Editorial: 15 December 2010

December 13, 2010 The Iranian domain’s second publication this year brings us Rosa Jamali, a poet, dramatist and translator. Her poetry – which takes among its inspirations classical Persian literature and philosophy, Greek mythology and modern fiction – plays with disrupted syntax and juxtaposes different registers, merging traditional rhythms with the cadences of everyday speech. In poems such as ‘The Last Street of Tehran’, personal experience is infused with political comment and lament. Elsewhere in her poetry, though often enigmatic and obscure in its metaphor, there are moments of startlingly arresting and crystalline imagery: “The mouse is a sharp vessel of me singing”; “I’m unripe greengages”; “The only resident of this house is the gloomy hawk”.

In this issue we also feature a new poem by Toon Tellegen, who was first published on PIW in 2006. ‘A Poem for Henry Hudson’ was commissioned for a gala poetry evening in New York in 2009 during the time of the Henry Hudson celebrations. It’s both a spirited ode to New York, “the centre of the world”, and all its myths and iconography, as well as being a personal evocation of family life and the narrator’s origins in “Voorstraat, at the corner of Asylstraat, / in a small town in Holland”. Alongside this work on the Netherlands domain is Herman Gorter (1864–1927), who was a leading member of the famous Eighties Movement, a group of Dutch writers working at the end of the nineteenth century. Translator Paul Vincent’s introduction to Gorter gives an excellent overview of the poet’s cultural milieu and literary work, as well as his involvement within socialist politics and contributions to Marxist philosophy. Gorter’s Dutch poems are accompanied by Vincent’s translations into English; these are crafted negotiations of Gorter’s poetic forms and rhyme schemes, and are a fantastic introduction to the work of this respected writer, widely considered to be one of the first modernist poets in Dutch literature. As we in the Northern hemisphere creep towards the shortest day of the year, Gorter’s high-spirited poems alleviate seasonal affective disorder like a white-light box: dive into his unashamedly exuberant invocations of love and colour and “willows of light, ribbons of light, white silver / waters of light, wheedling light, vistas of shiver light, / sheaths and bayonets of light, army of light”. And . . .

Our latest archive tour leads you through some of our favourite poems from this year’s publications on PIW. Don’t forget that you can read {link shortcut="int_editorial_list" title="all our back issues"} and explore our archive via the links in the left-hand column of this homepage.

We return in January, with poetry from the USA, Israel, Japan and the Netherlands. On 27 January, we will publish a special issue to celebrate National Poetry Day in the Netherlands and Flanders, in which you’ll find new poems by Remco Campert, translated into English by Donald Gardner especially for PIW.