Portside

As the generals imprison over 30 poets, California poet Phyllis Klein attacks the killers of poetry in Myanmar, the futility of trying to erase words with bullets.

“So much of this last year has been about breath and breathing,” writes the poet Kindra McDonald, referring to respirators and the words “I can’t breathe.”

Rebecca Foust’s poem “Crack” speaks to vulnerability—"just a nick/to break the skin”—that encapsulates the era of pandemic.

California poet Rebecca Foust addresses an accustomed high standard of living that we know is precarious, evanescent.

Costa Rica poet Simmons protests the legacy of “colonization” that confuses crime and justice.

Hilary Cruz Mejia, a young Latinx poet from Guatemala, protests the genocidal history of her homeland, while seeking to preserve its indigenous roots.

“Where profit ignites,” writes the late poet Al Young, “lives go out.”

Responding to the shootings in Atlanta’s Gold Spa, poet Patricia Mona Eng uses online quotes of the shooter against the 911 recordings of the Asian woman calling for help.

Martín Espada’s newest collection, Floaters, takes its title from the term used by some Border Patrol police to describe migrants drowned in the Rio Grande.

There’s a strong feminist working-class voice in the poetry of Australian writer Lesbia Harford 1891-1927.