The 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry Shortlist

The Judges’ Citations

Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose

By Osip Mandelstam

Translated from Russian by Peter France

New Directions

Many Anglophone readers would readily rank Osip Mandelstam among the most original and influential poets of the 20th century, yet the versions in which his work has reached us have been, by and large, either dispiritingly lax or disquietingly rigid. Peter France’s impeccable selection of poems and prose—the fruit of a lifetime’s engagement—conveys in every line the subtlety and suppleness of this most sonically sensitive of poets. Time and again, to borrow an image from one of Mandelstam’s early masterpieces, France’s translations “draw from reeds the wealth of a full note.”

Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow

Natalka Bilotserkivets

Translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky

Lost Horse Press

“A pulsing, powerful, elastic rhythm” surges through Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, a selection of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s poetry written over the last four decades. Masterfully and boldly translated by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky, these spiritual, lyrical, and narrative poems interweave themes of geography and identity, motherly and romantic love, tragedy and loss, memory and literature. A keen observer, whose spare writing moves from acceptance to self-transcendence, Bilotserkivets takes the reader on a journey of grief and wonder.

Exhausted on the Cross

By Najwan Darwish

Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

NYRB Poets

Exhausted on the Cross, Najwan Darwish’s second volume of poetry, is poignant, raw, unflinching, and deeply humane, infusing the sorrow and suffering of occupation and the human condition with a startling lyricism. Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s unforgettable translation in its stark, clean, yet melodic register, invites us into the complexity of Darwish’s poetry, the suppleness of his Arabic, and the uncompromising vision of resistance in the face of oppression that beats at the heart of this marvelous book.

Purgatorio

By Dante Alighieri

Translated from Italian by D. M. Black

NYRB Classics

There is nothing middle-of-the-road about D. M. Black’s version of the middle book of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The translator’s every step is sure, evincing not only his sensitive ear for the cadences of blank verse but also his profound insight into the psychology of the poet as well as of his shades. Black shows great respect for Dante as both a craftsman and a thinker, and in so doing serves the reader as a uniquely competent guide to “that Mountain where the blade of Reason probes us.”