Published by Faber & Faber, 1984, 123 pages. “I was stretched between contemplationof a motionless pointand the command to participateactively in history.”—Away from It All, quote from Czesław Miłosz, Native Realm: A Search for Definition The thread that runs through this collection the poet’s role in history and politics. Is the poet an observer or …
Category: Poetry
Dearly: Margaret Atwood
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2020, 124 pages “Dearly beloved, gathered here togetherin this closed drawer,fading now, I miss you.I miss the missing, those who left earlier.I miss even those who are still here.I miss you all dearly.Dearly do I sorrow for you.” “You can wander away. You can get lost.Words can do that.”—Dearly These …
No Gods Live Here: Conceição Lima
Translated from Portuguese by Shook.Published by Phoneme Media and Deep Vellum, 2024, 255 pages. The original versions of the books from which the poems are taken were published in 2004, 2006, 2011, 2014 and 2024. “The dead ask:Why do roots sprout from our feet? ...What was this kingdom that we planted?”—From Plantation “The enigma is some …
Sacrifice: Cecilia Woloch
Published by Tebot Bach, 1997, 95 pages. “I wonder if any life goes far enough to ever heal itself.” The vivid and sensual poems tell the story of a woman from childhood to adulthood. They act as snapshots, highlighting important moments of her life. The poems in the first section are about childhood, life seen …
My Hollywood and Other Poems: Boris Dralyuk
Published by Paul Dry Books, 2022, 69 pages. Step into this book and be transported to Hollywood, a city of émigrés and faded glamour. It is a city that is constantly changing, where the old is demolished to make way for the new, and where what was once fêted is now forgotten. In the first …
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Iep Jāltok—Poems from a Marshallese Daughter: Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner
Published by the University of Arizona Press, 2017, 82 pages. From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in what is now the Marshall Islands, an event which seems to have slipped into the mists of history. But it is still very real for the islanders, as Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, a Marshallese poet, …
Continue reading Iep Jāltok—Poems from a Marshallese Daughter: Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner
Autumn Journal: Louis MacNeice
Published by Faber & Faber, 1939, 96 pages. Louis MacNeice wrote this “journal”—a poem split into 24 parts—from August 1938 to the beginning of 1939. It was a time of uncertainty, with the Second World War looming. This is a poem of endings: the ending of a love affair, of summer, of the year, of …
The World’s Wife: Carol Ann Duffy
Published by Faber & Faber / Picador, 1999, 96 pages. History and myth have often focused on men: Sisyphus, Lazarus, Herod, Pilate, Midas, Faust, Freud… But what of their wives? Who were they and what did they think of their men? These women are brought to life in Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems. The …
Kumukanda: Kayo Chingonyi
Published by Chatto Poetry, 2017, 52 pages. I’ve discovered new poets as part of the reading challenge, and two of them have blown me away. One is Kendall Hippolyte from St. Lucia, and the second is Kayo Chingonyi from Zambia. In north-western Zambia, tribes have an initiation ritual for young boys called kumukunda. During the …
Life’s sentences
Published by Picador, 2015, 60 pages.Review by Usha Raman I have several books of poetry on my shelf...and now, on my Kindle. I leaf (or swipe) through them in the spaces between fiction, when I am recovering from an intense or troubling story or when the weather puts me in the mood for contemplation rather …
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