poetry
Ibrahim Nasrallah (Arabic: إبراهيم نصرالله; born 1954 in Amman, Jordan, in Wihdat refugee camp) is a Jordanian-Palestinian poet, novelist, professor, painter and photographer. He studied in the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) schools and at the UNRWA Teacher Training College in Amman. He taught in Saudi Arabia for 2 years in the Al Qunfudhah region and worked as a journalist between 1978 and 1996. Nasrallah then returned to Jordan and worked at Dostur, Afaq and Hasad newspapers. He is in charge of cultural activities at Darat-al-Funun in Amman. He has published 14 books of poetry, 13 novels and two children's books. In 2009 his novel The Time of White Horses was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Vicente Acosta (1867-1908) was a Salvadoran poet, professor, and politician. He was widely published in Salvadoran journals and magazines, and in 1904 founded La Quincena, a journal of scientific and cultural studies.
José Martí (1853-1895) is a Cuban national hero and a towering figure in Latin American letters. A poet, essayist, journalist, revolutionary philosopher, translator, professor, publisher, and political theorist, he fought for Cuba's independence from Spain and against the threat of United States expansionism into Cuba. He is considered the father of Latin American modernism, and his best known works include the children's magazine Edad de oro (1889), the poetry collection Versos sencillos (1891), selections from which were adapted by composer Julián Orbón into the iconic Cuban song "Guantanamera," and the many crónicas he wrote for newspapers in the U.S. and Latin America.
losing someone you know losing family members you wanted to know but never had a chance to What life wisdom would you have wanted to share? we’re moved by a hunger to learn more about the untold loved ones know our survival depends on Things passed down I dream…
By Hasheemah Afaneh. Netanyahu survived the latest Israeli vote. Will Palestine survive his election promise to annex the West Bank?
What is to be done. Where is the work to be found? We come out of the house and look around for it. We search the stables and garage, surely it hasn't gone far. My pen. My pen. It was just here, full of the ink of thoughts. Did it drain whilst I was filling it with my idle mind? Devil's plaything am I. Flay it on the drawing board! Let's see it's veins and beating heart under a microscope. There it is! Yes! The ink was _inside_ this whole time! I stab into it with thirsty nib. I scrawl hastily while it is still fresh. The ink will dry and become tacky, but this, this is still flowing and fluid. There isn't yet the hesitation. There is an element of dedication. A pent-up desire that eschews the world in favor for auto-cannibalism. When does it become more than a diary? Must it? Look here. Who let this one in? The ink becomes tacky. The paper has something to say, now. It did before, but now the ink is sinking in and pooling around the natural textures of the paper. And the paper has feelings about all that. Ink in it's pure sense would be the endless night, not with a speck of light, unable to be viewed. Would it ever dry? Would I ever know? The very act of placing it down, temporalizes it, and begins the countdown. It becomes tangible and therefore, able to be reduced. #poetry
Unknown Incan poet. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. translated this poem from “La Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno,” which is a letter written by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala to King Phillip III in an effort to describe the deplorable treatment of the indigenous people in the Americas by the Spaniards. The letter was lost in the journey, but found 300 years later in Denmark, in 1909.
Susana Reyes earned a master’s degree in Estudios de la Cultura Centroamericana with an emphasis in literature before working at several universities in El Salvador as a professor. She currently teaches at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas UCA. Reyes ran the now-defunct Escuela para Jóvenes Talento en Letras, a workshop for young writers; co-hosted the radio program La Bohemia on YSUK during the 1990s; and has participated in various theatrical productions, and led numerous theatrical workshops. She has also participated in investigations regarding the state of both literature at large and literature written by women in El Salvador. She is the literature editor of Índole Editores, belongs to the Grupo Literario Poesía y Más, serves as the current president of the Claribel Alegría Foundation, and directs the literary workshop Palabra y Obra. She can be reached at direccion@fundacionclaribelalegria.org.
Issam Zineh is author of the forthcoming poetry collection *Unceded Land* (Trio House Press, 2022), which was a 2021 Trio Award finalist and editors’ selection, and the chapbook *The Moment of Greatest Alienation* (Ethel, 2021). His most recent poems appear or are forthcoming in *AGNI, Pleiades, Guesthouse, Tahoma Literary Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal*, and elsewhere.
Rosario Orrego (1834-1879) was a renowned Chilean writer and women’s rights activist during the nineteenth century. Her pioneering novels, poetry, and journalism led to her becoming the first woman in Chile to be recognized as an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Santiago.
Ḥafṣa bint al-Ḥājj ar-Rukūniyya was a noblewoman from Granada known for her legendary love affair with a vizier that ended tragically when an envious ruled killed him. She later became a royal tutor in Marrakech for daughters of the Almohad dynasty. Only about 60 lines of her poetry have survived to the present.
