Dispatches

The Assignment

“the poem gripped me and would not let go until I’d turned it into English” | Chana Block on her first translation.

Ukrainian Feature: Words for War

“For many of the poets, the war is not some distant event one hears about in the papers. It is part of their personal history”| poems from Ukraine, edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky

In Praise of Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021)

“For years now, as my plane begins its descent toward the airport outside of Kraków, the city where I was born and raised but left years ago, I recite them quietly” | by Piotr Florczyk

Yulya Tsimafeyeva’s Poetry of One-Legged Wonder

“Between these poets of cultural affirmation and the poets of silence… comes a voice of a woman—and a woman in a patriarchal world is always somewhat of an immigrant” | by Valzhyna Mort

Poetry and Plastics

“But how can poetry tackle such an urgent and growing global problem?” | Claire Cox reports on her time with The Clean Seas Odyssey

The Perpetual Ideal

Memories of a master class with Derek Walcott. “I wonder, though, if we ever astonished Derek, even just a little.” | by Patrick James Errington

An Image Writes the Poem

“I see the photo of a hole in the bombed ceiling of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi” | Poet Alan Semerdjian on “The Hole in the Church of My Heart”

Images from Gaza: Nasser Rabah

Nasser Rabah is a Palestinian poet born in Gaza. He has published several books of poetry in Arabic. In the United States his work has appeared in journals such as Two Lines (Center for the Art of Translation)  and elsewhere. Writing about him in LA Review of Books, Joanna Chen, a poet who lives in …

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On the Vulnerability of a Strong Poet: Translating Akhmatova’s Female Love – An Essay by Olga Livshin

On the Vulnerability of a Strong Poet: Translating Akhmatova’s Female Love In the West, Anna Akhmatova is broadly known as one of the most powerful voices for poetry of witness. If you are a non-Russian-speaking reader and have read any Akhmatova, you probably read her long, epic, narrative poem Requiem, which captures the collective sorrows …

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Letter from the Caribbean: Life and Times — On John Robert Lee’s Collected Poems 1975-2015

Life and Times — On John Robert Lee’s Collected Poems 1975-2015 By Vladimir Lucien About a month ago, I saw Robert Lee having lunch with a few of his mates. “Old boys”, I thought to myself (which is what his alma mater —also mine— calls their alumni). Something about the collegial, somewhat mischievous laughter, and …

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Letter from Beijing 3: How would Li Bai Write Today? 北京来信3:李白活在今天会怎样写诗?

LETTER FROM BEIJING 3: HOW WOULD LI BAI WRITE TODAY? 北京来信3:李白活在今天会怎样写诗?     LIGHT UP By Chen Dongdong 陈东东   Light up an oil lamp in the rocks so they can see the sea. Let them see the sea and the antique fish. See the light too, a lamp held high on the hill.   Light …

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Essay: In the River

In the River by Carmen Radley   Last May, on a warm Friday evening, I stood on the north bank of the Rio Grande. I gazed south and noted that the landscape—from the dust the color of linen that puffed at each footfall to the writhing ridge of mountains blue with distance—was sublime but desiccated, …

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