U.K. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's The Owl and the Nightingale (Princeton Univ., May) is a translation of a medieval English debate poem.
"This translation unexpectedly became a lockdown project. I became a writer in residence in my own office, and like many writers, found it difficult to concentrate with the background of bereavement and anxiety. One of the great tragedies of lockdown and pandemic was that the normal channels of communication were completely disrupted. I was without all the coincidences of everyday life you need for your own writing. Working on a poem of debate in the middle of a time of great silence was odd, and I don't think I fully processed that.