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Translation: Ġgantija II

February 3, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Translated from the Maltese by RUTH WARD and IMMANUEL MIFSUD

Poem appears in both Maltese and English below.

Translator’s Note

The Poem

Malta is a country caught in the crosscurrents: between North Africa and continental Europe; between insularity and a constructive role on the world stage; between prehistoric ruins and the blockchain. Mifsud is the voice of Malta, reflecting the archipelago in its richness, complexity, and contradictions. His is the voice through which the margins question the center; myths of progress are challenged; and the ancient interrogates the present, as in “Ġgantija II.”

The Ġgantija (“Giantess”) temples of Gozo were built during the Neolithic and are thought to be more than 5,500 years old, older than the pyramids of Egypt. They were erected by a people who worshipped a mother figure, a goddess. Awareness of intergenerationality and the unbroken cycles of life takes on a peculiar intensity when all that you have ever been surrounds all that you are in the present — and all you might aspire to become. It is comforting; it is confining. “Ġgantija II” was commissioned for an interdisciplinary event and an excerpt from it, in the Maltese, has been incorporated into a public sculpture on the island of Gozo.

Sometimes the Sun Becomes a Dragon You Can’t Escape

February 1, 2022 Fiction

By RACHEL KOZLOSKI

After the Celtic folktale of King Eochaid and his sons

Sometimes the sun becomes a dragon you can’t escape. It was that kind of Sunday when Nicole and her sisters sat bored and panting on their stoop, too tired and sun-stoned to fight with each other, or to find something to do. Occasionally one of them exhaled loudly, with noise, “Huuhhnnnnn” because that was the only way to feel release.

Steven Tagle on “Notes on Looking Back”

January 28, 2022 Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.

Transcript: Steven Tagle Podcast.

Steven Tagle speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his essay “Notes on Looking Back,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Steven talks about writing this essay, originally in Greek, as a way to explore his love of the language and the experience of learning, speaking, and writing in it. Steven first came to Greece several years ago as a Fulbright Fellow. He discusses his current writing project about borders and migration, and the time he spent visiting and getting to know a family in a refugee camp in Greece. Steven also talks about life in Greece—how friendly and welcoming Greek people can be to outsiders, and how the country weathered the pandemic. When he interned at The Common, Steven spearheaded the magazine’s first podcast series.

Also discussed in this podcast:

An essay with photos in the Los Angeles Review of Books, about a refugee camp in Greece
Steven’s current writing project, funded by a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs: a series of dispatches about Greece as a cultural crossroads

January 2022 Poetry Feature: Austin Segrest

January 27, 2022 Poetry, Poetry Recordings

Poems by AUSTIN SEGREST, from The Groom.

Table of Contents:

• The Groom
• After Caravaggio
• Revision
• Raptures

Dispatches: Stella Wong

January 26, 2022 Dispatches

By STELLA WONG

Spooks (Pidgin)

Iowa City

Re: M Moore

This is the mess.
This is the age we wrought.

January 2022 Poetry Feature

January 20, 2022 Poetry, Poetry Recordings

New poems by our contributors: MADELEINE MORI, G. C. WALDREP, ELLEN DORÉ WATSON, and ROBERT FANNING.

Table of Contents:

Madeleine Mori | Marrow

G. C. Waldrep | Rereading “Corson’s Inlet” at the Glendale Methodist Cemetery

Ellen Doré Watson | In Which I’m Not Allowed to Lie

Robert Fanning | Inarticulata

Cockroach

January 19, 2022 Fiction

By RAJOSIK MITRA

I

It is 3:46 A.M. July, 2019. This cockroach is a creature of habit, something that crawls out from the cracks right after the lights are out. Nobody sees it till it is right there, suddenly there, on that exact same spot every night. It has a look on it that tells you it is old, that it’s been waiting there for ages, waiting for something inevitable that never comes, always deferred. Its antennae, moving in a slow rhythm, sweep the air above its head.

Podcast: Noor Naga on “Who Writes the Arabian Gulf?”

January 14, 2022 Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.

Transcript: Noor Naga Podcast.

Noor Naga speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about co-editing The Common’s first-of-its-kind portfolio of writing from the Arabian Gulf, which appeared in Issue 22. Noor penned an introduction to the portfolio, titled “Who Writes the Arabian Gulf?”, which explores her experience growing up in the Gulf with no real contemporary literature written for, by, or about that diverse population. Noor discusses her idea to create the portfolio, what she enjoyed about assembling it from submissions, and what themes unite the pieces that became part of it. She also talks about her forthcoming novel from Graywolf Press, and why an earlier novel didn’t find a home in publishing.

Quarters

January 12, 2022 Dispatches

By BEINA XU

Berlin, Germany

I live in the wrong colonial quarter of Berlin.

My neighborhood is called Afrikanisches Viertel, and my flat is on Guinea Street. There’s Kongostraße, Togostraße, Kamerunerstraße, Transvaalstraße, Sansibarstraße, Otawistraße—I could go on, but you could also just Google Germany’s colonial conquest of Africa.

The Common to Receive $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts

January 11, 2022 News, News and Events

The Common literary journal will receive its sixth grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2022. The Art Works grant of $10,000 will be awarded to The Common to help publish and promote place-based stories, essays, and poems by new and underrepresented writers from the US and abroad.