From RICHARD McKANE, poet & translator
I am, as a poet and Arc Translator, horrified at the prospect that Arts Council Funding may be withdrawn for Arc Publications. Arc published bilingually in their fine Visible Poets series 'Guests of Eternity' my translations from the Russian of Larissa Miller seen by some as in a direct line of descent from Anna Akhmatova, whom I had translated for Penguins and OUP over 40 years ago and for an entriely new expanded book in her anniversary year 1989 by Bloodaxe.
Many authors turn to Arc with their most valuable work. In my case Arc had accepted as a follow up to Larissa Miller 'Written in Prison. Twentieth Century. Russia.' An anthology which was the brainchild of Russian PEN. I note that English PEN, on which I am a member of the Writers in Prison Committee, has had their Arts Council Budget tripled.
Recently Ruth Christie and I (co-translators of Nazim Hikmet and Oktay Rifat both from Anvil, an earlier book of Oktay Rifat had come out from Rockingham Press) had sent a submission of the well-known lyrical and surrealistic Turkish poet Tugrul Tanyol. For us Arc was by now the natural choice, and indeed I had been preparing a whole litany of Russian poets to send to Arc.
It is impossible for me to not react forcefully to the withdrawing of funding for Arc, for I have fought with my poetry and translations so very many battles, risking at times as my friends at Arc and Larissa Miller (Arc had accepted a second book of hers) know my very sanity and I know what that means since I was Senior Interpreter at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture from Russian and Turkish for 18 years.
Please for the sake of poetry and human rights revise your decision and continue to fund Arc publications.