From CHRISTOPHER PILLING, poet and translator
I am protesting about the drastic cutting of the Arts Council grant for Arc Publications. Not only are they a lively and energetic publisher of poetry in the North of England and how many are there of those? but what is more, they are surely almost alone in publishing many translations of merit of significant European poets and beyond. Their publications are really international, and without their contribution our poetry world will be much narrower, largely homegrown and often parochial. And the knowledge that we recognize that there are poets of value abroad can only increase our entente cordiale with countries with other languages.
I feel privileged to have been chosen for one of the translations in question with Defying Fate, my translation of Défier le Destin by the Belgian poet Maurice Carême after a selection of this was runner-up in the John Dryden Translation Prize competition.
Please review your decision about ARC Publications.
Where do I go with my next translation? Flambard did my last one, Springing from Catullus in 2009, after a large selection from it had won the John Dryden Translation Prize (sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literature Translation) in 2006. But Flambard have been axed as well. Another Northern casualty!
I mention my other translations to show that, although my work has been highly praised and chosen or short-listed for several awards, possibilities for future publication have more or less disappeared with these cuts.
My previous translations were from Flambard (Love at the Full a complete translation of Plein Amour by Lucien Becker, the Poetry Book Society recommended translation for Autumn 2004 (The PBS is another casualty) & short-listed for the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry translation 2005.
The Dice Cup, my translation (with David Kennedy) of Max Jacob’s Le Cornet à dés (shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2001) was with Atlas Press whose range of possible authors is quite limited and their publications are rare..
And Peterloo Poets (who have collapsed) who published These Jaundiced Loves, my complete translation of Tristan Corbière’s Les Amours Jaunes (1995) which was a Sunday Telegraph & BBC World Service Book of the Year.