Translated by Brian Cole, with an introduction by Peter Dale.
Parallel text, Italian / English

"Brian Cole translates Cattafi's precise meditations and unexpected imagery with skill and subtlety."

Translation Review:

"This is a subtle book full of those flashes of half-recognition that come 'when the hawk has made his journey / from the fist to a heart.'" Susan Wicks

Visible Poets series, no. 1. Series editor: Jean Boase-Beier.

A selection from over 300 poems in the Collected Works, containing some of poet's finest writing. This collection reflects Cattafi's restlessness and his urge to travel - there are poems about islands, streets, cities, the sea, about places both familiar and unfamiliar to the English reader.

But we are also aware of a strong element of spiritual journeying in his poetry, as he probes the truth and meaning behind the existence of the concrete, the ordinary, the everyday. In this new translation, Brian Cole translates Cattafi's precise meditations and unexpected imagery with consummate skill that allows the English reader to share the poet's urgency of being "driven by necessity / to a truth clothed in falsehood".

Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, Summer 2000

About the Author
Jean Boase-Beier is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Translation. She founded UEA's MA in Literary Translation and ran it until 2015. Her academic work focuses particularly on translation, style and poetry, and especially on the translation of Holocaust poetry. Recent publications include A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies (2011, Bloomsbury) and Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust (2015, Bloomsbury). Current research, which follows on from a recent AHRC project 'Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust' is on the influence of Russian Formalism and Prague Structuralism on the thinking of Benjamin, Celan, Brecht and others. Jean Boase-Beier is also a translator of poetry from and into German and is the Translations Editor for Arc Publications.


Book Information
ISBN 9781900072427
Author Bartolo Cattifi
Format Paperback
Page Count 84
Imprint Arc Publications
Publisher Arc Publications