Poetry

For the Venezuelan poet Adalber Salas Hernández, 'poems are not unlike the microorganisms that act as his diminutive muses,' writes his translator from Spanish, Arthur Malcolm Dixon. Four such poems are presented here in both languages, where the reader is immersed in imagery from the Bible alongside observations of tiny living forms. Accompanied by a translator's note from Dixon, these poems become a meditation on the complexities of life at both large and small scales, between the tangible and intangible.

Indigenous Mexican poet Irma Pineda writes both in Spanish and Didxazá, one of the variants in the Zapotec language family. Here, read four of her bilingual poems in Didxazá and Spanish from her 2020 collection, Nasía racaladxe' / Azul anhelo [Blue Longing], based on Pineda's interviews with women who were victims of domestic violence in her hometown Juchitán in Oaxaca, Mexico. The poems – the first two of which are untitled – are presented first in Didxazá (also known as Isthmus Zapotec), then Spanish, followed by their English translation by Wendy Call. They are accompanied by an additional translator's note by Wendy Call, reflecting on Pineda and Call's long-term collaboration.

'I’m not saying, hey, imagine, what if it was you. / I’m saying it is you' — this poem by Sarah Lasoye collapses the distances between us, where complicity and silence breed and hinder true connection and solidarity. The poem was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Norman Erikson Pasaribu translates four poems by Ni Made Purnama Sari, whom they call 'one of the most important Balinese writers working today'. These poems were published in Purnama's 2015 collection, Kawitan, which explores how Balinese people relate to both their ancestral pasts and their futures in a home subject to intense environmental exploitation and touristic, (neo)colonial exoticisation. 'To translate these poems is to understand Purnama’s experiences,' Pasaribu says, 'and then respond to the giant that is Western ignorance of lives in the Global South.' All four poems are presented here in both the original Indonesian and in English.

Read three new poems by Tishani Doshi from her forthcoming collection, Egrets, While War. The first, 'Monsieur Tout-Le-Monde', is dedicated to Gisèle Pelicot, a French woman who became a major feminist figure after waiving her right to anonymity as a victim in a multiple rape case; the poem is meditative, pausing for the 'kerfuffle' of a bird, yet piercing in its portrayal of the commonality of sexual violence. The remaining two poems are sonnets, similarly contemplating the movements of birds and other animals, while studded with reflections on the nature of living itself.

Reem Abbas's prose-poem is bookended by two encounters at the airport immigration counter. Throughout this text, experiences, language, and silence of a 'survivor of nationality' are played with to mirror how an immigrant must adapt their voice to their environment. This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Read two new poems by London-based poet Hasti, weaving together influences from Hafez to alternative hip-hop, Black poetry, and Iranian cinema. Titled 'Future-La' and 'Yek Atash', these vulnerable poems see the speaker absorbing unfathomable turbulent change in a world where 'we've hewn a home ... in empire's gut'. With an illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

Read three poems by Kazi Neel, written in unnamed dialects from the chars (temporary unstable river-islands) in Assam, India, translated into English by Shalim M Hussain. Their themes range from religious falsities to a woman's hopes to state control, offering glimpses of everyday life and pressures in the region. The poems are presented both in their original script and in English, with an accompanying translator's note.

This World Poetry Day, we are sharing poems by Fatimah Asghar that speak to multiple communities, geographies, and crises in our world — where solidarities flower in beauty salons, ICE trucks cluster, grandmothers pray, empires collapse, and fists pulse. The poems thread rhythmically through equally horrifying and tender, grandiose and soft everyday images, nurturing resonances between our varied personal, communal, and political experiences. With an illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

Nigerian Hausa writer and artist Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi offers three formally inventive poems that yearn for a deeper sense of spirituality and security through ancestral connection, maternal figures, and cultural traditions and crafts.

Read a conversation between writers Jay Bernard, Dante Micheaux, and Oluwaseun Olayiwola on Transfigurations: Collected Poems, a landmark volume containing all eight major poetry works by the legendary Black American poet, playwright, and polymath, Jay Wright. Together, they trace critical, audience, and reader perceptions of Wright's work over time, as well as why Wright has been historically overlooked in the global literary sphere in comparison to contemporaries like Wole Soyinka. The conversation is interspersed with two of Wright's poems from the volume, as well as several other excerpts and fragments.

Naomi Madlock's poem brings a body with disabilities to a riverbank, where nature's streams of unexpected ruins and treasures – 'a flap of algae', 'domestic waste', 'sunlight/seeping through a porcelain shard' – assemble a sense of wholeness and peace. This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Yessica Klein's poems, 'I'd Like You To Meet The Brazilian Sun' and '1989', explore different aspects of Brazilianness with humour, nostalgia, pain, and frustration at once — where the 'Sun always has a joint', but fair governance can feel unreachable.

Read two poems in both Spanish and English from acclaimed Mexican writer Jeannette L. Clariond, translated by Pulitzer Prize–winner Forrest Gander from the forthcoming collection Even Time Bleeds.

We are honoured to publish two new poems – 'Bird' and 'Just A Simple Life' – by Haia Mohammed, a 23-year-old poet from Khan Younis in Gaza, reflecting some of her experiences, pains, and dreams living through occupation and genocide. Haia is part of the first group of scholars to be successfully evacuated from Gaza to the UK. Her debut poetry pamphlet, The Age of Olive Trees, is out now.

Simon Peter Eggertsen was shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry for a poem imagining the experiences of a nineteenth-century slave.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney shares two new poems – 'I'M NOT WRITING BECAUSE I'M FINALLY IN LOVE' and 'Apartment' – that flicker across mundanities, introspections, and desires.

In this poem, Juleus Ghunta – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry – juxtaposes the ordinary lives of his peers with his sister's suicidal ideation. The 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open until 30 June 2025. Read the full guidelines and submit your work.

Zainab Imran – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry – examines the UK's rejection of Shamima Begum as a citizen, its repercussions reverberating through the narrator's life.

Based between the UK and New Zealand, SK Grout offers two poems which unearth everyday lyricism and memories amid wider concerns of environmental and climate care. 

Wasafiri is proud to publish the pieces shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. In this dense, run-on poem, Sara Elkamel looks at every aspect of her life and gaze as touched by her mother's.

This collaborative ode to the tradition of the Armenian memory book, or houshamadyan – from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation – comprises a unique survey of the genre by historian Khatchig Mouradian, an essay and maps by urbanist Garine Boghossian, poetry by Christopher Kazar Janigian, and art by Masha Keryan.

To celebrate the publication of Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, our guest co-editors Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan have curated an exclusive online poetry showcase for the Wasafiri website. Here, four poets – also published in the issue –  share some more of their work with us.

We're delighted to share two poems by José Buera to mark the publication of our 40th Anniversary Issue, Wasafiri 119: Futurisms. These poems explore dystopian futures – and the tensions between humanity, alienation, and machine – through hauntingly beautiful descriptions. Wasafiri 119: Futurisms is available to order now. Or purchase the Wasafiri anniversary bundle, giving you deep insight into the history and trajectory of the magazine and literary landscape across four decades.