Undercurrents

Exchanges - Spring ’16 issue

We feel this focus on social justice is timely for more than one reason—but chief among them is The University of Iowa’s ongoing Just Living initiative—and our title echoes contributing poet Kamal Kumar Tanti’s affirmation that “History plays the undercurrent of my poetry” (translated by Dibyajyoti Sarma).

We’ve turned our pages over to nine writers and nine translators who speak of state censorship (“I chose the shame of a coward / and cut my own larynx”—Chieu Anh Nguyen, translated by Huong Nguyen), of social stigma (an aloof and icy-eyed colleague is spat upon by a “well-dressed, grey-haired man” in Agustín Cadena’s “My Former Colleague,” translated by Patricia Dubrava), of shame (the discovery that no one can be born to a grandmother, and the gaping absence of a father’s name—Angi Máté, translated by Jozefina Komporaly), of a suffocating Eurydice, her throat filling with daily details (Inna Kabysh, translated by Katherine E. Young), of dangerous love (Max Lobe, translated by Elettra Pauletto; Benito Pastoriza Iyodo, translated by Bradley Warren Davis), and of a prison of tongueless words (Ahmad Shamlu, translated by Farzad Salamifar and Addie Leak). We’re also creating our own small undercurrent by opening this issue with a Spanish-language piece (Andrea Chapela Saavedra’s translation of Harris Khalique’s poems).

Our shift toward a visual component carries on in “Undercurrents”—we’ve continued to feature work by local artists on every page. Special thanks to the Catich Gallery at St. Ambrose University for this issue’s cover art, “Imaginary Landscapes Student Demo 20,” by Father Edward Catich.

The Exchanges Staff