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"Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing  with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring  with replacing the noun. It is doing that always  doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.  Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and  pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is  what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no  matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a  great many kinds of poetry." 
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[Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), U.S. author. "Poetry and Grammar," Lectures in America, Random House (1935).]

The Irish Special edition launch at the
Cork International Poetry Festival 2017

Do We Belong Where We Return Or Where We Die by Nikola Madzirov

Why Read War Poetry? by Constance Ruzich

From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill

On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner

Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott

For a small-ish language community, Dutch writers achieve a remarkable international resonance, and poets seem to have been served exceptionally well by their translators, if recent publications in English are anything to go by. If one was looking for some recurring character across the wide variety of poetic invention among them it might be a kind of lucid wryness and clarity of gaze, an assertion that however historical or mythical association might illuminate our contemporary concerns, the heart of the matter lies under our noses, in the streets and lanes, in our apartments and institutions. Interestingly, the latest translations of entirely new collections – by the marvellous Toon Tellegen and Nachoem M. Wijnberg – fit this paradigm less readily, flying further towards the visionary perhaps, yet even here the world of experience remains entirely this one, the time still absolutely now.

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Read the essay here

from the Guest Editor of Issue XXXIII
​

Everything is possible in a poem. It is a safe space, a cage for our pains and fears, a bomb shelter, a breath of air when you get numb under the thunder of explosions.
Everything is possible within a poem. If literature is there to order the world’s chaos, then poetry is its most condensed form, thick, precise, and well sealed. You take a piece of reality, be it physical or metaphysical, you word it as if it were to be put in a frame, roll it up, put it in a bottle, and let it float on the surface of the ocean until it reaches its accidental addressee-the reader. 

Read more

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Book reviews

International Poetry of the First World War Ed. Constance Ruzich (Bloomsbury, 2020) reviewed by Kathryn White

Monthly features

To Translate the War by Aneta Kamińska

Poet in Focus​
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Poems: Yasuhiro Yotsumoto

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editors' Recommendations
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November: Poems by Jaspreet Singh (Bayeaux Arts, 2017) reviewed by Christine Wiesenthal

After Grief, by Shikandin, Red River, 2021 reviewed by Pramila Venkateswaran

Witnesses of Remembrance by Kunwar Narain (translated by Apurva Narain) (Eka, 2021) reviewed by Mathura

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Tidal Events- Selected Poems by Mária Ferenčuhová reviewed by Anna Blasiak

Wings to Soar High, by Amir Or reviewed by Seth Michelson

War Music – An Account of Homer’s Iliad, Faber and Faber, edited by Christopher Reid

The Singer of Alleppey by Pramila Venkateswaran, Shanti Arts LLC (2018)

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Featured Poet

Victoria Amelina is a Ukrainian novelist, essayist and activist. She was born in 1986 in the city of Lviv, Ukraine. Victoria Amelina is winner of the Joseph Conrad literature prize 2021 and finalist of European Union Prize for Literature 2019. ​She is most known for her two novels, 'Fall Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens' and 'Dom’s Dream Kingdom'.
​

Editor's Choice

Lesyk Panasiuk is a Ukrainian writer, translator, designer and performance artist. He is the author of three poetry books (in Ukrainian), books in translation published in Romanian and Russian. His works works have been translated into 20 languages. He has been a translator and co-translator of books by Valzhyna Mort, Siarhey Prylutski, Dmitry Kuzmin, Artem Werle and 3 anthologies of Belarusian literature. 

 Editor's Choice

 
Olga Bragina (Kyiv 1982) is the author of six books: Applications (2011), Namedropping (2012), Background Light (2018), Speech is Like a Flash Lamp (2020),  Prisms of Pleroma (2021), and Pelicans (2021). Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Vozdukh, Interpoezia, Polutona, Novaya Yunost, Volga, Zinziver, Words without Borders, AGNI, and Springhouse Journal.

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János Áfra, Zoltán Csehy, Mónika Ferencz, András Gerevich, Ákos Győrff, Benji Horváth, Tibor Juhász, István Kemény, Árpád Kollár, Dénes Krusovszky, Gábor Lanczkor, Zoltán Lesi, János Marno, Hajnal Csilla Nagy and Others. ​(edited by Lanczkor Gábor ​and Balazs Szollossy)

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John Montague,Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, John W. Sexton, Matthew Geden, James Harpur, Bernard O’Donoghue, Moya Cannon, Mary Noonan, Enda Wyley, Paul Casey, Seán Lysaght, Celia de Fréine and others. (​Edited by Patrick Cotter)

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Martinus Nijhoff, Gerrit Achterberg, M. Vasalis, Hanny Michaelis, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Lucebert, Hans Lodeizen, Mark Boog, Hagar Peeters, Maria Barnas, Alfred Schaffer, Mustafa Stitou, Ramsey Nasr, Kira Wuck, Ester Naomi Perquin, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Donald Gardner and Jane Draycott (Edited by David Colmer)

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.​Anju Makhija, Rizio Yohannan Raj,Manohar Shetty, Arundhathi Subramaniam, A.J. Thomas, Sampurna Chattarji, K.Srilata, Mani Rao, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and others. (Edited by Abhay K)

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"A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named." 
[Friedrich Von Schlegel (1772-1829), German philosopher. Aphorism 114 in Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798), translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Pennsylvania University Press (1968).] 

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