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from Bluets
At the bottom of the swimming pool, I watched the white winter light spangle the cloudy blue and I knew together they made God. When I walked into my… More
PEN Case Studies in Digital Freedom – Surveillance
In this series of posts, we demonstrate how we use the PEN Declaration on Digital Freedom to defend writers, bloggers, and activists. More
Three Excerpts from New Impressions of Africa
Tired of giving his sweat to the bourgeoisie to drink / The slut in her attic dreams of living in style; / And to see his hands adorned with… More
The Land at the End of the World
The night—which resembles a notary’s office where resigned third-rank civil servants lie snoring among the sheaves of official papers—transforms the houses and the buildings into sad family vaults inhabited… More
Manifesto: 1965
The African image is not then an image by equation but an image by analogy, a surrealist image. Africans do not like straight lines and false mots justes. Two… More
PEN at UNESCO Freedom of Expression Conference – Day 2
The second day of the UNESCO conference on Freedom of Connection, Freedom of Expression in Marrakech featured more heated debate and discussion. I presented PEN's Declaration on Digital Freedom,… More
PEN at UNESCO Freedom of Expression Conference – Day 1
I just ended an eventful and controversial day at the UNESCO conference on free expression in Marrakech, Morocco, where I was invited to speak about PEN's new Declaration on… More
On Translating Pavel Srut
The emergence of these poems after a decade of silence attests to the endurance of the imagination and Pavel’s liberation from his self-imposed exile in the metaphorical ghetto. They… More
Worm-Eaten Time: Poems from a Life under Normalization
The same language, only/the words have changed. Instead of the bee/that got caught in your hair last summer,/you comb out the matted, shriveled tangle//With its unintelligible message. More
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