Join us as we count down to ALTA41: Performance, Props, and Platforms with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose long- and shortlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order, moving first through the longlisted and then the shortlisted titles, alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s judges for poetry are Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Jennifer Feeley, and Sawako Nakayasu, and this year’s prose judges are Esther Allen, Tess Lewis, and Jeremy Tiang.

For quick reference, you may find the NTA longlists here, and the NTA shortlists here. Today we’re shining the spotlight on Magnetic Point: Selected Poems, longlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry:

Magnetic Point: Selected Poems 
by Ryszard Krynicki
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh
(New Directions)

In this stunning collection, which translator Clare Cavanagh has selected from a half-century of Ryszard Krynicki’s work, the unforgettable voice of one of Poland’s leading modern poets emerges in crystalline English verse. These poems are largely informed by the harshness of life in the Polish People’s Republic, repeatedly exposing the rifts between political ideology and the lived reality of the people. A certain mystic beauty, a sacred quality, shines through these texts, always offering at least some measure of love and redemption. Cavanagh’s translations dazzle, dexterously encompassing the range of Krynicki’s verse, in all its humility, wit, and love.