On Thin Ice
KATHRIN SCHMIDT
Multi-award-winning contemporary poet and novelist Kathrin Schmidt was born in the former German Democratic Republic, her voice feminist, political, and distinctly of the east. Her themes range through unemployment, loneliness, suicide and disaffection, which she sees as characterising the experience of East Germans during and since Reunification. Schmidt’s novel ‘You’re not dying’ (2009) won the German Book Prize and will at last appear in English in 2021 translated by Christine Les.
SUE VICKERMAN
The UK’s Brexit vote triggered writer Sue Vickerman to throw a rope across to Europe by turning to literary translation. Being northern English, Vickerman empathizes with East German peer-writer Kathrin Schmidt who similarly hails from a region where people feel ‘left behind’ and where right-wing populism is on the rise. Sue has translated TWENTY POEMS BY KATHRIN SCHMIDT, Arc Publications, 2020. She edits for Naked Eye Publishing (UK). suevickerman.eu
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
The Oppression Tables: Genesis
blackis not the desired colorof women...
Of Beasts & Feminism: An Interview // Review of FABLESQUE by Anna Maria Hong ~ Sarah Audsley
Writing within the constraint of a bestiary—a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone—Hong applies pressure through a feminist re-interpretation on traditional Greek myths, common Western fables, and personified animal tales.
Everything in Salt Water
Baptized at ten given too soon a clean heart a shiny new spirit so much left of me to make filthy. When I turned teenager my mother tells me to wash...
A Review of G.C. Waldrep’s THE EARLIEST WITNESSES
Hailed by his contemporaries as a visionary poet, G.C. Waldrep aptly presents an intimate study of the literal, physical, and spiritual act and implications of seeing.
A Review of Jennifer Militello’s THE PACT
If you are someone like me who usually – but not always – closes her correspondence to friends and family with the word “love,” Jennifer Militello’s “The Pact” (Tupelo Press) might make you want to think about what it means when you use – or withhold – that word.
Four Poems
As they were lowering/his coffin in to the ground/beside my mother’s grave/where the grass had regrown–
Tender the River: An Interview with Matt W. Miller
In Matt Miller’s fourth book, Tender the River (Texas A&M Press 2021), Miller shows us the grace of listening and how it can shape and change you, as a river does land. The collection is an homage to Miller’s hometown of Lowell, MA, following a narrative of its multifaceted histories, including the geological, economic, social, and personal archives of the place.
Welcome Stephen Cramer as our new Assistant Poetry Editor!
The GMR is thrilled to announce that Stephen Cramer will be joining us as Assistant Poetry Editor. We look forward to working even more closely with Stephen.
But Then I Turned Into My Evil Twin: Kindness and Ecstasy
“I am so desperate for that vaccine/I’d knock down an old person/to get it,” someone once said.
Poemed
sky-blue-prison/prism of spin-back-earth
A Review of NO MORE TIME by Greg Delanty
Have you heard of the scurfpea, quagga, aye-aye, or the northern gastric frog? Greg Delanty’s new book of poems, No More Time, is filled with such exotic creatures, and more familiar ones, too. In some cases, they are thriving. Many others are either extinct or endangered, facts weighted with an awareness of humans’ role in their plight.