Die Krähe mag das Gummiboot* Ja, sie ist ganz verliebt* In die Reste vom Picknickbrot Das versehentlich verblieb Im Boot PENG! - Jetzt ist es entzwei Man hat's deutlich vernommen Die panische Krähe fliegt vorbei Sie kennt nicht das Rahmenabkommen* Punkt Zwei: Kein Picken von Brot Im Gummiboot #Reimbattle (2024-10-09) – verliebt, Rahmenabkommen, Gummiboot #WritingCommunity #poetry
Holiday Change fills my pocketsand my children are far away.I have five hundred dinars in my pockets . . . the shop is nearby.Its candies are plentifulbut they are too distant.The five hundred kilometers between us is l
_from works by Hasheemah Afaneh, laila r. makled, Yousef Abu-Salah, Rashid Hussain (translated by Salma Harland), Bassam Jamil (translated by Nicole Mankinen), Rania Lardjane, Hani Albayarie, Summer Awad, Veera Sulaiman, Suzana Sallak, Nama’a Qudah, Michael Jabareen, Alia Yunis, Yara Ghabayen, Aiya Sakr, Edward Salem, Ahmad Mallah, Kat Abdallah, Liane Al Ghusain, Priscilla Wathington, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Farah Alhaddad, Mikhail de Parlaine, Bader Alzaharna, and Fady Joudah._ ______________________________________ The air around me is clogged with dust, my lungs feed on cement; my mouth, on rocks. Black curls melt onto fracturing cheeks. People are running out on the streets and they are still bombing the buildings there. They called us: _Human-animals_ _Collateral damage_ _Casualties_ _Uncivilized_ _Third world people_ _Terrorists_ ~ God said (and already you can tell I’m making this up), _If you lift a rock, I am there._ At first, some screams echoed from within the rubble, and then everything went silent. Mustafa said he couldn’t recognize his own brother; the faces he had looked at his whole life were wiped of all features. We love our Lebanese mountains and Palestinian hills so deeply that they mistook us for stones. We were so identified with the olive and cedar trees, they thought us inanimate. Unalive. A land without a people. Never allowed to return, I fumble to find holes for the past to not be a bleeding visitor who asks why the ambulance never arrives. ~ I write in English, feeling a rising tension between myself and the language. The words feel strange, empty, unable. (Is this a disappearing game or stretching membrane?) I’m against my child becoming a hero at ten against the tree flowering explosives against the branches becoming gallows against the flowerbeds becoming trenches against it all but which fire will keep me from what is mine? Sage in the fall, grape leaves in the spring, and rooted year-round in our family trees –pomegranate, fig, apricot, almond, orange. Before planting each of those trees, Sedo would kiss the seed, imbuing it with a piece of his soul. [Your names are the only language](https://new.thecradle.co/articles/gaza-health-ministry-lists-names-of-6747-palestinians-killed-by-israel) that holds any meaning. ~ There’s no point in turning the page on the calendar. The ninety-year old as registered in the documents of the colonizer’s archive is still fifteen, and the one who is seventy-five years old in the colonizer’s documents was actually born today, yesterday, tomorrow. They were all born and are all being born here. The almost dead wakes up, dies, dreams and breaks smiling. You learn to sing in a secret language for the prisoner’s ear only - We, those of us not from Gaza, never meet Gaza as she’s rebuilding herself. We, those of us not from Gaza, have yet to meet Gaza not under siege. ~ I see how he holds a maimed toddler in his left arm while driving an ambulance with his right, how he sits on the sidewalk, head against the remaining wall of a store, gazing blankly toward the fiery sky. When the empires come for you you learn to hide it all. Ash. Spells. Funeral bells. Candles on our mantlepieces and in our hearts: _Please,_ _do not leave us. Stay with us._ Hell is reading their messages and not being able to do a thing. ~ It’s not as easy as it used to be to be alone with the earth. Children don't play outside anymore. They play in hospitals and shelters, dark circles around their precious little eyes. God is Palestinian, and we have all killed him, snuffed him out, missile by missile. _But which fire_ _will keep me_ _from what is mine?_ Hope was the last breath of the traveler, hope was his land. That cramped room in Ummi’s house in Gaza was my cathedral. The symphony of creaking floorboards, downstairs arguments, and wobbling window sills its choir. I tell them Ramallah is the most beautiful, and that beauty compels you to forget their ugliness and that of your own. We keep waiting for justice, the light of recognition that makes the world whole: _we see you and love_ _you as you are_ I am spent yet full of readiness. The fire drinks from my eyes. The roots of my land absorb me _____________________________________ source: https://adimagazine.com/issues/17/
Rocío Cerón is one of the foremost poets and performance artists of her generation. Her work enacts a dialogue between languages and combines poetry with sound experimentation, performance, and video to create spaces of transcreation. Her volumes of poetry include *Basalto* (2002), *Imperio/Empire* (2008), *Tiento* (2010), *Diorama* (2012), and *Borealis* (2016). Her poems have been translated into many European languages.
