IN THE  context of the forthcoming EU referendum, the refugee crisis and rising tabloid xenophobia, it is more important than ever that we think carefully about our relationship with our neighbours on this planet.

Where does the “national” end and the “international” begin? If, as the Italian writer Primo Levi once put it, “the anguish of each is the anguish of all,” why is it so hard to shed our own thick skins?

I can’t think of a better way of thinking about this than by reading Centres of Cataclysm: Celebrating Fifty Years of Modern Poetry in Translation (Bloodaxe Books, £15). Edited by Sasha Dugdale and David and Helen Constantine, it brings together half a century of Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), the magazine described by John Berger as a kind of Fifth International for “anyone who wants to change the world and see it changed.”