News & Events | Page 115 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Podcast: Elisabeth Jaquette on Translating Sudanese Fiction

January 15, 2021 Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

Translator Elisabeth Jaquette speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about four stories she translated from Arabic for Issue 19 of The Common magazine. These stories appear in a special portfolio of fiction from established and emerging Sudanese writers. In this conversation, Jaquette talks about the delights and difficulties of translating from Arabic, as well as her thoughts on form, style, and satire in literature from the Arab world. She also discusses translating Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, which is currently a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

January 2021 Poetry Feature: Bruce Bond

January 14, 2021 Poetry

Happy New Year! We begin 2021 by welcoming BRUCE BOND back to The Common.

Bruce Bond is the author of twenty-seven books, including, most recently, Black Anthem, Gold Bee, Sacrum, Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015, Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods, Frankenstein’s Children, Dear Reader, Plurality and the Poetics of Self, Words Written Against the Walls of the City, and The Calling.

Table of Contents

Patmos III
Patmos V

The Common’s 10 Most-Read Pieces of 2020

January 10, 2021 News and Events

As The Common office gears up to share exciting new works in 2021, we want to reflect on the pieces that made 2020—our 10th anniversary year—an incredibly special one! Below, you can browse our list of 2020’s most-read pieces to see which works of fiction, essays, interviews, and more left an impact on our readers.

Poems in Translation from Bestia di gioia

January 7, 2021 Poetry, Translation

Poetry by MARIANGELA GUALTIERI
Translated from the Italian by OLIVIA E. SEARS

Poems appear in both Italian and English.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Mariangela Gualtieri is a poet of great incandescence. Whether confronting existential questions or questions of daily existence, she writes with searing honesty and compassion. A veteran of the theater, Gualtieri’s voice can be thunderous and oracular, but also painfully intimate.

Cihu

January 6, 2021 Dispatches

By ADAM DALVA

Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park, Taiwan

Taking the Waters

January 5, 2021 Essays

By MARTHA COOLEY

Sulfur: odor of rotten eggs, matchhead, volcanoes, gunpowder, and Lucifer down there in Hell’s fire and brimstone.

Also the smell that pervades thermal spas. Along with minerals such as sodium chloride, iodine, and calcium, sulfur is a key component of many therapeutic waters. Linked as it is with fire and corrosion, sulfur also has a storied association with the healing of numerous ailments, particularly respiratory and skin-related ones.

Podcast: Omer Friedlander on “Operation Tamar”

January 1, 2021 Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

Writer Omer Friedlander speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Operation Tamar,” which appears in Issue 19 of The Common magazine. “Operation Tamar” is set in Israel, where Friedlander grew up. In this conversation, Friedlander talks about the setting and inspiration for this story and others, and the editing and revision that went into “Operation Tamar” before publication. He also discusses his current projects, a novel and a short story collection recently sold to Random House for publication.

Ask a Local: Landa wo, Strasbourg, France

December 31, 2020 Interviews

Landa wo is a contributor to our Lusosphere portfolio in Issue 20.

Your name: Landa wo

Current city or town: Strasbourg

How long have you lived here: 5 years

Three words to describe the climate: Cold, mild, temperate

Best time of year to visit? Summer and Winter

December 2020 Poetry Feature: Denise Duhamel and Jeffrey Harrison

December 23, 2020 Poetry

Poems by DENISE DUHAMEL and JEFFREY HARRISON

This month we welcome back longtime contributors Denise Duhamel and Jeffrey Harrison to our pages.

Table of Contents:

Denise Duhamel
– 2020
– American Sestina, 2019

Jeffrey Harrison
– The Mount

In the Garden of Invasive Species, I Offer Gratitude

December 22, 2020 Dispatches, Poetry

By JENNIFER PERRINE

Port Murray, New Jersey and Milwaukie, Oregon

for my grandparents, who did not teach me
how to farm, and yet they scattered these seeds:
How a dunk into scalding water slips
the skin from a peach, leaves it unfuzzed, slick
for canning. How the trick to shucking corn
is one clean jerk. How jars of beet brine turn
eggs to amethysts that stain my fingers,
my lips. They left me to play in cellars
stocked with preserves and jam, in rows of trees
that released chestnut burrs for my bare feet
to find. What would they think of my pea shoots
left unlatticed, free to tendril one noose
after another around other plants,
my slapdash harvest, larder left to chance?