BTBA 2010: The Poetry Finalists

As mentioned before, we didn’t announce a poetry longlist mainly because there were only 50-some-odd books eligible for this year’s award, and name-checking half of them would seem to dilute the award . . .

That’s not to say that there weren’t a ton of great collections in translation that came out last year worthy of a little extra attention. In fact, I’m sure the poetry judges could name an addition half-dozen that could’ve made the list in a different year . . .

But anyway, here are the 10 titles that the fantastic people on this year’s poetry panel selected as the finalists:

Nicole Brossard, Selections. Translated from the French by various.¹ (Canada, University of California)

René Char, The Brittle Age and Returning Upland. Translated from the French by Gustaf Sobin. (France, Counterpath)

Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another. Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah (Palestine, FSG)

Elena Fanailova, The Russian Version. Translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler. (Russia, Ugly Duckling Presse)

Hiromi Ito, Killing Kanoko. Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles. (Japan, Action Books)

Marcelijus Martinaitis, KB: The Suspect. Translated from the Lithuanian by Laima Vince. (Lithuania, White Pine)

Heeduk Ra, Scale and Stairs. Translated from the Korean by Woo-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill. (Korea, White Pine)

Novica Tadic, Dark Things. Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic. (Serbia, BOA Editions)

Liliana Ursu, Lightwall. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter. (Romania, Zephyr Press)

Wei Ying-wu, In Such Hard Times. Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine. (China, Copper Canyon)

Similar to the fiction longlist, there’s a great deal of country balance here, and a lot of small press love. (Go White Pine and Zephyr!)

Similar to what we did for the fiction titles, starting next week, we’ll be featuring a book a day from this list, with all the write-ups being written by the esteemed panelists (Brandon Holmquest, Jennifer Kronovet, Idra Novey, Kevin Prufer, and Matthew Zapruder).

And as with the BTBA for fiction, the winner will be announced on March 10th at an event that will take place at Idlewild Books.

¹ Here’s the complete list, which is really too long to include above without ruining the whole aesthetic of this post: Guy Bennett, David Dea, Barbara Godard, Pierre Joris, Robert Majzels and Erin Moure, Jennifer Moxley, Lucille Nelson, Larry Shouldice, Fred Wah, Lisa Weil, and Anne-Marie Wheeler.