Massachusetts Review
Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.My first translation project was poems and short stories by young Colombian writers for Historias de vida y muerte/ Stories of Life and Death. That writing came from workshops I taught in Cazucá, a slum south of Bogotá where many of the writers . . .
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Jon Hoel: The natural world is pretty frequent in your work over the years; in these recent poems, though, there are two terms specifically I wanted to ask you about, “decolonization” and “land back.” Both are ideas many people are likely familiar with, but some might not be. I was curious what . . .
Read MoreTell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.The first piece I remember writing was a short story I wrote for school when I was about seven or eight. It was about a little girl (definitely me) who went on tropical vacation with her family (definitely my family) and, while on . . .
Read MoreLisa Suhair Majaj in Amman, Jordan, circa 1968.Photo courtesy of the author. Through the tent flap the child saw bomb-lightstreak the sky, heard the drum of thunderthat was not thunder. She should have beentoo young to grasp the proximity of death,but this was Gaza. She asked her mother pensively, What if I . . .
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A Review of Ayşegül Savaş’s The Anthropologists (Bloomsbury, 2024) “The green jacket, the ceremonial stones, breakfast with Manu, the Dame on the terrace, and the shapes of poems,” goes Ayşegül Savaş’ magpie-like narrator Asya as she meticulously collects objects and moments with her partner Manu to build their nest, two ex-pats in an unnamed . . .
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Phil Elverum, photo by Katy Hancock Poems are songs, songs are poems. This dictum may infuriate anyone who has ever penned an editorial on Leonard Cohen’s songs or anyone who was irate when the Nobel committee declared Bob Dylan was literature. Those familiar with the history of songwriting, however, might be inclined . . .
Read MoreLeyla Moushbeck and friends at the protest on May 7. Photo courtesy of the author Around midnight on May 7, 2024, I was arrested on the UMass campus alongside over 130 students, faculty and fellow community members. Up until the moment of my arrest, I’d been sitting on the ground, singing protest . . .
Read MoreRaffi Marhaba, “El Kofeyye Arabeyye,” courtesy of Artists Against Apartheid On October 7, 2023, a group of Palestinian freedom fighters from the military wing of Hamas, the de facto government of Gaza, changed the world forever. In Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a prison break and hostage-taking mission turned into a spectacle of carnage—after . . .
Read MoreI think I can finally stand meWithout a glass or a stein.– Barton Sutter, “Sober Song” Well, you know that a Sober OctoberFor this beer reviewer’s a Noper.Yet again—just for you—I’ve imbibed more such brews.Let me be your NA beer decoder. You can still do your work with these beers,Fill your glasses . . .
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