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Dream Time: The Art of Christian Veschambre
all paintings are oil on canvas Seeing a painting by Christian Veschambre for the first time can feel like you’ve been drawn into the vortex of an alternate universe. Figures emerge from a sandstorm unaware someone – us – is watching. They appear in profile or in movement, as if the force of the wind is sculpting them mid-action, sweeping away layers of stone and sand. We get the sense they’re not meant to be seen. When staring out from the canvas – as do some – they are as if startled, ready to frighten, protect, or to speak. Whoever they are, their presence seems to be hidden from…
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Translating Empathy in a Time of War
Global Voices – Letter from Poland Artwork by Oksana Drachkovska Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi & Mark Tardi At a slightly different historical moment, they could have been our grandparents – or us. They come from places with names that are familiar, like Kyiv, Lviv, and Odessa as well as from places that weren’t part of our mental map a few weeks ago – like Kryvyi Rih and Kherson. All of them have had to leave behind what they know and love: partners, relatives, friends, landscapes, pets. They’ve brought with them what they could: a few changes of clothes and whatever else one might grab when the pulse drum of panic…
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Three Short Vignettes by Mariella Mehr (translated from the German by Caroline Froh)
Artwork by Isabel Peterhans WHEN CHESTNUT BLOSSOMS GREW INTO YOUR BEDROOM Laughter is a bright wall around us. A ceremony of drunken greetings over at the next table, the noise of belonging together. Hanging overhead, whiffs of cool oil and hungry desire – rosy, edged in black. Housewife faces, student faces, plump party mouths, little girl faces, intellectuals, sensitives – but mostly males. The Weavers, you say, was always a waiting room. The host carries bad wine from table to table. You have your I-am-strong-on-my-own face on. The noise around us makes your body narrow and fragile, I dream you close to me. The beer sits untouched in our…
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Global Voices Interviews *Germany* Andra Schwarz & Caroline Wilcox Reul in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
A dialogue between authors and translators *** Last month Andra Schwarz’s poetry collection In the morning we are glass (Am morgen sind wir aus glass, 2017) was published in English by ZephyrPress thanks to a wonderful translation by Caroline Wilcox Reul. At LIT, we were delighted to publish five poems from Schwarz’s collection in March 2020. It is tempting when first reading these poems to assume they are about memories of a childhood home or reflections on the irretrievable past. This, however, would be a misinterpretation, one that does injustice to the deeper dimensions of Schwarz’s mission. If anything, the poems in this collection fall somewhere between archeological excavation and criminal…
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Two Poems by Eddie Kim
Minimax On a beach in Okinawa a super typhoon is coming. I apply two layers of SPF 50 sport waterproof. The coast is ours and the waves mischievous. I feign little mind to the literal red flag tattering above an empty life guard tower. Fear of death is what reminds you, after all, about living. My parents paced the decades through rain with umbrellas over my brother and me. Is there a difference between the things we live for and the things we die for? I watch my nephew build sandcastles close ashore, each reaching tide dissolves turret after turret. I suggest he move further inland because grown ups draw…
