Poem No.30

Every two years, the Edwin Morgan Trust invites poets from another country to work on translations of their poems with Scottish poets, in recognition of the central role translation played in Morgan’s own work. In 2015 the poets came from Slovakia; this year, they come from Portugal. The poets worked together at the Scottish Poetry Library and now the fruits of their labours can be enjoyed in The Other

Side of Silence, a short pamphlet available for free from the SPL while stocks last. Miriam Nash’s translation of Ricardo Marques’s ‘Poem No.30’ is one of the highlights. I can never scrutinise the diaries I don’t write biography is a passage to which I have no right – and if life’s excess swallows me, the multiplicity of shapes it might acquire will set my spirit free all I can do with these hands even the divining of my destiny – will only ever be an approximation, a council of the deities.

You can find a copy of The Other Side of Silence at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@spl.org.uk or visit www. scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk