Georgian poet and translators win Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation

On the Contrary by Georgian poet Lia Sturua, translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field, has been awarded the 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation.

The prize is an international biennial award for the best book of poetry in English translation by a living poet from beyond Europe. The winning poet and their translator(s) share an award of £3,000.

Sarah Maguire (1957-2017) was the founder of the Poetry Translation Centre and a champion of international poetry. This year’s winner was announced at a ceremony on Monday 9th September at the Brunei Gallery SOAS, University of London.

On the Contrary was published by Fal and supported by Writers’ House Georgia.

Ian McMillan, chair of the judging panel, said: “This book encapsulated what this award is about. It  encompasses all the vibrancy that poetry has to offer, while reflecting the turbulence of our fractured society."

Georgian poet Lia Sturua, born in 1939, went on to lecture at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, where she was a senior researcher at the Shota Rustaveli Institute for Georgian Literature. Since 1999, she has been a literature consultant at the Galaktion Tabidze House Museum. Her first collection, Trees in the City, was published in 1962, followed by 12 more books. As well as poetry, Sturua has published prose, including three novels. Her poetry has been translated into German, French, English and Finnish.

Natalia Bukia-Peters is a freelance translator, interpreter and teacher of Georgian and Russian. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, and has worked with the Poetry Translation Centre since 2013.  Her translations have been published in the UK (by Fal publications, Francis Boutle, Bloodaxe Books) and in the US. 

Her most recent poetry books are Diana Anphimiadi’s Why I No Longer Write Poems (Bloodaxe Books), co-translated with Jean Sprackland; and Lia Sturua’s On the Contrary (Fal), co-translated with Victoria Field. Field is a writer, researcher and poetry therapist. Her most recent poetry collection is A Speech of Birds (Francis Boutle, 2020).

Field’s book The Lost Boys (Waterloo, 2013) won the Holyer an Gof Prize for poetry and drama, and her memoir of marriage and pilgrimage, Baggage: A Book of Leavings was published by Francis Boutle in 2016.

Field has also co-edited three books on therapeutic writing and publishes and presents widely on writing and healing. She is an Associate in the Academy of Sustainable Futures at Canterbury Christ Church University.

The judges of this year’s prize were Ian McMillan, English poet and presenter on “The Verb” on BBC Radio 3, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Irish poet, academic and translator, and Ghareeb Iskander, a prize-winning Iraqi poet and translator.

The shortlisted books will feature in a retail partnership with the Poetry Book Society.