María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira (1875-1924) was a teacher, poet, dramatist, and musician in Uruguay at the turn of the twentieth century. She was known for being simultaneously cultured, charismatic, rebellious, and mischievous.
Ghassan Zaqtan (b. 1954) is a Palestinian living in Ramallah. A prominent poet, he has also written two novels, a play, and two scripts for documentary film. His work has been translated into French, Italian, and Norwegian among other languages.
Demetrio Korsi (1899-1957) studied both law and medicine but was unable to complete his studies for health-related reasons. In 1916, some of his poems were included in the seminal anthology, Parnaso Panameño, which instigated his renewed dedication to poetry.
Rashed Aqrabawi is a Palestinian-Jordanian writer and poet. He has been published by the Los Angeles Review of Books and Ambit. He lives in London.
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873) was a well-known author and playwright who lived nearly half of her life in her native Cuba and the other half in Spain. Her first novel, Sab, was an antislavery novel that predates Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin by a decade. Because of its abolitionist and feminist content, Sab was banned in Cuba until 1914, 73 years after it was first published.
Remigio Crespo Toral (1850-1939) was a poet and politician who became influential in both spheres, known as one of the most important Ecuadorian poets while also serving as "congress president" in Ecuador. He was an expert in jurisprudence, history, and literary criticism.
The Right Time By Khaled Juma Translated by Zainab Al Qaisi I had an appointment with the Right Time at the crumbling old café in the rundown city. I’d been waiting since I was ten. As usual…
Two poems from Iranian dissident poet Baktash Abtin, for whom poetry and revolutionary life are inseparable.
The identity of Serge St. Jean is unknown. This poem was previously published in *Collection Hounguénikon* and later anthologized in *Ayiti Cheri: Poésie Haïtienne* (1800-2015).
Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, editor, and community activist. She volunteers for organizations that promote Palestinian rights and the civil rights of vulnerable communities in Alexandria, Virginia, where she is active with the group Grassroots Alexandria. She also serves as a mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a writing program for youth in Gaza. Zeina’s chapbook, *Bayna Bayna, In-Between*, is published by *The Poetry Box*. Her poems appear in *Pleiades, Cordite Poetry Review, Mizna, Sukoon Magazine, Split This Rock, Passager, Barzakh: A Literary Magazine, Voice Male*, and the edited volumes *Tales from Six Feet Apart, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees*, and *Gaza Unsilenced*, among others. Zeina holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.
Celebrated wise man and poet from Chalco, Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin was the son of Cuetzpaltzin, the chichimeca governor Cohuayocan. He was born in the second half of the fifteenth century and died near the beginning of the sixteenth.
This is In Damascus (في دمشق), a stunningly beautiful film by the Syrian filmmaker and motion graphic designer Waref Abu Quba.
Clementina Suárez (1902-1991) has been called the “matriarch of Honduran letters” and was well known during her lifetime as a writer, a supporter of the arts, and someone who defied contemporary cultural norms and expectations of womanhood.
Written by “A Few Pariahs,” various Quechuan poets. Translated from the Spanish by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
Fatena Al-Gharra was born in and educated in Gaza.
José Santos Chocano (1875-1934) was a prolific poet and political activist considered to be a leading figure of the Latin American Modernism movement. In 1922, Chocano was recognized by the Peruvian government as poet laureate.
A young poet and graduate of a Gaza university that is in ruins, Sahar Rabah looks forward to the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers.
*How to be a poet in wartime* is a poem written and published by Hind Joudeh on her Facebook account in October 2023, at the height of the massacres in Gaza.
Claritza Maldonado, better known as Clari (as stated by her gold cadenita), is a creative writer, poet, and researcher from Chicago. She holds a BA in Linguistics with a minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a graduate student at Brown University in the American Studies PhD program with a Public Humanities focus. Her poetry has been published at the Wanderer Poetry literary website. Her research and creative writing purposefully overlap by way of language and content. Broadly, her research interests include cultural studies, media studies, performance studies, and Latina/o literature. As an aspiring curator/educator, she aims to situate her work between cityscape and island, intermingled with Spanglish. Her poems are stories of familia, history, conversation, observation, cultura, and resistance.
Nezahualcóyotl of Tezcoco (1402-1472) is known as one of the most famous, influential, and frequently cited poets of the Aztec world. During his life he received the title of tlamantini, or “he who knows something”—a title that was bestowed upon those who contemplated the ancient enigmas of humanity and the earth, as well as those of divinity and the grave. He was also the supreme ruler of Tezcoco and premier advisor of Tenochtitlan. Nezahualcóyotl has been referred to as “the poet king” by modern scholars.
Code with poetry, poetry with code. <https://codelit.com> #indieweb #poetry #code
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (1867-1916), better known as Rubén Darío, was born in the city of Metapa, Nicaragua (now known as Darío City). He was a poet, journalist, and diplomat, as well as the leading figure of the Latin American Modernist movement. He is often referred to as “el príncipe de las letras castellanas.”