My first book of translations is appearing January 1 and available for pre-order!!!! www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978... The first English translation of one of Germany’s most inventive and celebrated poets, Portolan, by Daniela Danz, follows the routes of container shipping that,

Running off to work on a story. In the meantime: Religious left: still a thing.

Singing

So excited to share four poems from a collaboration I'm honored to be working on with @christophernelson.bsky.social!!! These are wild, wonderful poems. Take a look!

Delighted to share translations from a project I'm working on with the amazing @monikacassel.bsky.social: four poems from Barbara Köhler's Niemands Frau, a brilliant, hallucinatory re-telling of the Odyssey. Thanks to Asymptote for believing in the work. www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/no-on...

Summer 2025 Reading Period Report & Finalists newsletter is here! 🎉🎉🎉

Super-excited to have my long poem "Sightlines" out in Under a Warm Green Linden 19. Long poems are my favorite poems to read and to write, and this one--about matrilineal connections, history, and art-making--is especially dear to me. www.greenlindenpress.com/issue19

BREAKING: FDA says covid boosters now only for those over 65 or with preconditions. www.statnews.com/2025/05/20/f...

Standing underneath the old border between East and West Berlin, @monikacassel.bsky.social finds her family history plastered on the walls. Check out our newest Dispatch at TC Online:

This is what not giving up looks like.

Nation Can’t Believe It On Harvard’s Side

Today I am reading, and returning, to two beautiful and still poems by @jillkitchen.bsky.social at Four Way Review fourwayreview.com/two-poems-by...

Probably the nicest thing about editing for a journal is finding a poem you love, sharing it with others on the team, and finding out that they love it as much as you do! Like this gorgeous poem by @rvtrousdale.bsky.social in our new issue of Four Way Review: fourwayreview.com/herring-gull...

So grateful to be a staff pick!

From Episode 70 with @danikastegeman.bsky.social Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/997fb4a3

Thrilled to share five sonnets about Potsdamer Platz, my great-grandfather's glass factory, and how the long shadow of totalitarianism persists for decades not only in our landscapes but in ourselves. Thanks to @commonmag.bsky.social for giving these poems a home.

Writing from a subway platform, @monikacassel.bsky.social observes Berlin’s broken history, and discovers fragments of her own family in the process. Don't miss Cassel’s new Dispatch, transmitted through five perceptive sonnets: buff.ly/JrHjSyD

Zipped over to my neighborhood “small” Powell’s yesterday to buy @patrycjasara.bsky.social's We Contain Landscapes and saw, again, that the poetry people there have good taste! Look at @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social and @aditimachado.bsky.social's books!

👇🎯 We are having trouble using proper terminology because it requires us to fully accept exactly what has happened to our country & wrestle with the fact that every single one of our elected representatives in Congress is violating their oaths of office by not immediately impeaching & removing him.

As the author of a history of concentration camps, I would like to emphasize that this is a very bad idea, and we should definitely not do it.

Denver Quarterly 59 #2 arrived in my mailbox today, and I’m thrilled share three sonnets that distill signature moments of my experience being a teen in Germany/U.S. in the 80s. I’m a wordy poet but also love to write sonnet sequences. Grateful to the editors for including me in this fabulous issue!

New poem in @diodeeditions.bsky.social--an ekphrastic piece on a photo of a flax storeroom (circa 1920) in a factory owned by my ancestors in Moravia. Many thanks to the editors for including my poem in this fabulous issue! diodepoetry.com/cassel_monika/

Extraordinary moment — Nancy Pelosi issues a statement calling on Democratic senators to reject the House funding bill, i.e. to defy Chuck Schumer. "Democratic senators should listen to the women," she says, referring to Murray/DeLauro who want a 1-month stopgap bill instead.

I miss DEI

RED ALERT: Now Is the Moment, Folks talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/red-a...

