Marta
“the rotting vegetable patch where Marta/finds a stranger’s hand under her dress and — oh — August//snaps like a dry twig…” By Agnieszka Wolny-HamkaÅ‚o, translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese.
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Dante – Prato Al Saglio
“the wind freezes/ in the nooks and gulping air your mouth// is sated with a fear that fades/ solely when you walk…”
By Raoul Schrott, translated from German by Iain Galbraith.
After the Iron Age / A vaskorszak után
“We wrapped ourselves in rains in October, watched run-over/ dogs scattered along the road: spilt guts,/ blood, hair…” By Gábor Schein, translated from Hungarian by Erika Mihálycsa.
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Autumn Villanelle / Herbstvillanelle
“the days are running out of light/ and an hour lasts ten minutes./ the trees have played their final colours.” By Jan Wagner, translated from German by Iain Galbraith.
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Remembering Las Vegas / Erinnerung An Las Vegas
“high above the theatre hung/ the rusting colt of the moon in its holster.” By Jan Wagner, translated from German by Iain Galbraith.
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Turkish Bath / Türkisches Bad
By Durs Grünbein, translated from German by Karen Leeder.
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Island Without Sirens / Insel Ohne Sirenen
“And the silence stretched for kilometres,/ Making one think of test-sites, dead craters,/ The acoustics of bombed-out opera houses…” By Durs Grünbein, translated from German by Karen Leeder.
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Peeling the Onion of Central European Writing
“If writers anywhere have been tasked with documenting the non-existence of the places they live their lives, then it has been the writers of Central Europe.” Michael Stein introduces our feature on contemporary writing from Central Europe.
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From the Sky, the Earth
“…after a while the pictures started climbing off the walls of the exhibition room and stretched until they had as many dimensions as they needed. Four, because they didn’t want to live for ever.” By Zsuzsa Selyem, translated from Hungarian by Erika Mihálycsa.
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Nightwork
“An enchanting place, these Czech lands of mine… they combine Catholicism and Communism in the most degenerate way possible.” By Jáchym Topol, translated from Czech by Marek Tomin.
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