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Derrick Austin
I can’t imagine myself reading bedtime stories
to a toddler, and I’m older than my father was
when he read those brightly colored books to me.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 26, 2021
The English translation is a reminder of linguistic colonization. English now surrounds both Irish and Ojibwe, but in my translation is not the primary vehicle for interpretation. Providing an English version of the poem ensures it can be read by Ojibwe speakers who may not know Irish and Irish speakers who may not know Ojibwe. It also reflects that this is a poem primarily concerned with the connection between Irish and Ojibwe which is a decolonial act of reclamation.
Result Type
- What Sparks Poetry
Feature Date
- January 25, 2021
Máirtín Ó Direáin (translated from the Irish into Ojibwe & English by Margaret Noodin)
I will find Solace
A short while only
Among relatives
Without sorrow
Without mind worry
Without loneliness
Without confusion
In the west
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 25, 2021
Sarah J. Sloat
An erasure from Sarah J. Sloat's book of visual poetry, Hotel Almighty.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 24, 2021
Jane Wong
Hunger eats through the air like ozone. You ask: what
does it mean to be rootless? Roots are good to use as
toothpicks. You: how can you wake in the middle of
a life? We shut and open our eyes like the sun shining
on tossed pennies in a forgotten well.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 23, 2021
Cherene Sherrard
Mouth organ at midnight.
One woman supine, another
quadrilles—all blush crinoline
and caramelized curls—in a swamp:
what slithers and steams, moss.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 22, 2021
Kathryn Smith
Tell me again of the lepers who learn
to shed their disastrous skin
by eating the meat of vipers: something
transmutable in the flesh. The ancients
spent lifetimes considering
the resurrection of irretrievable
parts:
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 21, 2021
Walt Whitman
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work...
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 20, 2021
Charlie Clark
To be serious is to have something unwavering inside you.
And, oh, how I waver. I’d write anything so long as it was beautiful.
It’s beautiful to touch either of my wife’s hands.
My wife’s hands are warm as flagstones set out beneath the sun.
When I touch them the ringing in my ears becomes the tuning of viola strings.
I think it was something like this that made Andre Breton write “Free Union.”
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- January 19, 2021
Perhaps, through my translations, I am driven by a similar impossibility: the desire to sense in other languages, through other filters, my grandfather's poems, and layer them on top of each other until he feels present.
Result Type
- What Sparks Poetry
Feature Date
- January 18, 2021