An Invitation to the Butterfly’s Ball

Very pleased to announce I have a deal to write a nonfiction title for adults about picture books for Fig Tree – the stories behind our childhood stories… Featuring nonsense, Flower fairies, the Mr Men, Babars suits, the invention of flapbooks, Miffy’s virgin birth, thumb sucking, roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce, nazism, matchgirls, chinese burns, poo, the naming of pets, tragic affairs, ‘That’s not my Princess’, Dogger, wraggle-taggle gypsies, my father’s psychic abilities, wild rumpuses, universequakes, nudity, the mum in ‘the Tiger who Came to Tea’ and forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree.

Thanks to Jenny Hewson who is now representing me at RCW.

Santa is getting Cate a lot of books this year. And if you see me over the festive season I’ll be talking excitedly about why ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ was banned in Communist China.

Mood: The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast

(illustration by Hilda Boswell)

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Submit / Subscribe

Modern Poetry in Translation is now open for submissions through Submittable. It’s going to be permanently open. If you translate a poem, I want MPT to be the first place you send your work, whether you’re a professional translator or it’s your first attempt.

I’m extremely pleased to announce my first issue of Modern Poetry in Translation is going to have a Caribbean focus. I’m planning to follow that with an LBGTQ issue in summer. Do please spread the word!

And if those issues sound as exciting to you as they do to me, please think about a subscription for yourself or someone else this Christmas. An annual subscription is a mere £23, for three completely beautiful 128 page magazines that will enhance your poetry shelves (I mean, the paper), plus full access to the digital catalogue. Every issue will give you insight into different poetries – new forms, radical approaches, fresh voices. If it’s a gift we can also send you a PDF that folds into a lovely card.

On Friday at the MPT away-day we were treated to a look at the archives at the British Library. I loved the handwritten, earliest correspondence from Ted to Daniel Weissbort – particularly the advice that: ‘The lifeblood of poetical translation is this: not to change a good poem into a bad one.’

The magazine has such an amazing history, that we all have a chance to participate in. We need more subscribers to carry on our work – allowing poetry to bear witness; giving voice to the silenced and excluded; creating an international community of translators and readers. This feels more important than ever in the wake of the UK Brexit vote.  So please, do support us! (Also, if you need further present ideas, this Jeremy Deller towel would make a good gift).

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