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Poetry

Children of the Xam

By Khadija Tracey Heeger

Watch Khadija Tracey Heeger read her poem “Children of the Xam” in the original Kaaps.Poet Khadija Tracey Heeger honors a rich and complex heritage.Between the vertebrae of the Langeberg…

Translated from Kaaps by Olivia M. Coetzee & Khadija Tracey Heeger

Multilingual

Affirm

By Martin SIEP Muller

Watch the music video for “Affirm” performed by SIEP, in the original Kaaps.This rap performance by SIEP uplifts and speaks truth.I affirm the soul in each personI affirm the soul in each…

Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal

Multilingual

I Lift My Eyes Up

By Nashville Blaauw

Where moving out is mostly in a coffin

Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal

scratch cards

By Shirmoney Rhode

and that which has no use will be discarded

Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal

Multilingual

A blue and yellow ceramic bowl in the shape of an ocean wave.

Wave bowl attributed to Christopher Dresser, ca. 1880. Glazed earthenware. Public domain, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, James David Draper Gift, in memory of Robert Isaacson, 2001.

Eyes of the Wave

By Francis C. Macansantos

Eyes of blue-green watch you, / Dimpled smiles hidden in water.

Translated from Zamboangueño Chavacano by the author

MultimediaMultilingual

Mr. Marcos (A Soliloquy)

By Francis C. Macansantos

The moon taunts, smiles, / “Come into my parlor, old man.”

Translated from Zamboangueño Chavacano by the author

MultimediaMultilingual

Pantun

By Nironjini Pillay, Shagina Bhalan, Nadarajan Mudalier & Mahendran Pillay

We are known as the Chetti of Melaka, / Guardians of tradition and culture.

Translated from Chetti Malay by Nurul Huda Hamzah & Stefanie Shamila Pillai

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The Land of Our Lives

By Magin Mario Balthazaar

The fish sing over here, / The fish sing.

Translated from Sri Lanka Portuguese by Hugo C. Cardoso

MultimediaMultilingual

My Beloved Lady

By Magin Mario Balthazaar

There will be no trouble, life will be good, / Come and dance the káfriinha.

Translated from Sri Lanka Portuguese by Hugo C. Cardoso

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Macau, Our Homeland

By H. Miguel de Senna Fernandes

A tiny land of a thousand wonders / A flower for anyone in grief

Translated from Patuá by the author

MultimediaMultilingual

Afroinsularity

By Conceição Lima

They left the islands a legacy / of hybrid words and gloomy plantations

Translated from Portuguese by Shook

MultimediaMultilingual

[0]

By Lauri García Dueñas

to the rain looming over mexico city open your jaws for us make kids laugh dogs bark

Translated from Spanish by Olivia Lott

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Monsoon Fable

frog cries saturate. life inundates. crane stares blacken. death curdles. ancestral winds whirl.

Translated from Malay by Thira Mohamad

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Poem in June

By T. Alias Taib

a field stretches, a pilgrim shuffles in despair

Translated from Malay by Eddin Khoo

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Linguistic Threads, translated by Alta L. Price

Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.As you make headwaybetween…

Translated from Italian by Alta L. Price

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Linguistic Threads, translated by Candice Whitney

Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In the step that you takeBetween…

Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney

MultimediaMultilingual

Linguistic Threads, translated by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah

Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In that step you takebetween…

Translated from Italian by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah

MultimediaMultilingual

Cereté, Córdoba

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

I love you all even more in exile

Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott

You Will Tell Them

By Mariem Mint Derwich

You will say to them that she sleeps in the calabash of worlds

Translated from French by Emma Ramadan

Multilingual

Say to the Tomb

Here the poem ends

Translated from French by Emma Ramadan

Multilingual

It’s difficult to calculate the influence of the missus of the night

By Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir

it’s difficult to appraise the unseeable

Translated from Icelandic by Meg Matich

Multimedia

A wrecked wooden ship lying on its side, half-buried in the sand

Photo by Tradd Harter on Unsplash

Sinkings

By Haukur Ingvarsson

the glacier is black / polar bears run on hot sand

Translated from Icelandic by Meg Matich

Multimedia

In Human-Made Society

By Eva Rún Snorradóttir

In order to get a visa, they had to explain to him how two women went about having sex.

Translated from Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer

Essays, or the Opening and Closing of the Okra Flowers During the Eclipse

The work of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt and his relationship to plants is reimagined in this poem by 2019 Poems in Translation Contest winner Alba Cid from her collection Atlas.Light is choral…

Translated from Galician by Megan Berkobien & Jacob Rogers

Multilingual

[My mother works in a cannery]

By Luisa Castro

Love is a work of art in a can.

Translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Multilingual

Stress

I suspect something in Kinue / reminds him of his own life.

Translated from Galician by Erín Moure

This, I Don’t Know

By Samuel Solleiro

These are the years directly preceding the onset of vulnerability.

Translated from Galician by Neil Anderson

Letter to Ukraine

By Danyil Zadorozhnyi

Like the border between the word leave / and the concept of returning

Translated from Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler & Reilly Costigan-Humes

blurry image of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Petersburg behind a canal

Murashko olga, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

About Time to Smile at Homeless People

By Dinara Rasuleva

Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.

Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen

Multilingual

Three Observations, Untitled

By Ksenia Zheludova

The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.

Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz

MultimediaMultilingual

Destined from Birth

By Xenia Emelyanova

Enough of their butchery.

Translated from Russian by Katherine E. Young

Multilingual

In Puget Sound

By Isabel Zapata

before their paths divided, they formed, together, three glints of light and shadow moving on at last

Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers

Elephant

O, it is a defeated god, approaching the dusk of time.

Translated from Chinese by Xin Xu

Birds in Flight, 1965

By Enrique Villasis

Not as a multitude, but as one.

Translated from Filipino by Bernard Capinpin

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Brown steel bell hanging from a mint-green wooden wall

Photo by Luís Perdigão on Unsplash

Trial Run

nothing is certain but and taxes

Translated from Chinese by Chenxin Jiang

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Pegasus Autopsy

By Julio Pazos Barrera

Soon the volunteers will arrive

Translated from Spanish by Bryan Mendoza

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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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The Red Rooster and Inevitable Saint

By Julia Wong Kcomt

“She was hot, your aunt Carmen, / she didn’t look Chinese.”

Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue

Multilingual

Here in Chorrillos

By Doris Moromisato

My eyes fill with rowboats

Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright

Multilingual

Four Short Poems

I have licked the tip of evil

Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue

COVID-19

By Arlinda Guma

In Germany the statue of Marx is playing chess with the family doctor

Translated from Albanian by Peter Constantine

Dawn

By Miguelángel Meza

water boils up from grouped stones, grips me.

Translated from Guaraní by Tracy K. Lewis & Miguelángel Meza

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My Fire

By Alba Eiragi Duarte

At light of dawn I rise and make fire, / and dry in nascent fire-gleam the space where dew once pearled.

Translated from Guaraní by Tracy K. Lewis & Alba Eiragi Duarte

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A hummingbird at sunset

Photo by Ramona Edwards on Unsplash

Our Father Is Tired

By Susy Delgado

a dark stillness / goes about sowing death.

Translated from Guaraní by Susan Smith Nash & Susy Delgado

Multilingual

Serpent

By Alberto Luna

I alone / plunge my roots / and outstretch my branches.

Translated from Guaraní by Susan Smith Nash & Susy Delgado

MultimediaMultilingual

[When I was born my mother]

By Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto

I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman

Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti

Multilingual

The top of a medical IV pole with an IV bag

Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Letter to the Father

By Ricardo Domeneck

I ask myself / if mother's ban / against confessing / . . . is still in place

Translated from Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan

In Praise of the Nude Body

By Mutsuo Takahashi

They’re as naked as the day they were born

Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

Gifts

By Mutsuo Takahashi

The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece

Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

Post-Op

By Mariana Spada

somewhere in between the promise and the certainty of rain / the bounds of things / —all things, including you— / are blurred

Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers

On Masks

take custody of my mouth

Translated from Chinese by Shuyu Guo

notes from this city

By Carolina Pihelgas

the window frames have become national borders, the doorknob a border guard.

Translated from Estonian by Adam Cullen

Multilingual

On Beginnings

By Filinto Elísio

Inert stone, atomic, / nuclear before life.

Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar

Multilingual

Lisbon – 1971

By Arménio Vieira

In point of fact, Lisbon was not waiting there [to greet us.

Translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker & Shook

Caviar, Champagne, and Fantasy

By Arménio Vieira

The Esplanada, thick with the scent of fragrant [DDT

Translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker & Shook

Song for My Father

By Filinto Elísio

The music played / on Apollo 11, it turned out, was “Georgia / On My Mind,” sung by Ray Charles.

Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar

Multilingual

From the Red Desert

I write to you from the red zone.

Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti

Multilingual

Shelter in Poems: Poetry to Break the Isolation of Social Distancing

By Words Without Borders

Words Without Borders is leaning into poetry's ability to fill the void of isolation.

Notes from Kolkata

By Sonnet Mondal

”Amnesia shrouds a generation.”

Translated from Bengali by the author

The Poem

By Mohsen Emadi

the poem is riding a bicycle; / trembling and in haste.

Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

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