CONTENTS / ÍNDICE

K N Howard

Djelloul

Dear Readers,

The best translators of poetry are often poets who in their years creating poems develop the special sensitivities we editors cherish. In this issue, we are happy to bring to you the poems of John O’Shea, our newest translator, and Iván Soto Camba, who has been with us for a while now.

Each poet in his own way focuses on our relationship to our environments. John, in his incredibly beautiful and exciting Elizabethan sonnet sequence, “Elementary” takes us to Ireland. “Coumdubh Lake” begins:

Against the slaty silver afternoon

The sky sketching kite gives shape to the air, Defines the rockface, the bottomless lake

They say that plunges all the way to doom….

Iván Soto Camba in “Garden”, offers a more ironic but equally exciting view of ourselves. Laugh if you can!

…the caretaker gives the flowers the names of the dead with large shears he cuts pedros, marianas and albertos and gathers them in a black sack…

We also welcome some old friends: for the fans of Aleqs Garrigoz, “Sunday” and for those of us who dote on K N Howard, “The Studio at 4:00 a.m” and “Whereas the Virtues of the Mantis.” We are also pleased to present excerpts from “Desde El Capulí” by Ecuadorian poet Byron Alexander Carrión Jumbo.

You’ll find more short fiction in these pages than ever before: on the difficulties of writing, the humorous “It” by Margaret McGavin, and in “Zoara” Wade Bell depicts the impact of an historical transition on the life of a young stone cutter and; by implication, us all.

Happy reading. See you again soon.