The Great Friend
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The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems was the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation for Spring 2002.
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The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems brings together for the first time a choice of work in this field from the last quarter of a century. As the title underlines, these are not imitations or adaptations, but translations that remain faithful to their originals while, to the best of my abilities, becoming English poems in their own right. The main body of the book chronicles a long-time commitment to twentieth-century Italian poetry, including renderings of works by, among others, Campana, Ungaretti, Saba, Bertolucci, Sereni, Fortini, Guidacci, Spaziani, Erba, Zanzotto, Rosselli, and Raboni – but there are also selections from an early involvement with Pierre Reverdy’s poems, poems like ‘On Ten Fingers’, and more recent readings of Noriko Ibaragi and Ingeborg Bachmann.
Portrait of my little girl
My little girl with a ball in her hand,
with large eyes the colour of sky
and her summer outfit: ‘Daddy,’
she tells me, ‘I want to go out with you today.’
And I was thinking: Of the many apparitions
admired in the world, I know very well
to which I would compare my little girl.
Certainly to foam, to the seaside foam
whitening waves, to that blue wake
which emerges from roofs and the wind disperses;
likewise to the clouds, the indifferent clouds
being made and unmade in clear sky
and to other light and roaming things.
Umberto Saba (1883-1957), translated from the Italian by Peter Robinson
Published: 2002
ISBN: 9780953947744
Pages: 75
The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems was the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation for Spring 2002. In the society’s bulletin, Douglas Dunn wrote ‘the range is eclectic without being scattered confusingly across too many languages and cultures. For me at least, much of this work is new. I imagine it will be for many other readers…such poems are interesting. They can wake you up to a diffierent kind of writing and saying, less hectoring, less public, more confidential and perhaps more neutral in its first person singular.’ Glyn Pursglove, reviewing the book in Acumen, found that ‘Robinson seems to take few liberties with his originals but his attempted fidelity is not allowed to distort his own use of English and English verse and there is a great deal to admire and enjoy here. Indeed, one could wish the book a good deal longer.’
Peter Robinson was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1953, and grew up mainly in Liverpool. He co-edited the magazines Perfect Bound and Numbers while helping organize various Cambridge Poetry Festivals and a Poetry International at the South Bank Centre. His many volumes of poetry include a Selected Poems (2003), Ghost Characters (2006) and The Look of Goodbye (2008). He was awarded the Cheltenham Prize for This Other Life (1988). Both The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems (2002) and The Returning Sky (2012) were recommendations of the Poetry Book Society. A translator of poetry, mainly from the Italian, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (with Marcus Perryman) appeared in 2006 and paperback in 2013.
He received the John Florio Prize for The Greener Meadow: Selected Poems of Luciano Erba (2007) in 2008. Other publications include his aphorisms, Spirits of the Stair (2009), four volumes of literary criticism, the most recent being Poetry & Translation: The Art of the Impossible (2010), various edited collections, anthologies, The Complete Poems, Translations & Selected Prose of Bernard Spencer (2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (2013). A collection of essays on his work, The Salt Companion to Peter Robinson ed. Adam Piette and Katy Price, appeared in 2007. The poetry editor for Two Rivers Press, he is Professor of English and American Literature, and currently Head of Department, at the University of Reading.
You can visit Peter’s website at: www.peterrobinsonpoet.co.uk
