From the Editors
Every now and then we come across that one poem, story, or painting that makes us look at the world in a different way. With more discernment, more empathy, more respect, or even—with a bit of luck—more awe. And with each artistic encounter, we step back out into the world and get to see it glimmer as if for the first time.
The beauty of art is that it places us right at the center of the world’s labyrinth, and it demands that we search for a new way out each time. What we come to realize is that we rarely find a way out, but at the best of times we end up finding ourselves. In an interview never before translated into English, Jorge Luis Borges, asked about his fascination with the labyrinth motif by Marin Sorescu (transl. Daniel Nemo), remarks that “finding a solution is not that important. It is important to search. To search, always, even without hope. Poetry is an attempt at orientation—in the world.”
This yearning for orientation underpins our unrelenting effort to find meaning in ourselves, a theme that Anna Badkhen discusses in her interview and essay “Acts of Humanity,” in which she reflects on the subjectivity of maps and how seeing the world actually requires us to look inward. She notes that “what each map always implies is the observer, you. Each represents our effort to make sense of ourselves in a particular place—and thus, each charts our reach for meaning.” Shifra Steinberg’s short story “Anoptics” also explores new ways of looking at our surroundings, as an optician becomes consumed with his latest vision-altering creation, leading him to question the very existence of objective reality.
In the Spring issue we also celebrate our interconnectedness with all forms of life around us. Let yourself be transported by the sensitivity of Eleni Sikelianos’ ecopoetics, or dive into Amsterdam Poet Laureate Marjolijn van Heemstra’s poems (transl. Rosalind Buck) about the magic of being born and the life-changing experience of motherhood.
Take a moment to discover a series of fascinating sketches by Staffan Gnosspelius in which the idea for his latest picture book, bear, first appeared. Find out how art transcended political, cultural, and linguistic barriers for Iranian-born poet and Swedish Academy member Jila Mossaed in her essay in verse “To Breathe Words in the Woods” (transl. Brad Harmon), where she considers the obstacles of writing in a new language: “All the words I had played with in my poetic world needed to change clothes.” An experience first-generation Korean American Rosannah Oh also shares in The Human Mind Is Its Own World, an interview on finding her own path to poetry.
Searching is at the heart of all artistic endeavors. Marin Sorescu’s reply to Jorge Luis Borges “Maybe that's why you travel so much... To find yourself in the world...” may well be a view shared by quite a few artists in the Amsterdam Review this spring.
The beauty of art is that it places us right at the center of the world’s labyrinth, and it demands that we search for a new way out each time. What we come to realize is that we rarely find a way out, but at the best of times we end up finding ourselves. In an interview never before translated into English, Jorge Luis Borges, asked about his fascination with the labyrinth motif by Marin Sorescu (transl. Daniel Nemo), remarks that “finding a solution is not that important. It is important to search. To search, always, even without hope. Poetry is an attempt at orientation—in the world.”
This yearning for orientation underpins our unrelenting effort to find meaning in ourselves, a theme that Anna Badkhen discusses in her interview and essay “Acts of Humanity,” in which she reflects on the subjectivity of maps and how seeing the world actually requires us to look inward. She notes that “what each map always implies is the observer, you. Each represents our effort to make sense of ourselves in a particular place—and thus, each charts our reach for meaning.” Shifra Steinberg’s short story “Anoptics” also explores new ways of looking at our surroundings, as an optician becomes consumed with his latest vision-altering creation, leading him to question the very existence of objective reality.
In the Spring issue we also celebrate our interconnectedness with all forms of life around us. Let yourself be transported by the sensitivity of Eleni Sikelianos’ ecopoetics, or dive into Amsterdam Poet Laureate Marjolijn van Heemstra’s poems (transl. Rosalind Buck) about the magic of being born and the life-changing experience of motherhood.
