The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, Ivano Fermini trans. Ian Seed, Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review, ISBN: 978-0999705827, £15.95

The Dice Cup, Max Jacob (Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Seed) Wakefield Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1-939663-83-6, $19.95

The Central Laboratory, Max Jacob, Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow, ISBN 978-1-939663-80-1, $22.95

The joys of reviewing translations from languages one less-than-half knows are boundless. This is especially the case when the originals are by a poet I’d never heard of before; but in the case of Ivano Fermini I expect I won’t be alone in that ignorance. In fact, so little is known about Fermini that I had a moment wondering if he might be an obscure member of Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imagined Authors, but no, he’s real enough.
On the plus side, my sketchy Italian and the lack of biographical information meant…