With Children's Day 2024 just around the corner, the anticipation to commemorate the spirit and vibrancy of youth is palpable throughout India. This special day, falling on November 14, marks the birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's inaugural Prime Minister, who was

Couplets of Arabic poems in some artworks to enjoy reading poetry in Arabic language online. Get my poetry books, or get some poetry in Arabic language in posters to hang on your walls at home.

A Poignant Exploration of Youth and Self-Discovery Through Poetry

A Journey of Resilience and Self-Discovery Through Poetry and Stories

"A collection of haunting lyricism that evokes the beauty and hardship of the rural South, by a revered American master of letters— the award-winning, bestselling author of the novels Serena, Something Rich and Strange, and Above the Waterfall. In this incandescent, profound, and accessible collection, beloved and award-winning poet, novelist, and short-story writer Ron Rash vividly channels the rhythms of life in Appalachia, deftly capturing the panoply of individuals who are its heart and soul— men and women inured to misfortune and hard times yet defined by tremendous fortitude, resilience, and a fierce sense of community. In precise, supple language that swerves from the stark to the luminous, Rash richly describes the splendor of the natural landscape and poignantly renders the lives of those dependent on its bounty— in cotton mills and tobacco fields, farmlands and forests. The haunting memories and shared histories of these people— their rituals and traditions— animate this land, and are celebrated in Rash’s crystalline, intensely imagined verse. With an eye for the surprising and vivid detail, Ron Rash powerfully captures the sorrows and exaltations of this wondrous world he knows intimately. Illuminating and indelible, Poems demonstrates his rich talents and confirms his legacy as a standard-bearer for the literature of the American South." -- Description provided by publisher.

And now that it is morning I’ve lost all the poems from the night. I watched them leave, pack their bags and go. No way to stop them, I’m left alone, and with nothing to show, but my empty page and motionless pen. Until this night, I will wait for my dear poems return carrying […]

Knife Sharpener: Selected Poems

A childhood full of Christmasses in Wales has left IDEAS producer Tom Howell pining for a certain kind of nostalgic poem this winter. So he turns to poets to put into words a strange feeling of homesickness, nostalgia, and yearning in his documentary, Fireside and Icicles.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ‘21 University Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing, offers a brief survey of Irish history from earliest times to the present day through the prism of his own poems. No tickets required.

They're so bad, they're good!

The entries received for the ‘Dear Chennai, with love’ initiative by The Hindu Made of Chennai, captured the city in all its glory

Hinds, Gareth, 1971- author, illustrator

Kaufman, Caroline, author

Vancouver : Ronsdale Press, 1997.

Cupar, Fife, Scotland : Matecznik Press, [2024]

Peterborough, Ontario, Canada : Broadview Press, [2016]

Hong Kong : Asia 2000 Ltd., [2002]

London : Wellsweep, 1994.

Calligrapher Narayana Bhattathiri celebrates poet Kumaran Asan’s 150th birth anniversary with an exhibition of select works featuring verses

Nondestructive method authenticates works of Robert Burns, one of Scotland’s most famous writers

Mother's Day poems come in all shapes and sizes. Many address the poet’s memories of their mother. Others describe the poet’s gratitude for their mother. So

Father's Day poems. The choice of Father's Day poems may not be as wide as those that honor mothers or romantic love.

Seven poets from across the US share new works written and posted to Facebook within one day of the recent mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando . These poems are raw, personal, and earnest. In the wake of such horrific violence, host Will McInerney passes the mic to seven writers to help us understand what happened at the Pulse nightclub on June 12th . When the country is collectively at a loss for words, sometimes poets can help us find them. Subscribe to this Podcast

Each day, I post a Basho poem. These are my own translations.

Although Basho mostly keeps to the haiku form (5-7-5) I haven't kept that restriction. Some translations follow that form when possible. I do keep it to three lines and keep the rhythm haiku-like (short, long, short) with the 1st and 3rd often the same length. For each translation the goal is to find a balance. Translation, especially with poetry, is often seen as an impossible task. That is the case here. In that sense, these texts are not Basho but inspired by him.
The source is various Japanese sites but primarily this one: http://www2.yamanashi-ken.ac.jp/~itoyo/basho/
There are a number of Basho translations out there. Some are very literal while others are more daring. I admire the translations of Lucien Stryk.

[Link]

Oh what has happened, my darling little friend? I knew that it would happen, but I longed for us to never end. What shall I do without you? What shall

Death is in air The death of an old white horse His name; Donny His death was tragic to me How loved could he be How much I loved my Donny With his

I remember you were sick, And yet I had to go. I wasn't there to watch you die, That pain, I hope, I'll never know. So I never got to say goodbye, I

Sage Today I sit alone and cry, Without you by my side. Of all the times I've said goodbye, This one made me cry. If there was anything I could have done,

I find it hard to express my feelings, And say how much you meant to us, This poem is just another poor attempt, I’m being such a wuss! I can’t remember

COVID-19 nightmare The poet in me lies dormant in this COVID-19 nightmare, So concerned am I, to ensure that I’m taking care Of my person, my property, my family, my friends, Making sure to tie up all loose ends! There’s food to buy, and...

Poets possess keys to aspects of the world that are often hidden from our collective view. It is why I turn to them as often as I do whenever I find myself treading water, trying to make sense of things that make me question everything I think I have known. Like our global pandemic, for instance. Nothing prepared us for the weeks of forced isolation, the overwhelming insecurities that bubbled up from within, or the creeping doubt that nothing we really did for a living was of any actual significance. And so, I turned to poetry.

