Sarah Maguire

Sarah Maguire
Born	26 March 1957 London
Died	2 November 2017
Occupation	Poet, Translator
Nationality	British

Sarah Maguire (26 March 1957 – 2 November 2017)[1] was a British poet, translator and broadcaster.

Life

Born in London, Sarah Maguire left school early to train as a gardener with the London Borough of Ealing (1974–77). Her horticultural career had a significant impact on her poetry: her third collection of poems The Florist's at Midnight (Jonathan Cape, 2001) brought together all her poems about plants and gardens, and she edited the anthology Flora Poetica: the Chatto Book of Botanical Verse (2001). She was also Poet in Residence at Chelsea Physic Garden, and edited A Green Thought in a Green Shade, essays by poets who have worked in a garden environment, published at the conclusion of this residency.[2]

Maguire was the first writer to be sent to Palestine (1996) and Yemen (1998) by the British Council. As a result of these visits she developed a strong interest in Arabic literature; she translated the Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan and the Sudanese poet, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (2008). With Yama Yari, Maguire co-translated the Afghan poet Partaw Naderi (2008); their translation of A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by the leading Afghan novelist, Atiq Rahimi (Chatto & Windus, 2006) was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007.[3][4]

She was the only living English-language poet with a book in print in Arabic - her collection of selected poems, Haleeb Muraq (Dar-Al Mada, 2003), was translated by the leading Iraqi poet Saadi Yousef. Maguire was the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre, which opened in 2004.[5]

The Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation was launched by the Poetry Translation Centre on 12 September 2019 to recognise and encourage quality translation of poetry into English.[6]

Awards

• 2008: Cholmondeley Award
• 2001-03; Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London

Works

• "Passages". The Guardian. London. 8 August 2005.

Poetry Books

• Spilt Milk. Secker & Warburg. 1991. ISBN 978-0-9511023-3-6.
• The Invisible Mender. Cape Poetry. 1997.
• The Florist's at Midnight. Jonathan Cape. 2001. ISBN 978-0-224-06213-8.
• The Pomegranates of Kandahar. Chatto & Windus. 2007. ISBN 978-0-7011-8131-4.

& not mentioned, Almost the Equinox - selected poems 2015 published by chatto & windus

Edited

• A Green Thought in a Green Shade: Poetry in the Garden. Poetry Society. 2000. ISBN 978-1-900771-26-9.
• Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse. Chatto & Windus. 2001. ISBN 978-0-7011-6922-0.

Translations

• Haleeb Muraq (Selected Poems). Saadi Yousef (trans.). Syria: Al-Mada House. 2003.
• Atiq Rahimi (2006). A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear. Yama Yari (trans.). Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-7673-0.
• Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (2008). Poems. Sabry Hafez (trans.). Enitharmon/Poetry Translation Centre.
• Partaw Naderi (2008). Poems. Yama Yari (trans.). Enitharmon/Poetry Translation Centre.

Anthologies

• Susanne Ehrhardt; Paul May; Lucy Anne Watt; Robert Crawford; Sarah Maguire; Mark Ford (1989). New Chatto Poets: Number Two. Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-3393-1.

References

1. "Sarah Maguire obituary". The Guardian. 14 November 2017. Archived from the original on 8 May 2023.
2. "Sarah Maguire | Cross-Fertilisation: Poet in Residence at the Chelsea Physic Gardens", The Poetry Society.
3. Robert Potts (21 July 2007). "All this time on my knees — The Pomegranates of Kandahar by Sarah Maguire review". The Guardian. London.
4. Fran Brearton. "The Pomegranates of Kandahar by Sarah Maguire review". Tower Poetry. Archived from the original on 8 November 2007.
5. "Translators | Sarah Maguire", Poetry Translation Centre.
6. Introducing the Sarah Maguire Prize, Poetrytranslation.org, 22 Sept 2019. https://www.poetrytranslation.org/articles/introducing-the-sarah-maguire-prize

External links

• "Sarah Maguire", The British Council
• James Byrne, "Interview", Wolf Magazine