Eastern/Central Europe and Excursions elsewhere Summer, 2011 Summers in Lithuania are usually quite lovely. The cities are not overwhelmed with zealous tourists taking photos of something they surely know about only for the moment. No fireplugs in Vilnius for them to mark like an impoverished version of a wise …
Jacek Gutorow Opole, Poland I’m reading some Polish poets in English translation and asking myself: how to verbalize one’s intention in language? How to articulate and, at the same time, preserve something that emerges as inarticulate, wanting in words and basically having the aspect of the thing which is yet to be expressed? Very often …
Congratulations to Kimberly Burwik, the winner of our inaugural C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize! Burwik’s poem “And No Thief Approacheth and No Moth Corrupteth” was chosen by the editorial staff of Poetry International. We would like to acknowledge Emari DiGiorgio as runner up for the poem “Calvin Pees on Iraq.” Honorable mentions include Amanda Auchter’s “Checkpoint …
by Kerry Shawn Keys Eastern/Central Europe and Excursions elsewhere Spring, 2011 To begin this first Letter From Vilnius, in what entertains to be a bi-monthly series for Poetry International, I believe some very brief background information is essential to the context and purport of the writing. I first visited Lithuania …
By Paweł Marcinkiewicz Polish Poetry in Sweden “Sorangens Folkhogskola,” is a local university in Nassjo, a small town in southern Sweden. Since 1987, it has organized one of the most interesting poetry festivals in the world. The “Nassjo poesifestivalen” (http://www.lj.se/poesifestivalen) usually has a thematic focus. Previously, they had an American year when they invited such …
From Margo Berdeshevsky Notes from this side of the Seine: Paris, winter rides into spring, 2011 Dear ones, Winter was “icumin in, laude sing goddam.” Well it did. And hence, a quiet winter season where one wanted to hide, mostly, and think of nothing. Except perhaps a solarized and pewter river. Or the …
Eve Grubin describes how she met Sinead Morrissey among other things in this letter from London.
from Margo Berdeshevsky Paris, late autumn, 2010 Dear Ones: I’ve been on the road these recent days. But carrying my European and Parisian-influenced mentality with me along the way, I aver. I won’t comment here on the endless French strikes; or even on the most recent American losses; there is and has been more …
From Azadeh Kamyar Taste of sun I can still feel it in my mouth the taste like sun ravenously we drank together from a bowl full of snow Call me Winter is close … I don’t live in Tehran. This crowded metropolis is not a proper place to live for such an introverted …
from Margo Berdeshevsky Paris, autumn 2010: King Lear: O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady: If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st Which …