Earlier this month, the Poetry Translation Centre announced the launch of the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation:
The prize was established in the memory of Sarah Maguire (1957-2017), the founder of the Poetry Translation Centre (PTC) as well as a poet-translator.
According to organizers, the prize will be awarded once every two years for the “best book of poetry from a living poet from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East in English translation, published anywhere in the world.” Books also must be the work of a single living poet, written in a non-English language, translated to English.
The winning poets and translators will divide a prize of £3,000.
The prize’s aim is “to showcase the very best contemporary poetry from around the world,” as well as to champion the art of translating poetry. In a prepared release, the PTC said:
Like any other literary prize, we hope that the Sarah Maguire Prize will attract more attention and a larger readership to poetry translation in general and to poetry translation from under-represented cultures in particular. We also hope that it will stir conversations around the topic of poetry translation into English that will eventually lead to a more ‘universal’ approach to poetry in the UK and other anglophone cultures. We would like to see this prize encouraging more publishers to consider publishing high-quality translations from leading international poets.
The prize is open for submissions until January 31, 2020; eligible books must have been published between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2019.
The prize’s first judges will be: Iranian poet Alireza Abiz, Latino-British poet Leo Boix, and Swahili-language translator Ida Hadjivayanis.
Interested publishers can apply through the PTC website.
