Rusty Needle

Ivan V Lalic is perhaps the finest poet in the Serbo-Croat language, and thanks to Francis R Jones's translations his work can be read as authentic poetry in English. A Rusty Needle traces his development over nearly twenty years, from his first published poems to the end of the sixties. It gives `an excellent overview of a remarkable poet', as Edwin Morgan writes in the PBS Bulletin.

 

He continues: `Although he has many lyrical poems on themes of love and landscape, the most distinctive part of his work relates to the ebb and flow of historical conquest and change on the northern shores of the Mediterranean... He broods over darkly crucial events like the fall of Byzantium to the Turks, and delivers interesting questions about the ambiguities of memory.'

 

Ivan V Lalic (1931-96) studied law in Zagreb, where he first began to publish poetry, and worked for the publishers Nolit in Belgrade. He was also a distinguished critic and translator, especially of English poetry.

 

His other books in English with Anvil and Francis R Jones are Last Quarter (1987), The Passionate Measure (European Poetry Translation Prize, 1989) and A Rusty Needle (Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, 1996).

 

Francis R Jones (b. 1955) lectures in English as a foreign language at the University of Newcastle. His other translations include Hans Faverey's Against the Forgetting (Anvil, 1995) and Vasko Popa's Collected Poems (with the late Anne Pennington, Anvil, 1997).

Born in 1955, Francis R. Jones lectures in linguistics at the University of Newcastle in England. Born in 1931, Lalic studied law in Zagreb, where he first began to publish poetry. He died in 1996.