Take a moment to discover a series of fascinating sketches by Staffan Gnosspelius in which the idea for his latest picture book, bear, first appeared. Find out how art transcended political, cultural, and linguistic barriers for Iranian-born poet and Swedish Academy member Jila Mossaed in her essay in verse “To Breathe Words in the Woods” (transl. Brad Harmon), where she considers the obstacles of writing in a new language: “All the words I had played with in my poetic world needed to change clothes.” An experience first-generation Korean American Rosannah Oh also shares in The Human Mind Is Its Own World, an interview on finding her own path to poetry.
Searching is at the heart of all artistic endeavors. Marin Sorescu’s reply to Jorge Luis Borges “Maybe that's why you travel so much... To find yourself in the world...” may well be a view shared by quite a few artists in the Amsterdam Review this spring.
Contents
Contributors
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Riverbed Review, and others), including a recent nomination for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021). He is a reformed lawyer, he writes and plays music, and he teaches literature. Abel resides in rural Georgia.
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Anna Badkhen is the author of seven books, most recently the essay collection Bright Unbearable Reality, which was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award. She has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones. Badkhen was born in the Soviet Union and is a US citizen.
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Rosalind Buck has been translating Dutch-language literature since 1998, with 40 books to her credit so far, besides many poetry projects for both publication and performance. In 1999, she was on the editorial team of the third edition of the Van Dale Dutch to English dictionary. Rosalind is also an author in her own right and, since Covid, has been presenting mainly online shows, featuring original stories, poetry and music with a faintly macabre flavour and a twist of humor. In addition, she finds time to be a vegan chef and secretary of an adoption association for retired hens in France.
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Dr. Alicia Byrne Keane is a poet and recent graduate from Dublin, Ireland. Alicia holds a B.A. and Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin’s School of English and an MSt. from Oxford University. Alicia has twice been awarded the Irish Arts Council Agility Award (2021, 2022) and is in receipt of a Dublin City Council Bursary Award (2022). Alicia’s recent poetry has been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Anthropocene and New Irish Writing; forthcoming work includes poetry in The Seneca Review and a debut full collection from Broken Sleep Books (December 2023).
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Harrison Fisher received his M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and a Doctor of Arts from SUNY-Albany (now the University at Albany). He held an NEA fellowship in poetry in 1978. From 1980-82, he edited and published the photocopied visual arts and poetry rag Bingo Chow. He has published twelve collections of poems since 1977 and has appeared in over a hundred magazines.
Staffan Gnosspelius has been living in London since 2002, when he graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art. He shares a studio in south London with two talented artists and his main mode of transport is a rusty, beaten up, old bicycle. You can find out more about Staffan's work at www.gnosspelius.com or on Instagram: @Gnosspelius.
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Amy Gordon spent her childhood years in New England, France, England, and Brazil. Following a career of teaching theater skills to middle school students, she went back to school for an MFA in Poetry at Drew University. Her poems have appeared in Blue Nib, The Massachusetts Review, Pomegranate London and other journals. Her first chapbook, Deep Fahrenheit, was brought out by Prolific Press in 2019. A second chapbook, The Yellow Room, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. She is also the author of numerous books for young readers. Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House) won the 2015 Paterson Prize for Young People. She lives in Western Massachusetts.
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Brad Harmon is a writer, translator, and scholar of Scandinavian and German literature, philosophy, and film, currently a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA and a 2023-2024 ASF Fellow to Sweden. A 2022 ALTA Emerging Translator Fellow for Swedish, his translations of Jila Mossaed’s writings have been featured in Poetry, LyrikLine, Loch Raven Review, and Swedish Book Review, where his essay on her poetry recently appeared.
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Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry and nonfiction. She's the author of the book-length poem Metabolics and the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, an Oregon Book Award finalist. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Annulet Poetics, The Southeast Review, and Sixth Finch. She lives in Portland, Oregon and co-hosts the Constellation Reading Series at Tin House.
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Jimmy Lo lives and writes in Atlanta. He’s the author of The Sea is White and A Reduction published by Little Red Leaves Textile Series. You can find him online at jimmylorunning.com
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Elizabeth Loudon is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Trampset, Blue Mountain Review, Lily Poetry Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal, amongst others. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA from Cambridge University. Her debut novel, A Stranger in Baghdad, will be published by Hoopoe Fiction in May 2023 and is dedicated to all those forced to flee their homes. She writes about loss, post-colonial displacement, and motherhood.
