A Bird Called Elaeus

About the Author

David Constantine lectured in German at Durham from 1969 to 1981 and at Oxford from 1981 to 2000. He was co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2004 to 2013. He was named winner of The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2020, and presented with the award by HM the Queen in 2021. He has published eleven books of poetry, six translations and a novel with Bloodaxe. His poetry titles include Collected Poems (2004), which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Nine Fathom Deep (2009); Elder (2014); and Belongings (2020). His Bloodaxe translations include editions of Henri Michaux and Philippe Jaccottet; his Selected Poems of Hlderlin, winner of the European Poetry Translation Prize, and his version of Hlderlin's Sophocles, combined in his new expanded Hlderlin edition, Selected Poetry (2018); and his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter Than Air, winner of the Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. His translation, A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology, is published by Bloodaxe in 2024. Other books include his translation of Goethe's Faust in Penguin Classics (2005, 2009) and his co-translation (with Tom Kuhn) of The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (W.W. Norton, 2018). He has published six collections of short stories, and won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award in 2013 for his collection Tea at the Midland (Comma Press). Four other short story collections are published by Comma Press. His story 'In Another Country' was adapted into 45 Years, a major film starring Tom Courtney and Charlotte Rampling.