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Contributor

Luljeta Lleshanaku

Contributor

Luljeta Lleshanaku

Luljeta Lleshanaku is one of Albania's foremost younger poets. Born in Elbasan in 1968, she grew up under virtual house arrest because of her family's opposition to the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. She was not permitted to attend college or publish her poetry until the weakening and eventual collapse of the Communist regime in the early 1990s. She is among the first generation of poets to emerge out of the cultural wasteland of enforced socialist realism in the arts, reinventing Albanian poetry almost entirely from scratch. Her published books include The Sleepwalker's Eyes, 1992; Sunday Bells, 1994; Half-Cubism, 1996; and Antipastoral, 1999.

Articles by Luljeta Lleshanaku

The Postman
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
He comes to me every day with a cruel bounce in his stepwith eyes darting like little green flames—the town postman in a heavy, damp coatjovially announcing he has nothing for me.I see his blue…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
Shadows on the Snow
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
The snow comes late this year. Violet shadowsdoze like shepherds rounda white fire.The swaying shadow of a fence looks like a woman's clavicle—a woman who dreams of her lover's snowy journey…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli