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Global Voices: A conversation with Iranian poet Ali Asadollahi
by LIT Translation Editor J.P. Apruzzese
Introduction
For more than two decades, Iranian poet, translator, and editor Ali Asadollahi has been quietly expanding the possibilities of contemporary Persian poetry. The author of six poetry collections, he has written across free verse, haiku, visual poetry, and other experimental forms, guided by a restless commitment to exploration rather than any single aesthetic program. Alongside his own work, he has devoted himself to translation, introducing contemporary world poetry to Persian readers while helping bring Persian literature into conversation with audiences beyond Iran.
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Global Voices Interviews
In the latest installment of LIT’s Global Voices interview series, Québecoise poet, translator, and scholar Chloé Savoie-Bernard speaks on fragmentation, feminist and queer legacies, the politics of opacity, and the power of poetry to make kingdoms from ruins.
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Global Voices Interviews
At LIT, we see translation as the essence of all writing – whether it’s translating across languages or transforming life into words, images, and sound. From the individual to the collective, from the intimate to the universal: in the end, it’s all about translation. We are thrilled to share this newest, brilliant installment of Global Voices from Indonesia.
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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
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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.
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Global Voices Interviews *Hungary* Kinga Tóth & Timea Balogh in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Hungarian version of this interview is forthcoming in Aprokrif in early 2021.
In Kinga Tóth’s world everything is alive and moving and coalescing at each moment. Separation and disconnection are notions she considers unnatural in the natural world. In her work, the multimedia artist and poet captures what most of us neglect to see – not so much the interconnectedness of everything – which suggests the possibility of disconnection – but rather the relentless and organic becoming of everything into one living body that contains all animate and inanimate life.
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Two Poems by M. Vasalis and Arno Bohlmeijer (translated from the Dutch by Arno Bohlmeijer) Artwork by Ton van Rijsbergen
Death
Death pointed out little interesting things:
here’s a nail – said Death – and here’s is a rope.
I look him in the eye, a child. He is my master
because I trust and admire him,
Death.He showed me everything: drink, pills,
pistols, gas tap, steep roofs,
a bath tub, a razor, a white sheet,
“casually”– in case I’d fancy it, one day,
death.And before he left, he gave me a little portrait…
“I don’t know if you forgot it yet,
