Celebrating World Poetry Day

By Susan Harris

Today is World Poetry Day, and in celebration we invite you to explore our rich archives. Start with Ilya Kaminsky's brilliant manifesto on poetry in translation, "Correspondences in the Air," from our Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, and then turn to the nearly six hundred poems we've published. You'll find poems from languages minor and major, by old masters and young finds, on the quotidian and  the otherworldly, in tones elegiac and ecstatic. But as Ilya says, "One must leave all those labels aside and read these poems for what they do to our language, our emotional and spiritual lives."

In other poetry news, the BBC, in cooperation with the Scottish Poetry Library, is broadcasting a poem from each of the 216 countries participating in the Olympics.  Our own Ghirmai Yohannes's "Unjust Praise," translated by Charles Cantalupo and Ghirmai Negash, will represent Eritrea; we'll let you know when it's live.

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