A Year in Review (2023)

Though the great song return no more

There’s keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.

--W.B. Yeats

Last year went down the drain
They all do really
Why complain
Drink a cup of kindness (yet)
And say goodbye to our regrets

--Scrawl, "11:59: It's January"

Mostly, I've been heartbroken. Summer firesmoke from Canada as a whole country of trees burned, fall horrors in Israel and genocide in Gaza, ongoing family health nightmares. 

Still plodded on. Joyful, in the despite. 

Also--our ongoing peacebuilding program in Ireland, met the Pope in Rome, went to the south of France and walked in Van Gogh's footsteps in Arles. Shared poems and traded words everywhere.  

Grateful for family, friends, comrades, editors, and readers. 

One book: Ochre & Rust: New Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (Green Linden, 2023). 

And these pieces published this year (poems, translations, essays, interview):

·         “Poetic Mapping: A Conversation with Philip Metres by Carol Fadda.” Diode 16.3. Fall 2023.

·         “I drink dusty water,” “A ship hovers…,” “Sonnet,” “Stanzas,” “How dirty and spongy…” by Dimitri Psurtsev (translation). Diode. 16.3. Fall 2023.

·         “Why the Russian Protest Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky Still Matter (A Homeland Made of Words).” Lit Hub, October 2023.

·         “More Than Just a Pretty Hat: On Titles.” Writer’s Chronicle. September 2023.

·         “Let Us Be Attentive! How Wondering Leads to Justice-Seeking.” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education. Fall 2023.

·          “To Y.K.” by Sergey Gandlevsky (translation). Adroit. 46. 4023.

·         “The Forecast for Cleveland,” “Thrown,” “Ode to the Uilleann.” Schlag. 6. August 2023.  

·         “Prayer.” The Slowdown Show. Minnesota Public Radio. July 2023.

·          “Disparate Impacts.” Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country (2023)

·          “Disparate Impacts.” What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People. Lexington: U of Kentucky Press, 2023.

·         “Letters I Must Wait to Open: Revising ‘Ashberries: Letters.’” The Art of Revising Poetry: 21 US Poets on their Drafts, Craft, and Process. Ed. Kim Stafford and Charles Finn. Bloomsbury, 2023.

·         “Poetry Kinship: Zach Thomas and the Writers in Residence Program.” Adroit Journal. 45. June 2023.

·         “The Paradise of Danez Smith’s ‘Summer, Somewhere.’” Cincinnati Review. Spring 2023.

·         “Dreaming the Total Poem, Assembling the Counterarchive, Writing the Refuge.”

Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press, 2023).

·         “Wind/ode.” The Margins. April 2023.

·          “Qasida for Abdel…” and “Explanation.” The Journal. 2023.

·          “Map the Not Answer.” Pleiades. 2023.

·         “I’ve never drunk tea,” “God, your clouds,” “Like God’s grace,” “How tired…” by Dimitri Psurtsev. Translations. The Dodge. January 2023. 

Fugitive/Refuge (2024) coming soon!

Coming soon! 

In Fugitive/Refuge, Philip Metres follows the journey of his refugee ancestors—from Lebanon to Mexico to the United States—in a vivid exploration of what it means to long for home. A book-length qasida, the collection draws on ancient poetic traditions and invents new forms—odes and arabics, sonnets and close-ups, prayers and documentary voicings, heroic couplets and homophonic translations—to confront the perils of our age: forced migration, climate change, and toxic nationalism.

Fugitive/Refuge pronounces the urge both to remember the past and to forge new ways of being in language. In one section, Metres meditates on the Arabic greeting “ahlan wa sahlan,” framing these older forms of welcome as generous, embodied ways to respond to the digital alienation and mass migration of postmodern societies. In another section, he dialogues with Dante to inform new ways of understanding ancestral and modern migrations and the injustices that have burdened them. Ultimately, Metres uses movement to create a new place—one to home and dream in—for all those who seek shelter.

Ceasefire Now!