Slovak poetry in English anthologies

Abstract

The paper gives a survey of English translations of Slovak poetry published in anthologies, from a seminal John Bowring’s anthology in 1832 up to the latest selection from six Slovak poets published in Great Britain in 2010. It attempts to chronologically introduce and briefly analyse each of thirty anthologies in which Slovak poetry appeared up to the present time. We also included those that were primarily focused on Czech poetry but published poets of Slovak origin writing in Czech like Ján Kollár and Pavol Jozef Šafárik. As it can be seen from many analysed books, Slovak poetry is not as unknown in the English speaking world as it seems at first sight. However, this penetration has met with difficulties from the unsystematic approach of editors through limited reach of some anthologies published within compatriot communities to varied skills of particular translators.