Do join us for an evening of poetry in translation from Chinese, German and Italian

Matthew Barton  has created a new version of Rilke’s Duino Elegies which was a mountain of a work, a literary achievement that has enthralled and sometimes baffled its readers. Its author wrestled with it over more than ten years, finally completing it in a tumultuous creative ferment in 1922. It comes to new life in this edition by Matthew Barton,  poet and professional translator, who is attuned as much to its rhythms and music as its meanings, and seeks to recreate the molten flow of Rilke’s lines.

A selection of versions of poems by the great Italian poet, Eugenio Montale, by Leicester poet, Roy Marshall who has read from his own collections in the bookshop. Roy has been working on these translations for three years.

Martin Stannard has been publishing poetry and criticism for some 40 years. He was founding editor and publisher of joe’s soap’s canoe (1978–93) and poetry editor of Decals of Desire (2016–7).  His most recent full-length collection is Poems for the Young at Heart (Leafe Press) and a chapbook, Items, was published by Red Ceilings in August 2018. He taught at a university in China for more than a decade from 2005, during which time he began working on producing English language versions of poems from China’s classic Tang period.

Entry: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk