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Contributor

Shpresa Qatipi

Contributor

Shpresa Qatipi

Shpresa Qatipi is a professor of English at Tirana University. In addition to many poems by Luljeta Lleshanaku, she has translated and published short stories, essays, and articles for the Eurolindja Publishing House in Albania and the Soros Foundation.

Articles by Shpresa Qatipi

Irreversible Landscapes
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Irreversible is the riveron whose backdead leaves swirl.Irreversible are words-the dust of roadsmingled with breath, warm breaththat sticks to our trembling lipslike fog to a boat.Irreversible is this…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
The Island You and I
living on an islandfar from cities with traffic lights and people.Outside we hear the rustlingsof a bed of reedswhere the wind with its toothless mouth blowsluring in tides.A boat is moored on the shorea…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
February Sky
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Large, gray, sprawledlike an old elephant.Winter is ending.Low, sloping roofs are overturned boatsslumbering along the shores of drowsiness.Twenty years of an oak tree’s lifeis burned instantly…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
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 uniform…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
The Cinema
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Without failSundays at the cinemawere always rainy daysbig black umbrellasclashing against the ticket booth.The doorman among the torn stubslooked like a watercolorhung crookedly on a kitchen wall.We…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
It’s Not Time For . . .
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
It’s not time for a change.As long as I can rememberit’s never been time for a change.Like cars that screech to a halthouses standpoised in their old breeding groundof rotten acacia leaves.From…
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