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WWB in 2023: The Year in Poetry

December 2023

Text reading WWB in 2023: The Year in Poetry over a photo of an elderly person with their hands...

WWB shares some of of our favorite poems published in the past year, translated from Ukrainian, Russian, Haitian Creole, Dutch, and Arabic.

An ivory background with water stains

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Kaddish: For Miklós Radnóti

If the light cries at what I write / it doesn’t mean that I’m alive

Translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter

Multilingual

Illuminated highways in Kyiv at night

Photo by Levi Kyiv on Unsplash

a moving grove

By Iryna Shuvalova

go escape while you can go escape

Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

MultimediaMultilingual

A flowering wisteria branch

Photo by Owen Yin on Unsplash

Black and White: Three Poems

By Nisrine Mbarki

they speak different languages but will learn each other’s

Translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison

Multilingual

A nitrate negative of Gaza

"Gaza. (Ghuzze). Section near the mosque" by American Colony in LOC.

Afterwords

By Sinan Antoon

After our house in Jabalia was destroyed we hid in the UNRWA school. But the bombs followed us there too . . .

Translated from Arabic by the author

Multimedia

Four cloth sheep hang from a child's ceiling mobile

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Poem for Children with Trouble Sleeping

By Jean D’Amérique

don’t beat yourself up / that’s why the cops have jobs

Translated from Haitian Creole by Nathan H. Dize

MultimediaMultilingual

Photo by Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash

The Last Letter of My Body

By Alex Averbuch

gardens are in bloom: cherries, oranges, mandarins / I talked through three phone cards in three days

Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher

Multilingual