Day #1 of BHM: Fasia Jansen. She was born in Hamburg in 1929. She was the illegitimate daughter of Liberian Consul General Momolu Massaquoi. Massaquoi was the grandfather of Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi, Black German-American journalist who worked at Jet and Ebony magazines. 1/

Huge congrats to @rclarren.bsky.social, @miriamgershow.bsky.social, Laura Moulton & all the other OR Book Award finalists & award recipients! literary-arts.org/2025/01/anno...

Update on “Project Dishtowel,” where I’m teaching myself/ learning to spin flax and weave linen in an attempt to understand the processes that my ancestors mechanized and scaled up to a dizzying degree in a number of factories in 19th- to mid-20th-century Moravia.

Daniela Danz translated by Monika Cassel. What a poem! This is how to poem.

Just saw that my translation of Daniela Danz was featured on this incredible list on Lit Hub! So grateful to the Poetry Foundation and Poetry Daily for helping this poem—which is among the best I’ve ever translated—find readers! And huge thanks to Timothy Donnelly for sharing it again!

RIP Professor Victor Brombert, who died last month at age 101. I was extraordinarily lucky to take his class on The Modern French Novel in 1991 and was just thinking about Robbe-Grillet, whom we read, the other day. At the time, I knew nothing about his biography, which I’ll link an article to.

Walked down to my neighborhood grocery store to picket with New Seasons workers today. As a former proud union member I won’t cross a picket line, but it’s even better to join one! I call on all Portland area friends to boycott until the workers get a fair contract!

It has been 20 years since Bowker found only 3% of books were translations. Of the 100 “best books” by the ny times this year a whopping… 4 are translated. How far we’ve come.

Calling all translators! We're building a Bluesky starter pack for emerging and established translators—so that we can follow each other and be in community together on the World Wide Web. If you want to be included, add yourself to this thread, and share this post far and wide with your networks :)

Perhaps/ a woman I do not know/ is facing the day with the heavy heart/ that, by all rights, should have been mine. -Lisel Mueller (1924-2020), "In November" one of my favorite poems by Mueller, who, as a young teen, left Germany for the US in 1939. #everynightapoem

At the other end of the parenting road as a new empty-nester who is catching up with all of the things I had to let go of to make space for writing while parenting/managing other significant responsibilities, this post really rings true. Head space for the roaming that writing requires is precious!

Last week, Black community members at the University of Michigan shared their stories. A long thread, because there were a lot of them, and they can make you weep.

Cover of Larks, with photograph by Nicola Davison-Reed, forthcoming from Ohio University Press in April, 2025. www.ohioswallow.com/978082142591...

And the kink in the line and the kink in general is attention. Han VanderHart (Poetry Northwest)

Last night, 19 Senators voted to end illegal arms sales to Israel. We stood up to AIPAC, the Democratic Senate leadership, and the Biden administration. We must continue going forward to end illegal arms sales and hold Netanyahu accountable for his war crimes.

The purpose of poetry is to return that which is familiar to its original strangeness. —Charles Simic

Wowowow!!! Just found out the @washingtonpost.com listed my book FRENCH GIRL @fieldmousepress.bsky.social as one of The 10 best graphic novels of 2024!!! www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/1...

Started a starter pack!

@agnimagazine.bsky.social is now here! give ‘em (us) a follow! 🔥

AGNI Magazine is on Blue Sky! I love these lines from Paisley Rekdal's poem, "My Brother": "I want a brother to walk with me now through these woods, to stare with me into Death’s eyes, those glassy, winking flames." Read the full poem here: agnionline.bu.edu/poetry/my-br...

everyone say hi to @agnimagazine.bsky.social !! add us to all yr lit mag lists !!

This is actually poets

I am losing my mind a bit about having won this award! And I’m so glad to be recognized for my translation work—foundation of who I am as a writer and also a deep way to express my life lived in two languages. And I’m so grateful to Daniela Danz and her brilliant poems.

In middle school I was an altar server and worked a funeral for an 18yo. I didn’t have the maturity for that. I suspect the experience shaped me, as did the Catholic Church. I wrote this for the kids who had to grow up too fast. Thank you to Aster(ix) Journal. asterixjournal.com/the-altar-se...

Please welcome the wonderful writer @laurenfsharma.bsky.social.