Cirrus@Austlit

'A powerful new anthology depicting how love over the past two-and-a-half millennia has found its expression in the words of the world's greatest poets. 

'No, Love Is Not Dead is a timely affirmation of the great linguistic diversity of poetry and its ability to express passionate love, the most extreme of human emotions. With influential, award-winning poets including Kim Hyesoon, Laura Tohe and Warsan Shire, and languages ranging from Amharic, Akkadian and Ancient Greek to Yankunytjatjara, Yiddish and Yoruba, this unique anthology engages the reader in reflective tales of unlikely love stories and impossible love, love in a time of politics, surrealist love, visual love and free love, offering an intuitive insight into both historical and present-day perceptions of love across cultures.

'Including over 50 poets, writing on each of the world's continents, this new anthology of poems about love features a diverse range of original poems written in a variety of languages - modern, ancient, endangered and constructed -, accompanied by English translations and commentaries.

'Poets included in the book: Apollinaire; Nicole Brossard; Augusto de Campos; Catullus; Chaucer; Dante; Robert Desnos; Ali Cobby Eckermann; Goethe; Kim Hyesoon; Louise Labe; Federico Garcia Lorca; Vladimir Mayakovsky; Miklos Radnoti; Kutti Ravathi; Sappho; Warsan Shire; Laura Tohe; Marina Tsvetaeva.

'Languages included in the book: Akkadian; Amharic; Ancient Greek; Faroese; French; Galician; German; Hungarian; Italian; Japanese; Latvian; Maori; Persian; Polari; Portuguese; Russian; Sanskrit; Scots; Scottish Gaelic; Serbian; Spanish; Urdu; Welsh; Yoruba.

'Foreword by Laura Tohe, the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus with Distinction at Arizona State University, who has won awards including the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, and the Arizona Book Association's Glyph Award for Best Poetry.' (Publication summary)

'According to Unesco, of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world, more than half are endangered, with one disappearing every two weeks. This collection of 50 poems celebrates and preserves these unique voices and takes the reader on a global journey of discovery.

'POEMS FROM THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION gathers together 50 poems in languages from around the world that have been identified as endangered, and offers a unique insight into the culture of these beautiful, vulnerable languages through the voices of their poets. With one of the world's 7,000 languages disappearing every two weeks, and with them their poetic traditions, this anthology, with accompanying English translations and commentaries, aims to celebrate voices which may otherwise fall silent. It includes poems by both new and established poets, such as award-winning Joy Harjo in Native American Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, Gearoid Mac Lochlainn in Irish Gaelic, Nineb Lamassu in Assyrian, and Hawad in Tamajaght.

'This timely anthology is passionately edited by widely published poet and UK National Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, who is also the founder of the Endangered Poetry Project, a major project launched by London's Southbank Centre to collect poetry written in the world's disappearing languages, and introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies World Languages Institute, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic.

'One endangered language is dying out every two weeks. Of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world, around half of these will die out by the end of the century. With the death of those languages will also be lost the unique poetic traditions of their speakers and writers.

'Languages included in the book: Assyrian; Belarusian; Chimiini; Irish Gaelic; Maori; Navajo; Patua; Rotuman; Saami; Scottish Gaelic; Welsh; Yiddish; Zoque.

'Poets included in the book: Joy Harjo; Hawad; Jackie Kay; Aurelia Lassaque; Nineb Lamassu; Gearoid Mac Lochlainn; Valzhyna Mort?; Laura Tohe; Taniel Varoujan; Avrom Sutzkever.' (Publication summary)