“Can our rot ripen? According to the books, our future is on fire like a child pelted with kerosene and lit, pushed to start walking. (‘Stairs’).”
Jacqueline Schaalje
JACQUELINE SCHAALJE has published poetry and short fiction, most recently in The Comstock Review, The Friday Poem, and Pembroke Magazine. She's the winner of the Florida Review Editor's Prize 2022, and was a finalist in a few competitions, among which Live Canon's and Alpine Fellowship. She participated in the Fall 2022 W2W mentoring program of AWP. She is a translation editor at MAYDAY, and reviews books for Painted, spoken, too. She earned her MA in English from the University of Amsterdam.
Review: Marlon Hacla’s Glossolalia translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
Review: Sheyla Smanioto’s Out of Earth
by Jacqueline Schaalje
Out of Earth, the award-winning debut novel by Brazilian novelist Sheyla Smanioto, translated from Portuguese into English by Laura Garmeson and Sophie Lewis, and published by Boiler House Press, is about digging. The digging is simultaneously of dead bodies from the earth, dogs dug from the body which invariably means violence is going to flare […]
Review: Mona Kareem’s I Will Not Fold These Maps translated from the Arabic by Sara Elkamel
by Jacqueline Schaalje
Familiar tropes from Arabic poetry, the loneliness of the desert, sweetness of roses, cups of tea, the intimacy of courtyards, tears, hearts, souls, night and weeping to the moon, which can all become quickly sentimental, abound in Mona Kareem’s bilingual I Will Not Fold These Maps. But they are given a new twist because they […]
Hemley Boum’s Days Come & Go, translated from the French by Nchanji Njamnsi
Review by Jacqueline Schaalje
This is the vividly told story of three generations of women (and their husbands, friends, sons, and lovers—not necessarily in order of importance) both in Cameroon and after immigrating to France. Major personal and historical events, such as Cameroon’s war of independence, are told through the eyes of one character, whose circumstances provide the background […]
Review: Time Stitches by Eleni Kefala
translated from the Greek by Peter Constantine
Time Stitches starts with a shape poem:
to al
l those play
ing
hopscotch wi
thin
the gaps οf his
tory
Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin
translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang,
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
The daring viewpoint of a homophobe widow makes for a toe-curling, but also hopeful read in the riveting Korean bestseller by Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter, dealing with the loneliness and ostracism of a lesbian couple and a single elderly woman.
Review of Liminal and Nadir by Laura Fusco
translated from the Italian by Caroline Maldonado
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
Liminal and Nadir, two poetry books by Laura Fusco, present the voices of refugees in as direct a way as possible so we can feel and recognize their experiences.
The Owner of the Sea by Richard Price
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
The Owner of the Sea by British poet Richard Price, published by Carcanet, is a poetic retelling of three Inuit stories. It’s not a translation of those stories. They are based on folk stories told by elders and some other sources such as tales by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen. Price describes them as “poetry based on prose translations of live storytelling.” If you thought Inuit busy themselves with fishing and chewing seal skin all day long, let these poem refresh your perspective!
Mother and the Flowers
By Jacqueline Schaalje
Nine out of ten times, Mother hypnotized flowers not to sneeze. She taught other housewives to branch their spitzes, stick them out so they would all be prim donnas. Irksome they sprinkled pollen. Behind her elbow, they called her shrew and harridan. Minimalized in ro- tation, she peppered her devotees. Their landslip murk swelled with […]
