Paul Vincent and John Irons for 100 Dutch-language Poems (Holland Park Press)
The judges said:
This treasury of Dutch and Flemish poems (parallel texts of originals and translations) brings together single works of poets ranging from the 11th century to the 21st. It is a rich anthology, based on the two translators’ personal preferences, but also managing to represent something like a canon of important works judged by criteria clearly explained in the translators’ preface. In shortlisting the book the judges are commending not only the quality of the translations but the selection itself of poets and poems, and the composition of a whole that is even more than the sum of its parts. There is to our knowledge no comparably wide-ranging collection available to English readers, and although inevitably some omissions will be felt, many of the most influential poets are indeed here, powerfully introduced in these new English versions. We believe that the book will be a uniquely valuable source for teachers and students, but we are impressed above all by the inventiveness, the variety, and often the sheer beauty of these English works, through which the Dutch poetic voices speak and sing to us.
Philip Roughton’s translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man (MacLehose Press)
Patrick McGuinness said:
This is the third of a trilogy whose first two books, Heaven and Hell and The Sorrow of Angels, also published by MacLehose. This is a great epic tale, but it’s also written in the most powerful poetic prose. It is totally compelling, and as I was scrambling about for the right adjectives to describe it, I realized I’d do better to simply quote Boyd Tonkin’s lovely review fromThe Independent: “Beautifully translated by Philip Roughton, Stefansson's immersive prose swells, thunders and sparkles with all the shifting moods of the sea on an Icelandic summer's day.”