharpest, most disturbing way to the crisis of values that has plagued our civilization. Joanna Trzeciak's new translation displays Rózewicz's supernatural simplicity, his stark diction and sudden turns. From "regression into the primordial soup" finally I too came into the world in the year 1921 and suddenly . . . atchoo! time passes I am old and forgot where I put my glasses I forgot there was history Caesar Hitler Mata Hari Stalin capitalism communism Einstein Picasso Al Capone Alka Seltzer Al Qaeda

An illuminating new study of modern Polish verse in performance, offering a major reassessment of the roles of poets and poetry in twentieth-century Polish culture. WhatÕs in a voice? Why record oneself reading a poem that also exists on paper? In recent decades, scholars have sought to answer these questions, giving due credit to the art of poetry performance in the anglophone world. Now Aleksandra Kremer trains a sharp ear on modern Polish poetry, assessing the rising importance of authorial sound recordings during the tumultuous twentieth century in Eastern Europe. Kremer traces the adoption by key Polish poets of performance practices intimately tied to new media. In Polish hands, tape recording became something different from what it had been in the West, shaped by its distinctive origins behind the Iron Curtain. The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry reconstructs the historical conditions, audio technologies, and personal motivations that informed poetic performances by such luminaries as Czes_aw Mi_osz, Wis_awa Szymborska, Aleksander Wat, Zbigniew Herbert, Miron Bia_oszewski, Anna Swir, and Tadeusz R—_ewicz. Through performances both public and private, prepared and improvised, professional and amateur, these poets tested the possibilities of the physical voice and introduced new poetic practices, reading styles, and genres to the Polish literary scene. Recording became, for these artists, a means of announcing their ambiguous place between worlds. KremerÕs is a work of criticism as well as recovery, deploying speech-analysis software to shed light on forgotten audio experimentsÑfrom poetic Òsound postcards,Ó to unusual home performances, to the final testaments of writer-performers. Collectively, their voices reveal new aesthetics of poetry reading and novel concepts of the poetic self.

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation provides an accessible, diverse and extensive overview of literary translation today. This next-generation volume brings together principles, case studies, precepts, histories and process knowledge from practitioners in sixteen different countries. Divided into four parts, the book covers many of literary translation’s most pressing concerns today, from teaching, to theorising, to translation techniques, to new tools and resources. Featuring genre studies, in which graphic novels, crime fiction, and ethnopoetry have pride of place alongside classics and sacred texts, The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation represents a vital resource for students and researchers of both translation studies and comparative literature.

A compelling biography of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski that takes readers to Paris in the Roaring Twenties, to the front lines during WWII, and into the late 20th-century art world. Józef Czapski (1896–1993) lived many lives during his ninety-six years. He was a student in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and a painter in Paris in the roaring twenties. As a Polish reserve officer fighting against the invading Nazis in the opening weeks of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. For reasons unknown to this day, he was one of the very few excluded from Stalin’s sanctioned massacres of Polish officers. He never returned to Poland after the war, but worked tirelessly in Paris to keep alive awareness of the plight of his homeland, overrun by totalitarian powers. Czapski was a towering public figure, but painting gave meaning to his life. Eric Karpeles, also a painter, reveals Czapski’s full complexity, pulling together all the threads of this remarkable life.