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Rebecca Macijeski is the author of Autobiography (Split Rock Press, 2022). She holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Art Farm Nebraska. She has also worked for Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column, as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for the literary journals Prairie Schooner and Hunger Mountain, and is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee, her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Nimrod, The Journal, Sycamore Review, The Cincinnati Review, Puerto del Sol, and many others. Rebecca is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing Programs at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
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Journals publishing Janet McCann’s work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou'wester, America, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A&M University from 1969 until 2015, and is now Professor Emerita. She has co-edited anthologies with David Craig and written three poetry books and six chapbooks. Her most recent poetry book is The Crone at The Casino (Lamar University Press, 2014). She also has co-authored two textbooks and written a book on Wallace Stevens (Wallace Stevens: The Celestial Possible, Twayne, 1996). She lives in College Station, Texas with her dogs, Marple and Poirot.
Jila Mossaed (ژیلا مساعد) was born in Tehran in 1948. Since 1986 she has been based in Sweden, and writes in both Swedish and Persian. In 2018, she was the first non-native Swedish speaker elected to the Swedish Academy. The recipient of many literary prizes in Sweden, her ninth poetry collection in Swedish, Delayed Words, appeared in 2022. Her work has been translated into several languages including English, Dutch, French, and Greek.
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Daniel Nemo is an Amsterdam-based poet, translator, and photographer.
More info at www.danielnemo.com |
Rosanna Young Oh is a Korean American poet and essayist who was born in Daejeon, Korea, and grew up on Long Island. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Best New Poets, Harvard Review Online, Blackbird, The Hopkins Review, and 32 Poems. Her poetry was also the subject of a solo exhibition at the Queens Historical Society, where she was an artist-in-residence. A graduate of Yale, the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she lives and writes in New York. The Corrected Version is her first book.
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Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Three collections of shorter poems, A Poverty of Words, (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, forthcoming 2023). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology, Magma, Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc.
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Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions and four collections of speculative poetry can be found at most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information system management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in Café Irreal, Analog, Danse Macabre, The Cincinnati Review, and several hundred other places. www.kpoyner.com
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Born in California on Walt Whitman’s birthday, Eleni Sikelianos is a poet, writer, and "a master of mixing genres." She grew up in earshot of the ocean, in small coastal towns near Santa Barbara, and has since lived in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Athens (Greece), Boulder (Colorado), and Providence. Deeply engaged with ecopoetics, her work takes up urgent concerns of environmental precarity and ancestral lineages. Your Kingdom (Winter 2023) will be her tenth book of poetry, riding alongside two memoir-verse-image-novels.
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Shifra Steinberg is a writer from The Netherlands currently living in New York City, where she is pursuing an MFA from Columbia University. Her debut novel Imaginary Order was published in January 2023 with Austin Macauley Publishers and is available at most major UK and US bookstores. She also posts bimonthly short stories and essays on her Substack Absurdus.
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Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review.
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Marjolijn van Heemstra is a poet, writer, and theater maker who recently became Amsterdam’s poet laureate. Her vocation is to ask questions, out loud. Her apparently limitless fascination with the unfathomable dimensions of the universe seduces us all into wondering in awe at how all that vastness resonates in our insignificant existence. In her poetry, asking the question is infinitely more important than any answer. This creates a breathtaking boundlessness that gives us the scope to see and move beyond the confines of the human. A constant dual awareness, in which life takes place in the omnipresence of death, echoes through her most recent collection Reistijd, Bedtijd, IJstijd. The juxtaposition of these contradictions gives time a cyclical aspect and the body, which carries within it all possible perspectives, acts as a knot, tying up all those temporal entanglements. Van Heemstra is able to adjust the scale of her view like no other, thereby adjusting our view, and scaling everything within us.
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