Ripon, UK. Smokestack Books (Dufour Editions, distr.). 2019. 150 pages.
Reja-e Busailah’s Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood is an extraordinary collection that presents details of a boy…
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Les Brouzils, France. The Fortnightly Review. 2019. 160 pages. A uniquely valued genre in French letters is the cahier or carnet (notebook or journal). These collections are often li…
San Jose, California. Able Muse Press. 2019. 103 pages. It would be easy—too easy—to steal from Richard Wilbur and say Susan de Sola’s poetry is “call[ed] to the things of this world.” Too easy becaus…
New Delhi. Yoda Press. 2019. 126 pages. The ghazal, a form of Urdu poetry with a certain meter and rhyme, made its excursion into English with the forays of modern poets. Trailblazing Indian American…
Eastburn, U K. Bloodaxe Books (Dufour Editions, distr.). 2018. 119 pages. Negative of a Group Photograph includes thirty Persian poems by Azita Ghahreman with parallel English translations b…
Louisville, Kentucky. Sarabande Books. 2019. 36 pages. Khaled Mattawa’s Mare Nostrum is a lyrical account of the plight of migrants fleeing into Europe during Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation…
London. Zed Books. 2019. 208 pages. Translator Heinz Insu Fenkle writes in his introduction to Bandi’s The Red Years: “There are still numerous places where imprisonment, torture, and execut…
Reno. University of Nevada Press. 2019. 94 pages. Recently, in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, saltwater began inexplicably bubbling up from the ground at a rate of “two-to-four gallons a minute,” killi…
Norman, Oklahoma. Mezcalita Press. 2019. 142 pages. In this, his twentieth volume of poetry, Nathan Brown has done something unusual: one hundred poems, one for each of one hundred years; one hundred…
Kolkata. Hawakal. 2019. 63 pages. RaSh’s fascinating collection of poems draws immediate attention to its title. One only needs to turn over and read the first poem to understand the politics behind i…
Brookline, Massachusetts. Zephyr Press. 2019. 147 pages. Since she was still a child when the Soviet Union broke up, perhaps it is no wonder that in this volume of poetry Kazakhstani poet Aigerim Taz…
Sandpoint, Idaho. Lost Horse Press. 2019. 103 pages. This useful translation of poems, culled from six books by renowned Ukrainian author Yuri Izdryk, makes the most of the facing-page translation for…
Philipsburg, St. Martin. House of Nehesi. 2019. 53 pages. The latest poetic effort of the revolutionary poet of St. Martin, Lasana M. Sekou, drags us into the whirlwind of his words right from the sta…
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Press 53. 2019. 89 pages. Hedy Habra’s The Taste of the Earth invites us into complex worlds of different cultural pasts and presents, where existential anxiet…
Todmorden, United Kingdom. Arc. 2019. 83 pages. This important book is the first English-language anthology of poetry written by Rohingya poets, and these vital poems command our attention, memoriali…
Toronto. Mawenzi House. 2019. 84 pages. Seldom is someone a keeper of deep cultural knowledge and a gifted poet. Joseph A. Dandurand is both. SH:LAM (The Doctor) is “Indigenous Knowl…
Minneapolis. Coffee House Press. 2019. 77 pages. Who is allowed to call themself an American? When a crowd of thousands of white faces shout for an approving President Trump to “Send her back!” in ref…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2019. 87 pages. One Lark, One Horse takes its title from an anecdote that poet Michael Hofmann supplies in the front matter of the book. Not to steal the…
New York. New Directions. 2019. 80 pages. Throughout this newest collection, Dunya Mikhail writes poems of cities, friends, grandmothers, goddesses, of girls who might “outgrow / their dresses / while…
Toronto. House of Anansi Press. 2018. 112 pages. River Woman—profoundly personal, politically charged, playful and burning with love and loss—is a brilliant poetic work by Governor General’s…
Louisville, Kentucky. Sarabande Books. 2019. 98 pages. Historical reenactments have gained a burgeoning popularity recently. According to Jenny Thompson, author of War Games (2004), more than…
New York. W. W. Norton. 2019. 128 pages. This newest collection by Dorianne Laux includes selections from her five previous books of poetry and thirty-two pages of new poetry, some of her best to date…
Madrid. Amagord Ediciones. 2018. 281 pages. Los huesos de mi abuelo teaches me things about our terra, flora, and fauna that it seems I have only passively understood. “The sound of the first…
Durham, North Carolina. Duke University Press. 2019. 144 pages. Renato Rosaldo established himself as an ethno-poet with his groundbreaking 2013 volume The Day of Shelly’s Death, which combin…
Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2019. 72 pages. Much of the narrative arc—and indeed art—of Emily Skaja’s debut collection, Brute, is marked in the first poem of the book. There is skillful sou…