The Tumblr of Words without Borders

Before he defected, Jang Jin-sung was Kim Jong-il’s favorite court poet.

Here is an excerpt from his poem “Pillow”, published for the first time in English, in our North Korean Defectors Issue of Words without Borders:

With nothing to offer but a bowl of water
For one face-wash
The traders sit here
To sell their poverty

(photo courtesy chathamhouse.org)

An excerpt from the documentary film “Voices in Wartime” featuring Sinan Antoon. Come read his poem “A Butterfly in New York” in the April 2013: Writing from Iraq Issue of Words without Borders.

Blackness - in our March Issue:

“We who were killed

And our mothers were not allowed to cry for us

So they ululated

They were not allowed to mourn

So they wore colorful wild flowers

We who …

When someone dies

On his bed

Under his physician’s scalpel

His eyes never having seen the battlefield

They drag us from the Unknown Soldier monument

They extract tears from our mothers’ dried eyes

They throw black on them

They rouse us from our graves

And force us to walk in the martyr’s procession”

Pere Gimferrer, one of the poets in our March 2013: Spain’s Great Untranslated Issue. 

Video of Pere Gimferrer from Canal-L. Come read an excerpt from his poem “Rhapsody” in the March 2013: Spain’s Great Untranslated issue of Words without Borders. 

The website of Uzbek poet Hamid Ismailov

An energetic reading from poet Shota Iatashvili. Come see his nonfiction piece “My Story of Chess” in the September 2012: Writing from the Silk Road Issue of Words without Borders. 

Poet Hamid Ismailov reads a piece in Uzbek. Come see his poem “Love in Samarkand” in the September 2012: Writing from the Silk Road Issue of Words without Borders. 

Liu Xiaobo discusses freedom of expression in China in a PEN America video. Come read Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s review of his newly translated book “June Fourth Elegies” in the Book Reviews Section of Words without Borders. 

A video by art collective ”El Hombrecito” (in Spanish) with text by  Frank Báez and Homero Pumarol. Come read “The Marilyn Monroe of Santo Domingo” by Báez in the June 2012: The Queer Issue III of Words without Borders.