Photo by Yahia Lababidi There comes a time in one’s life when—to reflect, heal, and grow—one must retreat from the world. Middle age, naturally, is a stage of turning inward, and our global pandemic…

Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kneeling…

When Don Evans, the founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, contacted me in August 2019 to contribute a piece for the program that honored Sterling Plumpp with the Fuller Aw…

Photo by Parée / Flickr The editors of World Literature Today are delighted to announce our annual shortlist of Pushcart nominations for 2021. Pushcart Prize XLVII will honor the be…

Photo by zig0004 / Flickr for Derek Walcott & Sigrid Nama At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. — D.W., “Archipelagos,” Map of the New World  1.  Part…

Photo by Luke Porter / Unsplash Series editor’s note: Sometimes it is good to go back to our old rituals; sometimes even conversations slim with anxiety are welcomed into a home, into a body…

Dacheng Flour Factory, Shekou, Shenzhen / Photo by Chris / Flickr Every day, educated youth of the erstwhile industrial zone ride the sightseeing elevator, up and down, crowding into the skylark th…

Photo by niko / Unsplash Series editor’s note: The tree in Tamara J. Madison’s poem is one that holds a blemished beauty, both life-giving and life-taking. The speaker addresses the tree rig…

Photo by Darian Wong / flickr Series editor’s note: In Ashaki Jackson’s new poem, the Black woman is at the center of the speaker’s attention, which the poet holds in her own imagining, a ra…

Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation Fragile Eagle The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum displays fossils of extinct & extant species. Eye…

Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr In spring of the year I turned twenty I looked for a river river calm and wide that I believed to be my past incarnation. Since childhood, I’ve seen it many times…

Photo by J. Triepke / Flickr Series editor’s note: The speaker in Nick Makoha’s poem is an unexpected one: Icarus, coming back to reclaim his narrative, approaching Basquiat with a simple re…

  Photo by Kari Gunter-Seymour / www.karigunterseymourpoet.com Kari Gunter-Seymour (b. 1955) is having a moment—soon to become two years of moments since she was appointed in June 2020 t…

Dimitris Lyacos with Marsias / Photo by Walter Melcher In 2019 I interviewed Dimitris Lyacos on the occasion of the US tour/launch of his trilogy, Poena Damni, which had been recently re…

Photo by Parée / Flickr Editorial note: WLT mourns the loss of Kamilah Aisha Moon, whose poem, “Fireflies,” was included in the Black Voices series this year. We hope her light will…

Photo by Igor Karimov / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In this week’s poem, the speaker finds himself to be on the outside, looking in with an ever-watchful gaze, pondering all the water in…

Photo by valkrye131 / Flickr I kiss her & death is the shadow of that loving bird shaking on the pool yet when she turns to look it has flown. * She’s gone, sleepwalking with her kisses…

Photo by Megan (Markham) Bucknall / Unsplash It is easy to be a mother. Childbirth was nothing. Marriage and divorce only crack the plaster a little like when the S-train goes by. It is easy to…

Photo by Basetrack 18 / Flickr The trees outside my balcony, Remind me of the trees of Afghanistan They are big green clouds that land on the ground to lift our spirits and take them for a journey o…

Photo by michael_swan / Flickr Alternatives could or should be basin or lagoon or pool or puddle or small body or was there a motive or I got here by myself iterating through conversions or turning…

Photo by Simone Dalmeri / Unsplash Series editor’s note: With the opening poems of the 2021 series, Ariana Benson resurrects vivid, fleshy worlds, in which Black boys are immersed in fawnhoo…

Photo by Sylvie Mazerolle / Unsplash Assembly Dear fellow carpenters and woodworkers, I come with greetings of solidarity from the metaphysicians. Among us the situation has also b…

Photo by Moheb Soliman / From the series Tidings / A Protocol of Circulation, Washing Up & Will In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, to which I recently relocated from the land of infinite spectacles, Ca…

Birds over Jerash / Photo by Omar Chatriwala / Flickr The poets’ voices sing in my head across distance, sing to reconcile to make peace through counterpoint but can’t work as they should. For th…

Photo by NCinDC / Flickr He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of them? Why…