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Kim Hyesoon, one of Korea’s most prominent poets, lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.  Don Mee Choi, author of The Morning News Is Exciting, lives and works in Seattle.  This poem comes from All the Garbage of the World, Unite!

“today”

by Fujitomi Yasuo

translated from the Japanese by the author

Fujitomi Yasuo has taught English in a public school in Japan and been a lecturer in literature at Aoyama Gakuin University.  He has published numerous books of poetry, including a collected poems in 2008, and also actively exhibited drawings.  This poem is from The If Hour, a collection of work by Andres Ehin and Fujitomi Yasuo, edited by Taimi Paves.

“sixeyed”

by Andres Ehin

translated from the Estonian by Patrick Cotter

Andres Ehin has published novels, stories, and screenplays in addition to his numerous books of poetry.  His poetry has been translated into 34 languages.  Patrick Cotter lives in Cork, and is working on translating a collection of love poems by Paul Celan.  This poem is from The If Hour, a collection of work by Andres Ehin and Fujitomi Yasuo, edited by Taimi Paves.

Oliver Welden is a Chilean poet.  Dave Oliphant is a prolific poet, translator, and jazz historian.  This poem is from Love Hound (Host Publications), Oliphant’s translation of Perro del Amor, for which in 1968 Welden received the Luis Tello National Poetry Award of the Society of Chilean Writers.

This selection comes from If I Were Another, winner of the 2010 PEN USA Translation Award.  Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a Palestinian poet, author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, whose work is of such global significance that hit has been translated into nearly thirty languages.  Fady Joudah has been recognized for his distinguished translations of Darwish’s poetry, and won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his own first book of poems, The Earth in the Attic.

Grzegorz Wróblewski, born in Gdansk, raised in Warsaw, has lived in Copenhagen since 1985, and has published many volumes of poetry and prose.  Piotr Gwiazda, author of Gagarin Street: Poems, teaches at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.  This translation was first published in the Denver Quarterly.

Evaldas Ignatavicius accords Sigitas Parulskis’s Pagyvenusio vyro pagundos (Temptations of an Elderly Man) an important place in Lithuanian literature, calling it “the defining book of poetry in recent years.”  This translation first appeared in the 2010 issue (#27) of The Vilnius Review.

Lev Rubinstein was born in Moscow in 1947 and lives there to this day.  Philip Metres is the author of To See the Earth (Cleveland State University Press).  Tatiana Tulchinsky has translated and published numerous works into Russian and into English.  This poem comes from Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (Ugly Duckling Presse).

Maram al-Massri is a Syrian poet and translator living in France.  Khaled Mattawa is a poet and translator who teaches at the University of Michigan.  The poems come from A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor, published by Copper Canyon Press.

Astrid Cabral is one of Brazil’s most eminent contemporary poets.  Alexis Levitin is a prolific and distinguished translator who teaches at SUNY Plattsburgh.  This poem is from the book Cage, published by Host Publications.