I began with Ilya Kaminsky, whose work I have spent many hours over, grateful for their existence and troubled by how they came into being. Kaminsky's latest collection, Deaf Republic — and only his second in 15 years — seemed to come from a place of startling familiarity, despite the poems being set in a fictional city called Vasenka. They seemed recognisable because of what they described: citizens who lived happily during a war. 'And when they bombed other people's houses,' he writes, 'we protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough.' It moved and angered me, as he spoke of people living 'in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money…' because so much of it resonated with what we have been living through.

The impact of reading this while in isolation was powerful because Kaminsky lost his hearing at the age of four in Ukraine. He lived in silence until he turned 16 in America and was fitted with hearing aids. I thought about what he had once referred to as 'seeing in a language of images,' and what it meant for me, as a reader, to look at his world from that prism. As cities outside my window began shutting down, his poems set me free.

I was given access to another worldview by the English poet Fiona Benson and her (coincidental) second collection, Vertigo & Ghost.

This one was dark too, relying on Greek myth to somehow shine a light on the sexual violence that women have always had to contend with. Benson did this by portraying
the god Zeus as a sexual predator, a man 'who shoved a sawn-off shotgun / through the letterbox calling softly /like he was calling to the cat / that terrible croon, / SWEETHEART, / I'M HOME.' It was unsettling because it forced me to unlearn everything I thought I knew about a divine figure we had been trained to respect, a god of lightning and thunder who was married to goddesses and somehow given a pass to violate them.

Benson's Zeus has no morals, stalking his victims, praising Presidents who live in shiny gold towers, a flawed deity who would fit into India's current Parliament like a glove.

Another collection, an older one by American poet Claudia Rankine titled Citizen, forced me to look at the thorny subject of race, which, as any residential society's WhatsApp group can show, is alive and well in modern India. On the surface, Rankine's exploration of the covert and overt ways in which bigotry rears its head in America shouldn't find parallels in the country we call home. And yet, the minute we replace skin colour with caste, cracks start to appear in our carefully constructed façade of a tolerant, peaceful civilization.

What Rankine does is focus on microaggression — the thousands of minor, daily acts of prejudice, intentional or unintentional, that people of colour must grow accustomed to and accept as they go about the simple business of living. It compelled me to think of our own responses to the COVID-19 lockdown and the hypocrisy with which so many of us chose to vilify poor Indians whose only fault was walking home to meet a primal need for safety.

I recognise that the act of reading poetry is not only a private one, it is also one of privilege, given the implication that I need not worryabout shelter or where my next meal must come from. I believe it is important though because isolation creates an atmosphere of extreme scrutiny, allowing us to make changes to who we are and what we believe in.

No one doubts that the world emerging blinking into the daylight at the end of this pandemic will be a new one; all one can hope for is that the changes we must wakeup to will be for the better.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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John Carey is a welcoming host, full of enthusiasm, and the opposite of crusty. He can throw sparkling light on a poet's method in a handful of words

James Lafferty, 47, was arrested outside the singer's Sydney CBD unit on Saturday and charged with stalking after pleading for Delta Goodrem to come outside for two days.

James Joseph Lafferty, 47, appeared at Sydney's Downing Centre court on Tuesday with his mother where he pleaded guilty to stalking Australian pop singer Delta Goodrem.

James Joseph Lafferty, 47, was arrested in Grafton, NSW at 11pm on Friday night accused of breaching a court-order taken out by the singer to prevent him contacting her.

John Carey is a welcoming host, full of enthusiasm, and the opposite of crusty. He can throw sparkling light on a poet's method in a handful of words

Remembering Tagore on his 159th birth anniversary today, here we list down some of his timeless poems that continue to resonate his creative charm and are still as relevant.

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Forrest Gander and Patricio Ferrari will read their translations of Alejandra Pizarnik's French poems found in The Galloping Hour (New Directions, 2018).

Never before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetime, these poems draw from personal life experiences and they echo readings of Pizarnik's beloved/accursed French authors--Charles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud. Anna Deeny Morales will follow with a reading of her translations of Pizarnik's Diana's Tree, forthcoming this year. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Russian Jewish parents, Pizarnik is considered one of Latin America's most powerful and intense lyric poets of the 20th century. A discussion will follow the reading.

Date & time: Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 6:00 p.m.
Location: Hispanic Reading Room (LJ-240), Thomas Jefferson Building, 2nd floor.
Contact: cgom@loc.gov

(Copies of The Galloping Hour will be sold).

Click here for more information.

Join us tomorrow Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 6:00 p.m. for our reading and conversation: "The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik." The event will be held in the Hispanic Reading Room, located on the 2nd floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.

About the event:

Forrest Gander and Patricio Ferrari will read their translations of Alejandra Pizarnik's French poems found in The Galloping Hour (New Directions, 2018). Never before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetime, these French poems draw from personal life experiences and they echo readings of Pizarnik’s beloved/accursed French authors — Charles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud. Anna Deeny Morales will follow with a reading of her translations of Pizarnik's Diana's Tree, forthcoming this year. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Russian Jewish parents, Pizarnik is considered one of Latin America's most powerful and intense lyric poets of 20th century. A discussion will follow the reading. 

Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Division and the European Division of the Library of Congress. Presented in collaboration with the Alan Cheuse International Writing Center and George Mason University.

Click here for more information.

Hayden Library - PQ7390.F459 C6613 2016

Hayden Library - PQ8097.N4 A2 2016