Recent Reviews and News

[Twelve Stations and Colonies] display Różycki’s remarkably inventive use of received forms, which, like all histories an d traditions, can both inspire and constrain, both reinforce and diminish one’s identity.… Różycki’s humour—which Johnston brings across with great verve, down to the pun on Upper and Lower Silesia—takes aim at the manifold foibles and contradictions of Polish society, but the poet never stoops to derision. His irony is gentle: he extends universal sympathy to his fellow refugees and colonists, be they delusional or disillusioned. Their present is unbearable, their past irretrievable, yet they go on.… Tomasz Różycki’s idiosyncratic rapprochement with tradition is an attempt to make peace with his losses, even as they mount.
—Boris Dralyuk, The Times Literary Supplement

Relocations is a highly enjoyable collection of poetry introducing the English-language world to three incredibly diverse and talented women poets writing in Russian that could be as meaningful to a casual fan of poetry as to a comparative literature scholar. [full review]
—Will Evans, Three Percent

Yu Xiang’s poems are the poetic equivalent of shoegazer rock. She takes the mundane—a whiff of cigarette smoke, a falling leaf, a housefly—and stares at it so intently that it splits open to reveal something unexpected. [full review]
—Naomi Long Eagleson, Words Without Borders

That a rare poet like Bai Hua has an accomplished poet like Fiona Sze-Lorrain to bring his work to an English-speaking audience is wonderful. The result is a beautiful collection that helps the reader understand a poet of such quiet restraint and largeness of heart. [full review]
—Zafar Anjum, Kitaab, Asia+n writing in English

The title of the book [Wind Says] succinctly characterizes Bai's style—restless, murmuring, with an impressionistic brevity of image—and also displays Sze-Lorrain's translating prowess. [full review]
—Henry W. Leung, AsymptoteJournal.com

Paul Klee’s Boat, Anzhelina Polonskaya’s [latest book], is an emotional journey through the bleakest seasons of the human soul, translated with great nuance by Andrew Wachtel… a vital addition to the contemporary poetry canon, a collection as interesting as it is touching that will inevitably be remembered for years to come. [full review]
—Will Evans, Three Percent

Motherless Child is a superbly wrought romantic page-turner that has elements in it of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, with more than a touch of the latter’s gothic essence. [full review]
—Bill Gladstone, Canadian Jewish News

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