The winner of the 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for poetry in translation is On the Contrary by Lia Sturua, translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field, published by Fal and supported by Writers’ House Georgia.
The judges this year were Ian McMillan, English poet and presenter on The Verb on BBC Radio 3, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Irish poet, academic, and translator, and Ghareeb Iskander, a prizewinning Iraqi poet and translator.
This book encapsulated what this award is about. It encompasses all the vibrancy that poetry has to offer, while reflecting the turbulence of our fractured society.'Ian McMillan, Chair of Judges
The winner was announced at the prize ceremony on Monday 9th September at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London.
The PTC is known for giving voice to those who find it difficult to be heard, and we are proud that this year’s Sarah Maguire Prize shortlist contains books by poets from Mexico, South Korea, Iran, Lebanon, China, Georgia and Palestine.
LIA STURUA was born in 1939 and is a prominent Georgian poet. She graduated from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University’s Faculty of Philology. In 1974 she defended her PhD thesis on The Artistic function of Colour in Galaktion Tabidze’s Poetry. She lectured at the University and was a senior researcher at the Shota Rustaveli Institute for Georgian Literature. Since 1999 she has been a literature consultant at the Galaktion Tabidze Museum. Her first collection, Trees in the City was published in 1962, followed by twelve more books. As well as poetry, Lia Sturua has published prose, including three novels. Her poetry has been translated into German, French, English and Finnish.
NATALIA BUKIA-PETERS is a freelance translator, interpreter and teacher of Georgian and Russian. She studied at Ilia Tbilisi State University, and has an MA in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, and has worked with the Poetry Translation Centre since 2013. Her translations have been published in the UK (fal publications, Francis Boutle, Bloodaxe Books) and USA (Dalkey Archive). Her most recent poetry books are Diana Anphimiadi’s Why I No Longer Write Poems (Bloodaxe Books), co-translated with Jean Sprackland; and Lia Sturua’s On the Contrary (fal publications), co-translated with Victoria Field.
VICTORIA FIELD is a writer, researcher and poetry therapist. Her most recent poetry collection is A Speech of Birds (Francis Boutle, 2020). The Lost Boys (Waterloo, 2013) won the Holyer an Gof prize for poetry and drama. Her memoir of marriage and pilgrimage, Baggage: A Book of Leavings was published by Francis Boutle in 2016. She has co-edited three books on therapeutic writing and publishes and presents widely on writing and healing. Her PhD was on narratives of transformation in pilgrimage and she is an Associate in the Academy of Sustainable Futures at Canterbury Christ Church University.
2024 Prize
by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
Translated from the Arabic and introduced by Fady Joudah, You Can Be the Last Leaf draws on two decades of work to present the transcendent and timely US debut of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat. Art. Garlic. Taxis. Sleepy soldiers at checkpoints. The smell of trash on a winter street, before “our wild rosebush, neglected / by the gate, / blooms.” Lovers who don’t return, the possibility that you yourself might not return. Making beds. Cleaning up vomit. Reading recipes. In You Can Be the Last Leaf, these are the ordinary and profound—sometimes tragic, sometimes dreamy, sometimes almost frivolous—moments of life under Israeli colonial rule.
by Olivia Elias, translated from French by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
In her English-language debut, acclaimed French-language poet of the Palestinian diaspora Olivia Elias probes deeply into the upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Chaos, Crossing—translated by award-winning translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid—is a powerful chronicle of uprootedness, of times marked by inequality, injustice, and disconnection. These poems seek the calm at the center of the storm, the still point amidst the chaos.
by Lia Sturua, translated from Georgian by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field
This is the first collection in English from this remarkable Georgian poet. Born in 1939, Lia has lived through tumultuous times, and has always been an innovative, original and inspirational poet, drawing on imagery of music, painting, architecture and the body in her dreamlike work.
by Coral Bracho, translated from Spanish by Forrest Gander
Mexican poet, teacher and translator Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in 1951. She has published several books, two in English thanks to the brilliant poet-translator Forrest Gander, who has put this composite volume together, the first time Bracho has been extensively published in the UK. An extensive selection from Bracho’s earlier work, which ‘altered the landscape of Mexican poetry’ (World Literature Today), is accompanied by the entirety of her new book, of which Gander writes: ‘Although composed of individual poems, It Must Be a Misunderstanding is really a deeply affecting book-length work whose force builds as the poems cycle through their sequences. The “plot” follows a general trajectory—from early to late Alzheimer’s—with non-judgmental affection and compassionate watchfulness.
