RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Latest editorial
‘It’s high time he got read and enjoyed as he deserves’
Writer and translator DAVID CONSTANTINE talks to Meic Birtwistle about the long overdue publication of Bertolt Brecht's collected poems in English
Comma Press Bertolt Brecht
[Roger and Renate Rossing/Creative Commons]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
PLAYWRIGHT and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is one of the most significant Marxist literary figures of the last century and it seems appropriate that a new translation of his collected poems has just been published at a time when the centenary of the political assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht is being marked.
This massive joint undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn is a highly welcome contribution to Brecht’s study and enjoyment in English. Salford-born Constantine, a highly regarded poet in his own right, is an award-winning translator and short-story writer and here he answers questions about this major task and the pleasures and pains of translating poetry.
Similar stories
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art
When Cassy’s father fails to connect with his daughter — and misses out on
an evening in the Bitter End — a stranger’s self-mocking charm brings seething resentment.