Poetry

June 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems from Pedro Poitevin, Aiden Heung, and Ellie Black

This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.

Table of Contents:

  • Pedro Poitevin (trans. Philip Nikolayev), “Sonnet from the water before dawn” and “Self-Portrait as a Dog”
  • Ellie Black, “The Confessional” and “Revelator”
  • Aiden Heung, “The Theory of Evolution”
June 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems from Pedro Poitevin, Aiden Heung, and Ellie Black
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Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya

By HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
Translated By EDWARD GUNAWAN

Content warning: Some offensive slurs that appear in the source text have been carried over into the translation.

 

Translator’s Note

Fueled by far-right nationalist politics and religious extremism, persecution and violence from both state institutions and the general public against queer and trans Indonesians have reached unprecedented levels—mirroring similar disturbing patterns worldwide.

Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya
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May 2025 Poetry Feature: Dante Alighieri, translated by Mary Jo Bang

This month we’re honored to bring our readers an excerpt from MARY JO BANG’s new translation of Dante’s Paradiso, out soon from Graywolf Press.

 

cover of paradiso

 

From Paradiso: Canto XI

The first eighteen lines of this canto are Dante’s elaboration of human difference, his lament over the failure of some humans to realize their gifts, and an exultation for the opportunity he’s been given—which is to enter Heaven before he has died.

Thomas Aquinas’s clarification of “where they fatten up” begins at line 22 and continues without interruption until the end of the canto. In lines 124 to 126, Thomas complains that Saint Dominic’s flock, the Dominican friars, are showing signs of ambition and greed, seeking honors and offices. They are wandering away from the tenets of the order, which are to live a life of humility and self-sacrifice. In lines 137 to 139, he says, “You’ll see what has splintered the tree, / And how the remedy for that can be deduced from // ‘Where they fatten up, if they don’t lose their way.’” The tree is the Dominican order, and it has been scheggia (“splintered” or “chipped away at”) because so many of the sheep have strayed. If the monks and clergy remain true to the principles set out by Saint Dominic, they will be enriched with the “milk” of spiritual nourishment and “fatten up” the way sheep are meant to. 

Throughout the Divine Comedy, Dante is concerned with the ways in which selfishness destroys the social fabric. He details how people pay for that selfishness in Hell or by having to trudge up the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory. But Dante isn’t only interested in what happens after death, he is also talking about how we live while on earth. His life was destroyed by the petty grudges of partisan politics. As an exile, he was under constant threat of death. He takes great risks in writing his poem because he hopes that by addressing the greed and megalomania that is destroying Italy, he can help put a stop to it. He also knows that this is not a time-limited problem but a timeless one, which is why he wrote the poem in the vernacular—so that, unlike poems written in literary Latin, it would change over time. He said he was also writing his poem in the vernacular so that it could be read by everyone. That is why I translated the poem into the American vernacular. 

—Mary Jo Bang

May 2025 Poetry Feature: Dante Alighieri, translated by Mary Jo Bang
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Curlew Sixth Sense Bantry

By JOHN KINSELLA

To take a liberty with lexicon
is remiss in the circumstances
            of the curlew
with diminished habitat.
It reprises every day,
            and the mudflats
            sheeted by the in-
sweep of tide leads it to the mowed
grass in front of the Bantry

Curlew Sixth Sense Bantry
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