In this ode to the late Assia Djebar, Habib Tengour remembers Algeria through her voice.  Listen to Habib Tengour read "Celebration of the Absent One" in the original French. For Eliane, Mireille, and Regina                                   We dreamed of a phlegmatic life for you                                  ...

In this poem, the speaker leads us across a landscape of grieving deserts and volcanic desire.  Listen to Samira Negrouche read "In the Shadow of Grenada" in the original French.   Shadow you  in a desire for darkness Night will close its voices to you night will take pleasure in the dew                                            of its...

In this meditation on time, memory, and the usefulness of expectations, nothing is what it seems.   Listen to Samira Negrouche read "Minus One" in the original French.   The outflow of your drifting— up until now you’ve slid along the road I would like in a faraway language to tell you what I don’t understand  ** Nothing pulls you back from doubt any longer from obsession  from seeding  your body is amnesia   plural...

The poet eulogizes the revolutionary fighter and guerilla leader of Algeria's National Liberation Front, Ali la Pointe.   Pour Ali la Pointe   Here where each day calls out to our suffering Here where each step chains our desire for hope Here where everything cries out misfortune violence famine Here where blood is confirmed silently and grief gains ground He died. Died buried under a pile of rubble While he trampled hatred down with his proud blood So that the roots...

In this excerpt from La nuit du dedans, the poet reflects on the secret corners of his home.    X Who will tell the sun about my land my harried medlar tree my springtime without nervures  my helpful hand Who will recount my rootless garden  and my door open to all comers my night of faraway sounds my wheat that absorbs the hours  Who will cure me of my sequestration  and sweet secret —my monochrome dream my space gone gray at the temples ...

Franciane Conceicao Silva considers how racial relations in Brazil have affected literary history.  As the inquisition questions my existence and belittles the blackness of my body-word in the semantics of my verses, I carry on [ . . .] I carry on in search of other words, words that are still damp, voices drowned.   —Conceição Evaristo In my take on Afro-Brazilian literature in Brazil, I chose to consider first the works that had the most cultural...

In these four poems, Christiane Sobral breaks down the door, is spat on by a dragon and deliberately burns the beans in the pot.   Black Eye I am a black renegade I refuse the mirror daily Which tries to massacre me inside Which tries to deceive me with white lies Which tries to discolor me with its rays of light I am a black renegade Determined to face the system I drum up the black without a hitch I bum-rush the stage I am a black renegade I advocate a necessary...

This selection of writings is by no means or intention a full and general picture of Vietnamese literature. The reading choice returns/moves toward the presences, the ruins, and the enduring silences of writers-in-between, the hyphenated writers, the writers who hide themselves, the writers of unshareable struggles. The past, the present of the past, the present. North, South, the North in South, the South in North. Inside and outside. Here and there. Vietnamese and English. The fallen and...

A piece of furniture in an unusual location sparks a series of interrogations.      a velvet chair             standing by itself                         on a highway a chair standing by itself on a highway             means its life is over a life of ups and downs             before it was...

These translated, cut-up and reassembled Vietnamese texts are by Nguyễn-Hoàng Quyên, originals by Nguyễn Quốc Chánh (“Syndrome,” “Fucking Skulls Open”), Bùi Giáng (“Sương Tỳ Hải”), and Nhã Thuyên (“taste of waters”).   birds one by one penetrates a gap, disappearing wings disappearing songs, beaks remain, cut open one another’s eyes, napes, death...

A frustrated wife and mother finds life in a fishbowl instructive in this story translated from the Mongolian.   I've been in here for exactly one year. My once fair and delicate skin, the envy of all the other ladies, has hardened into scales mottled with red and pink splotches. A year, exactly one year. People have thought that I have been a fish for exactly one year. Regardless of what other people say, what really matters to me is that three hundred and sixty-five...

In "Vengeance," Norov Dalkhaa weaves a Mongolian Buddhist folk legend that dogs have the reincarnated souls of humans into an urban parable of sex, jealousy, and violence.   Listen to Norov Dalkhaa read "Vengeance" in the original Mongolian.     The black dog's large brown eyes drew Chuluun's attention. They didn't seem to be dog's eyes at all. The dog stared at Demchig, not even moving when Chuluun waved his hands and feet at it. Uzmee looked as fragile...

The human embryo has a special status because of its potential for development to a stage at which everyone would accord it the status of a human person. —The Warnock Committee (U.K.), Report on Human Fertilisation and Embryology, 1984   Children born by artificial insemination will also be problematic, for their lives have developed as a result of the destruction of numerous embryos. —Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia, Christmas Epistle, January 2014   Listen to...

Lela Samniashvili reflects on the terrible costs of war Listen to Lela Samniashvili read her poem "Military Drill" in the original Georgian.   Three years ago, during the war, our house was burgled. When I returned everything was upside down, Our possessions had probably borne those alien fingers with hatred. They stole my gold ring and several bottles of wine. They were probably in a hurry—only the drawers had been emptied.  They took nothing from the shelves. And yet I...

Georgian poet Lela Samniashvili on the "fatal defect" of time, and the past in the present Listen to poet Lela Samniashvili read "A Run in My Stocking" in the original Georgian If I leave, you will always be tortured with the feeling of guilt that you could not leave me. But from where I look at it, “always” seems so short, just like the past, or the future. The future— What do we know about it? There are precisely as many types of futures  as we want and even...

Georgian writer Gela Charkviani describes his early days as an aide to then-President Eduard Shevardnadze.   Listen to Gela Charkviani read "Shevardnadze and Me" in the original Georgian   My relationship with Eduard Shevardnadze developed slowly and painfully, and our first business meeting ended in complete failure. An overseas delegation was due to arrive in Georgia, and I had brought for his approval a plan for the visit, which had been prepared at the Ministry of Foreign...

Listen to Irakli Kakabaze read his poem "The Children of Beslan (To My Children)" in the original Georgian   Georgian poet Irakli Kakabade remembers the victims and the survivors of the Beslan School Siege Today is the First of September and As natural, As the sun’s setting and rising, The flowers’ budding and wilting,  The healing of open wounds, And death.  This isn’t a school bell ringing,  It’s the bells of a church. The mothers...

Irakli Kakabadze uploaded a number of short poems to various social media sites over the course of several years under the pseudonym Iaki Kabe, fooling many into believing they were the work of an unknown Japanese poet translated into Georgian. His poetry became so popular on the Internet that when a selection was published in book form, the book topped national bestseller lists.   Irakli Kakabadze reads "Seventeen Poems by Iake Kabe" in the original Georgian...

Naira Gelashvili eavesdrops on the beginning of a star-crossed affair Listen to author Naira Gelashvili read this story in the original Georgian.   I entered the tower. I didn’t stop in the front room, but took her to the second room. Here, long wooden benches stood on the right and left, and along the middle wall—a wooden bench, covered in bedding. A window was cut out of the fourth wall.     I was enveloped by a good mood, which I think came...

In the end, one sentence awaits us all—death  Joseph Brodsky   Because we are all murderers, he told himself. We are all on both sides, if we are any good, and no good will come of any of it. Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream   God inscribed my grief  On my sword I killed the man I’d sworn to be a brother to I used a sword on my brother They are chasing me to murder me They put a trap for me on the road Folk song   Listen to author Beka...