by Sin Yong-mok, translated from Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé
A debut English-language collection of hopeful and carefully attentive poems by one of South Korea’s most lauded young poets, this collection offers a selection of poems from Sin Yong-mok’s earlier collections, intended to serve as an illustration of his evolution as a poet, alongside a complete translation of the poems from his fourth collection, When Someone Called Someone, I Looked Back. Beautifully translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé with close attention to the sonorous aspects of Sin’s lines, this collection also captures the larger themes within Shin’s work and his attention to the spirit of community and peaceful coexistence with others. These are poems with a powerful belief in humanity and the beauty of the smallest hopes.
by Hazan Alizadeh, translated from Persian by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould
Notwithstanding his spare output, with only two volumes of poetry – Diary of House Arrest (Ruznama-ye tab‘id, 2003) and Blue Bicycle (Ducharkha-yi ābī, 2015) – to his name, Iranian poet Hasan Alizadeh has left a poetic signature on modern Persian poetry, distinguished by lyricism and colloquialism. In Alizadeh’s poems, a labyrinthine memory, structured by the intricate architecture of old Iranian bazaars and mosques, continually revises itself in spontaneous narrations of love and death. With an informative introduction placing the poet’s work in context, this evocative translation brings Alizadeh’s two collections into English for the first time.
by Jiang Tao, translated from Chinese by Josh Stenberg
In these melancholy and self-mocking poems — populated with youths and elders, cellphones and televisions — Jiang Tao presents and dissects a discontent with the state of the world. He employs his profound wit and poetic mastery to explore the passage of time, rural-urban migration, change and impermanence, and the difficulties of human communication and connection. Jiang Tao’s verse is, as translator Josh Stenberg has written, “a quintessential expression of urban malaise in contemporary China.” This is his first book to appear in English and is presented bilingually on facing pages.
Ian McMillan is a writer and broadcaster based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He’s produced books of poetry for children and adults as well as a couple of volumes of memoir. He’s presented The Verb, Radio 3’s weekly language and literature show, for over twenty years and he’s always really excited to encounter new writing by new writers. He’s currently translating the opera The Barber of Seville into Yorkshire dialect, which makes him very happy!
'I'm honoured to be a judge of the Sarah Maguire Prize, proudly keeping her name alive and giving a space to those who, like she did, wrestle with language and meaning every day of their lives.'Ian McMillan
Ghareeb Iskander is a poet, translator and scholar living in London. He taught Arabic at SOAS, University of London where he received his PhD in Near & Middle Eastern studies with an emphasis on literary translation. He published serval books including A Chariot of Illusion (Exiled Writers Ink, London 2009); Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, a bilingual collection, which won Arkansas University’s Arabic Translation Award for 2015 (Syracuse University Press, New York 2016); English Poetry and Modern Arabic Verse: Translation and Modernity (I. B. Tauris, London 2021). He was longlisted for the 2021 John Dryden Translation Competition. Iskander translated Derek Walcott, Ted Hughes and other world modernist poets into Arabic and Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, Hasab al-Shaikh Ja‘far and other Arab modernist poets into English.
Born 1942, Fellow emeritus of Trinity College Dublin. Her many translations of poetry include Dánta Antonella Anedda [translations from Italian into Irish] The Water Horse with Medbh McGuckian, from the Irish of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Gallery Press (2000), 21 poems by Nuala Ní Dhomnaill, in Leabhar na hAthgabhála ed. Louis de Paor, Cló Iar-Chonachta (2016), ‘Song of the Woman of Beare’ in Maurice Riordan ed. The Finest Music: An Anthology of Early Irish Lyrics, London, Faber (2014), After the Raising of Lazarus, (2005), and the Legend of the walled-up wife, Gallery Press (2011), both from the Romanian of Ileana Mălăncioiu. Her Collected Poems was published by Gallery Press in 2020.