Transreading Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine at 60
Beyond the Anglophone – discover indispensable international verse from MPT.
Modern Poetry in Translation magazine is celebrating its 60th birthday! When Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded MPT in 1965 they had two principal ambitions: to act in solidarity with oppressed writers and get poetry out from behind the Iron Curtain into a wider circulation in English, and to excite and inspire writers and the reading public in Anglophone cultures by confronting them with great work from across the globe. They published poetry that dealt truthfully with the real contemporary world and the magazine continues today to function as what Hughes called ‘an airport for incoming translations’.
MPT has published some of the most acclaimed world poetry, bringing Brodsky and Akhmatova from Russia, Amichai from Israel, Miłosz from Poland, & Darwish from Palestine in definitive translations. Some of the world’s greatest contemporary writers have had their first English language publication in MPT, including Kim Hyesoon, Don Mee Choi, Jan Wagner, Maria Stepanova, Lucas Rijneveld, and Serhiy Zhadan.
In this course we’ll be celebrating the magazine, looking at amazing writing from across the astonishing 60-year archive and using it as inspiration for your own writing. We’ll be reading some of the great variety of poetic forms that the magazine has published, including Korean modernism, Brazilian concrete poetry, and Somali gabay. We’ll trace how the magazine has always published writers whose writing has been informed by environmental concerns and read poets from cultures who are already living on the frontline of the climate crisis. We’ll consider the magazine’s origins as an act of political solidarity and what that might mean for its writers and readers in an era when fascism is on the rise again and international borders are closing.
Please note: We very much welcome translators to this course but no translation experience or fluency in other languages is necessary to participate.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 13 May 2026. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image credit: Modern Poetry in Translation
About Sarah Hesketh 
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Sarah Hesketh is a writer and Editor. Her books include Napoleon’s Travelling Bookshelf (Penned in the Margins, 2009), The Hard Word Box (Penned in the Margins, 2014), and The Emma Press Anthology of Age (Ed., 2015). Her most recent book, 2016, was published by CB Editions in spring 2025 and was a Guardian poetry book of the year. Her work has a focus on socially-engaged writing practices and she has been an Artist in Residence with Age Concern and The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. She is the workshop leader for the Poetry by Carers project and in 2022 she was awarded a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ award.
"The courses have helped me bring in writing poetry from the periphery of my life to the centre."
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