Judges announced for Sarah Maguire Prize 2022
Following the success of the inaugural Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, the Poetry Translation Centre is delighted to welcome an esteemed line up of judges for the 2022 prize.
The panel will be chaired by Rosalind Harvey, a critically acclaimed translator who co-founded the Emerging Translators Network. She is joined by the poet, novelist and critic Kit Fan and Kyoo Lee, a writer and professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York.
“I’m honoured to be chairing this excellent panel of judges for the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize. Now in its second year, the prize is a hugely welcome addition to the landscape of awards that recognise both author and translator, as well as specifically focussing on authors from beyond Europe, and I’m incredibly excited to read the work that comes in. It was as a new graduate as yet unaware of the richness of the world of literary translation that I first met Sarah Maguire at the Poetry Translation Centre in the early 2000s, the force of her personality and poetic understanding helped nudge me along the endlessly rewarding and surprising path that is the translation of literary works. It has always been important for literary cultures to be able to cross-pollinate and speak to each other via translation, but perhaps even more so now. Many of us turned to poetry during the pandemic as being the only medium adequate to contain or respond to these new feelings of uncertainty, loss, anger and adriftless on a grand scale. Along with my esteemed fellow judges, I am looking forward to reading and raising up some exciting poets, and to sharing them with English language readers, so that together we might navigate these still strange times accompanied by a diverse range of voices.”
Rosalind Harvey, Chair of the Judges 2022
Now in its second year, the Sarah Maguire Prize celebrates the art of translation awarding both winning poet and translator an equal share of a £3,000 prize fund. It was launched to recognise the best book of poetry by a living poet from beyond Europe published in English translation and to champion the art of poetry in translation. The prize was established in the memory of the poet Sarah Maguire who was the founder of the Poetry Translation Centre and long-time advocate for international poetry.
The winner of the 2020 Sarah Maguire Prize was Anniversary Snow by Yang Lian, translated from the Chinese by Brian Holton, with further translations by WN Herbert, L.Leigh, Lian Lizhen, Pascale Petit, Fiona Simpson, George Szirtes and Joshua Weiner and published by Shearsman Books.