The Poem Itself (1960) would be an excellent title for a hard-nosed, uncompromising volume of practical criticism. As a title for a volume of translations of poetry in modern European languages, it is rather bolder. When we meet with translations, [...]

Hala Alyan is a licensed clinical psychologist, professor at New York University, and writer. She is the author of the novel Salt Houses (2017), winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel, The Arsonists’ City (2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019). Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, LitHub, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Following the release of her latest collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (2024), poet and critic Jennifer Lee Tsai spoke to Alyan about the roles of witness, catharsis, and commemoration in her poetry.

The two historical narratives that Ishion Hutchinson braids together in his book-length poem, School of Instructions, are twin educations, each charged with violence. The older history is of the tens of thousands of West Indian soldiers, all volunteers, who fought [...]

I migrated to the UK at sixteen when my mother – a nurse in the National Health Service – brought the whole family from the Philippines. If Jane Austen’s ‘truth universally acknowledged’ is that a rich man must want a [...]

Jason Allen-Paisant’s Self-Portrait as Othello begins with a hesitation towards the titular comparison: ‘How could I resurrect you to speak, / when your burial is in no ground / that I can pilgrimage to’ (‘Ringing Othello’). Yet, the character of [...]

I can still remember the excitement of holding my first copy of Poetry London. It was the Autumn 2004 issue featuring Peter Redgrove on the cover, which I purchased only weeks after I first moved to the UK. I can [...]

Tim Z Hernandez is an American writer, poet, and performer. His first poetry collection Skin Tax (2004) received the 2006 American Book Award and his debut novel Breathing in Dust (2010) was awarded the 2010 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2014, he received the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection Natural Takeover of Small Things (2013) and the International Latino Book Award for his historical fiction novel, Mañana Means Heaven (2013). Most recently he was recognized for his research on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name, which is chronicled in Hernandez’s documentary novel All They Will Call You (2017). Hernandez is currently an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s bilingual MFA in creative writing program. Following the publication of his latest collection, Some of the Light: New and Selected Poems (2023), he spoke to our Reviews Editor, Isabelle Baafi, about the role of witness and mindfulness in his work.