Visible Poets

"These poems come right up to the reader, go through his pockets, check the seams and hems of his personality, his essence, his baggage, amiably but determinedly shaking him down." "A very lyrical poet." Remco Ekkers. Introduction by Jeffrey Wainwright. Translated by Willem Groenewgen. This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.

It is no coincidence that the poet Volker von Törne was, for many years, the Director of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Action for Atonement – Service for Peace), the German charitable organisation for education and reparation in countries throughout the world that have suffered under fascism and other oppressive regimes. His father had been a member of the SS in Germany in the Second World War, and as a consequence, his poetry is written from the perspective of someone who suffered, through no fault of his own, from terrible guilt after the war. This selection from von Toerne's collected poems is particularly significant in that it is a powerful and moving articulation of the psychological burden still carried by countless people today whose voices are not often heard, a burden which von Toerne's powerful, poignant and sometimes angry poetry helps us all the better to understand.

These poems contemplate the poet's native land of Russia, while at the same time casting a jaundiced eye on the alien culture of America, where he spent the final years of his life. Whether absorbed by the world of literature (particularly his fellow poets) or relating real-life experiences, Loseff conjures up a restless, frequently disturbing universe, full of complex imagery, rich literary allusion and formal experiment. Lev Loseff was born in 1937, grew up in Leningrad and worked as a journalist in northern Sakhalin, and as a magazine editor and children's playwright. He emigrated to America in 1976, where he later taught Russian literature at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He died in the USA in 2009. G.S. Smith was Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford from 1986 to 2003. He translated the bilingual anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry (1993), and worked in collaboration with Lev Loseff for many years. This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.

Peatlands is the first bilingual single collection of Mexican poet Pedro Serrano's work to be published in the UK. Introduced by WN Herbert, the poems are as linguistically thrilling as they are wide-ranging: with subjects as diverse as snakes and swallows, valleys and skyscrapers, weariness and love. This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here. Pedro Serrano is the author of six poetry collections published between 1986 and 2009. He also co-edited the 2000 anthology The Lamb Generation, which brought together translations of 30 contemporary British poets. His poems have appeared in the likes of MPT, The Rialto and Verse, and in 2007 he was awarded a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship. He lives in Mexico City. Anna Crowe's other translations include Joan Margarit's collections Tugs in the Fog (2006; ISBN 9781852247515) and Strangely Happy (2011; ISBN 9781852248932), both published by Bloodaxe, and the Arc anthology Six Catalan Poets (2013; ISBN 9781906570606). She lives in St Andrews.