Portside

At the turn of the 20th Century Czech immigrants flocked to the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen on the city's near west side attracted there by the offer of jobs. Mississippi-based poet Philip C. Kolin depicts their hopes and realities in a newly-published chapbook.

Pay attention to your DNA. The idea that you can't go home again assumes a different aspect in California poet Rebecca Foust's rendition: "Kansas one day will turn out to be Oz/and Oz Kansas."

War veteran Fred Norman devotes his writing to Peace. His mantra: Each night I ask myself/what did I do today/to end the wars?//If I answer back with/"Nothing"/then the dead that day/are mine.//I beg of them forgiveness.

The New York-based poet Darrel Alejandro Holnes addresses the matter of walls--geographic boundaries, borders, fences--that attempt to delineate the peoples on different sides and the ultimate hypocrisy, futility of the effort.

The UK poet Jane Spiro, a seasoned traveler and keen observer, reminds us that pleasure, wisdom and all good things depend on knowing "where to look."

Eric Garner, a sometime gardener who was killed by a New York City policeman's choke hold in 2014, lives on in Ross Gay's plain tribute to a man who worked with his hands.

The Persian poet Majid Naficy fled Iran in 1983 to live in exile in various places, currently in Los Angeles. His poetry here addresses the sense of loss, the urge to create roots.

We've become inured to civilian bombing, collateral damage, refugees on the road--the consequences of warfare--but it wasn't always so. As poet Cintia Santana depicts the World War II bombing of a scholarly library, she leads us to "the shock of light."

A gray hoodie will not protect her son from rain or cold, writes Massachusetts poet January Gill O'Neil, but a mother's fears for "the darkest child/ on our street" express a deeper threat from the outside as color and race threaten the safety of the young.

Warsan Shire, a Kenyan-born Somali poet based in London, addresses the terror and desperation of migrants forced to leave their homes seeking safety, shelter, hope even in strange and often inhospitable lands. Hers is a language of experience and insight, capturing the tension of the current crisis of uprooted people. .