Translations include:
The Dice Cup (Wakefield Press, 2022), from the French of Max Jacob.
'There is much to be enjoyed and loved in this book by readers who understand the importance, and pleasures, of being teased and confounded.' Jeremy Over, PN Review
‘The Wakefield Press edition with Seed’s informative and thorough introductory narrative, the entirety of Le cornet à dés in translation, including sections added in later editions, and as a bonus, “A Short History of The Dice Cup” written by Max Jacob in 1943 for his friend Paul Bonet, has put together a remarkably well-designed presentation.’ Pat Bolan, Black Bart Quarterly Review of Books.
‘The translation does an admirable job […] I’d never read The Dice Cup before starting this review but was steadily won over by its lovable quirkiness, intellectual heft, and curious humility. I also became persuaded of its importance within a location and period surely unignorable and enthralling to anyone interested in modernism.’ Guy Russell, Tears in the Fence.
'This choice of an absolutely contemporary vocabulary succeeds in retaining the freshness of phrasing of Jacob’s poems; Seed can allow himself to have fun, for his style is situated exemplarily in a universe which rightly wins over the unreserved complicity of the reader […] In short, one discovers here, with pure joy and genuine amazement, the look, by turns malicious, anguished or disoriented, of Max Jacob…’ Alexander Dickow, Les Cahiers Max Jacob.
'In The Dice Cup, Jacob tells stories through a mosaic of snapshots or film clips that run backward and forward at the same time with allusions to the classics, to comics, to irony. You will need two copies of this one—one for the shelf, and one to always have in the backpack.' Kevin Gallagher, Harvard Review.
For more information, click on: https://wakefieldpress.com/products/the-dice-cup?pr_prod_strat=copurchase&pr_rec_id=82745ce05&pr_rec_pid=8340725104959&pr_ref_pid=8341293826367&pr_seq=uniform
The Thief of Talant(Wakefield Press, 2016), from the French of Pierre Reverdy.
'The Thief of Talant is a deeply intriguing work bringing to mind a time when the possibilities for merging narrative and verse were open and endless, with Pierre Reverdy pointing steadily ahead.'
—Jarrod Annis, Three Percent
'Ian Seed's translation of this remarkable personal literary document is faithful and fluent and captures much of its nuanced suggestion.'
—D. M. de Silva, Poetry Salzburg Review
“Le voleur de Talan (first published in 1917) is one of the most astonishing texts to come out of the period, halfway between the prose poem and the lyrical roman-à-clef. […] Ian Seed’s translation of Reverdy’s prose poem captures the spell-binding effect of this inner-landscape narrative…”
—Ramona Fotiade, The Times Literary Supplement
For more information, click on https://wakefieldpress.com/products/the-thief-of-talant
The River Which Sleep Has Told Me (Fortnightly Review Odd Volumes, 2022), from the Italian of Ivano Fermini.
‘…a dramatic, fierce, and sometimes menacing lyricism.’ Tristan Moss, Litter.
'This drive away from treating things as members of classes and towards avoiding the predictable goes some way towards making sense of the formidable disjunction that typifies Fermini’s use of language [...]I found myself becoming engaged more and more with this odd, distinctive voice.' Billy Mills, Elliptical Movements.
For more information, click on https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0999705822?s=books&crid=MU2VPOE3BBLL&keywords=ian+seed&sprefix=ian+seed,stripbooks,228&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&language=en_US&sr=1-12&linkCode=gs2&linkId=15513fb51d61e23340db5b830f97c477&tag=thefortrevi-21
Bitter Grass (Shearsman Books, 2020), from the Italian of Gëzim Hajdari
'The book I kept reaching for earlier this year was Bitter Grass, an early collection by Gëzim Hajdari, newly translated by Ian Seed for Shearsman. The book-length poem begins: "No one knows if I still hold out / in this corner of the burnt earth"; as the news became increasingly terrifying, and we lurched into the unknown, I kept repeating those lines to myself. I'm still holding out, and I hope that you are too." Andrew McMillan, Literary Hub.
‘In these translations […] Ian Seed offers us a convincing sense of that pull of poetry’s undertow: a convincing refutation of Turgenev’s anarchist Bazarov who in 1862 had rejected everything that could not be established by the rational methods of natural science.’ Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence.
For more information, click on https://www.shearsman.com/store/Gezim-Hajdari-Bitter-Grass-p148617579
