Delighted & grateful to have new work up at 32 Poems…

Delighted to have two poems up at Granta!

Hope you enjoy this little snake eating its tail….

Very grateful to have seven new translations of Humberto Ak’abal’s poetry available at Lunch Ticket Review. Many thanks to judge, Alana Marie Levinson LaBrosse for these kind words:

“These translations are a cutting English in celebration of Akabal’s striking and bitter original. They show more allegiance in their confident and fluid departures than in their fidelity, demonstrating, as the poet himself says, “that god and justice / live in the soul.” There is a fierce and light freedom in these translations, reflected in their simplicity, that also lives in Akabal’s blackbirds, buzzards, and doves who perch and shit the same on cathedrals, palaces, rocks, trees, and fenceposts. Just as the only living prayer to rise in church comes from the trees we hewed into pews, so poetry lives with the tongues of translators who commit to their individual reading of a work. We can try to meet Akabal in English, but what might that mean? Translating an indigenous poet who spurned mainstream accolades from dominant, oppressive languages into yet one more dominant, oppressive language? We can only meet this translator’s Akabal and appreciate how much abides in these translations.”

Big thanks to The Nation & poetry editor, Kaveh Akbar, for sharing “I Wake in the Dark.”

On why we need to revisit old myths to create new ones…

What a delight to have this conversation recently with Mitzi Rapkin on her stellar “First Draft” podcast. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did… Be sure to check out the back catalog, too! George Saunders! Isabel Allende! Viet Thanh Nguyen! Diane Seuss!

I’ve been reading a lot of Vasko Popa, and thinking about the games of children…  Here’s the poem.

“A Stone,” which originally appeared in The Threepenny Review, is now up at Guesthouse.