A Sort of Homecoming: An Essay on Poetry In Translation

The Missing Slate, a Pakistan-based online magazine of culture and literature, has published my essay called 'A Sort of Homecoming: Poetry In Translation'. Here's an excerpt:


"Paul Celan stayed in my life, and I read him on and off, but only occasionally and with difficulty. Almost fifteen years after the first encounter, when I started reading Celan more seriously, I realised that there had been many good reasons to keep him in my life. As it turned out, Celan was probably also my major entry point into the world of translated poetry, and the act of translating poetry.
I mistrusted translated poetry for a long time. As recently as a few years ago, I still felt that it basically couldn’t be done, or could only be a pale shadow of the original."


You can read the whole essay here.