Looking back on a year of dispatches, I’m proud to report that we’ve had essays from five continents. I heard from writers in places both famous and obscure, as well as some remote areas that were unknown to me. More than once, I found myself zooming in on Google maps, trying to get a glimpse of the locations described. My hope is that some of this year’s dispatches inspired the same curiosity in you. Here are a few highlights from throughout the year, ones you may have missed the first time the around:

Samantha Ender confronts a snake in Rwanda;

Aaron Gilbreath forages for vintage bottles in the Californian desert;

Noreen McAuliffe dissects fish in Mongolia;

Elizabeth Abbott inspects a war zone in Balad Ruz, Iraq;

and finally, Julian Hoffman finds a birding bridge between Greece’s Prespa Lakes and Ottawa, Canada.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons

This week, as we look back on the year, I’d like to highlight the work of some of the poets featured in Dispatches. It’s sometimes hard to pin a location to a poem, and at the same time, a poem can often take readers more accurately to the heart of a place than a reported dispatch. This year’s poems took readers all over the world, from sleepy American towns to European cities to remote forests and islands. Here are a few of my favorites, all worth a second look:

Yvette Christiansë’s haunting “Uneasy Sleep”, which takes readers to a tiny island in the depths of the South Atlantic;

Cralan Kelder’s spare painting of Bali, “Bring ‘Em Home”;

Krista Leahy’s late night in a small town, “Redressed”;

Brian Simoneau’s view of the Pacific, “Poem With Snowy Plovers”;

and finally, poet Kobus Moolman’s moving essay about teaching poetry in prison.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons