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Poetry

A river with marshes on the left bank and buildings and trees on the right.

The Oder River in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice. Sebastian Wallroth, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Rolled-up Paper Gun

By Małgorzata Gorczyńska

Western intellectuals lack the historical experience common in other parts of the world.

Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal

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A close-up of white smoke with a black background.

Photo by George Becker

What is Poetry?

By Gozo Yoshimasu

The gateway of poetry is opened by frail things.

Translated from Japanese by Sayuri Okamoto

This picture has the cover of the book Again I Hear These Waters by Shalim M. Hussain on the right...

“This, Here, Is Home”: Shalim M. Hussain on Miyah Poetry from Assam

By Uttaran Das Gupta

The songs are part of our lives in the chars. They have been passed down to us and adapted through generations and are a testament to how life and religion become one in the everyday.

A black and white portrait of writer and editor Khairani Barokka holding a pen

Photo: Derrick Kakembo

“Curiosity and Excitement”: An Interview with Khairani Barokka

By Samantha Schnee

It’s about showing how poetry in translation is intertwined with innumerable parts of society, and can create resonances and collaborations that are precious, that last, that matter.

Young Russophonia: New Literature in Russian

By Hilah Kohen & Josephine von Zitzewitz

These writings spark immediate conversations through rapid-fire literary texts rather than typical online commentary.

“Reality (Unfortunately?) Varies”: A Conversation Between Galina Rymbu and Ilya Danishevsky

By Galina Rymbu

It seems to me—perhaps naively—that poetry has the ability to examine things in a maximally authentic way.

Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher & Helena Kernan

Portrait of Filipino poet Enrique Villasis.

PHOTO BY FACEBOOK/EN VILLASIS

An Interview with WWB Poetry Contest Winners Enrique Villasis and Bernard Capinpin

By Words Without Borders

I was fascinated by the art of ekphrasis: the discipline of transforming the visual into the verbal to stimulate different kinds of seeing.

Portrait of Bryan Mendoza, translator of Julio Pazos Barrera's Pegasus Autopsy.

An Interview with WWB Poetry Contest Winner Bryan Mendoza

By Words Without Borders

The difficulty was mainly in how concise the Spanish was—to re-create that in English took some trial and error.

Photo of translator, writer, and curator Nguyễn-Hoàng Quyên.

Nguyễn-Hoàng Quyên. Photo by Gianmarco Carlone

An Interview with WWB Poetry Contest Winner Nguyễn-Hoàng Quyên

By Words Without Borders

Making texts that are potentially wrong or slippery keeps me heedful of officious frames of correctness.

A Note from Contest Judge David Tomas Martinez

It was an Hunahpúan effort to choose only four poems from this extraordinarily strong pool of poems.

Learning Late Letters

By Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên

The dead don't let us go, I say to my friend Sirius, putting my father's letters in a drawer.

Translated from Vietnamese by the author

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An image Juan Arabia, director of Buenos Aires Poetry.

Confronting the Institution of Language: Juan Arabia on Poetry and the Pandemic

By María Agustina Pardini

“In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, Buenos Aires Poetry has allowed readers to download almost all of the catalog for free.”

Urdu Feminist Writing: New Approaches

By Asad Alvi, Amna Chaudhry, Mehak Faisal Khan, Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, Geeta Patel & Haider Shahbaz

A dispiriting narrowness has defined canons of Urdu feminist writing from previous decades.

I Spat Out This Poem

By Yasmeen Hameed

I swallowed fire / And forgot you were an ocean.

Translated from Urdu by Mehr Afshan Farooqi

Sappho’s Ephemera

Her sagacity immortalized even her scattered, sporadic axioms.

Translated from Urdu by Geeta Patel

Behind Closed Doors: Outing the New Chilean Narrative

By Lina Meruane

Contrary to the epic, totalizing, and politically engaged narratives of the Latin American Boom, the scope of the stories here is narrow, intimate, more local than ever before.

Remembering John Ashbery

By Hiroaki Sato

Ashbery fetched me a drink. I got drunk fast. And what did I prattle on about? The art of translation!

Alms for the Versemaker: An International Appreciation of John Ashbery

By Eric M. B. Becker

One year after the passing of John Ashbery, three poets and translators pay tribute to the great American poet.

The Poem as Epiphyte

Hope in the right place, you said, is hope misplaced

The Poetics of John Ashbery: Reflections from the Poet’s Uruguayan Translator

By Roberto Echavarren

John Ashbery wrote to be read rather than heard.

Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle

The Poet Who Asked for Forgiveness

By Gwak Moon-an

He came to accept that art had no value unless it was used as a tool of propaganda.

Translated from Korean by Shirley Lee

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