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Unlike numerous traditions, poetic inspiration of Moorish poets is not spiritual but carnal because it takes root in the desire for a woman, who taste like Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal. Love poems find their reason in the context of their production. In this case, the decisive moment of the meeting and the long-lasting impression it leaves on the poet. Love poems are not the privilege of a handful, they are primarly composed in the specific Arabic dialect (assāniyya), with the aim of reaching the woman's heart, like Bedouin Arabic pre-islamic poetry. So her first name, her body, her qualities and defects, from erotised become poetised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aemilia Bassano Lanier was partially of Jewish origin and came from a Venetian family of court musicians. She was brought up in the court and was educated by Countess Susan Bertie and the Duchess of Suffolk. Her work entitled Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is a long narrative poem articulating a woman-centred account of the Bible. As a woman of partial Jewish descent, Aemilia, who has 'a voice of her own', deals with the maltreatment of women and compares them to Christ in their silent suffering. At her time, women were often expected to be silent within society, creating an absence rooted in their lack of voice. Both Christ and women sacrifice themselves for the betterment of mankind. This article will deal with Aemilia Lanier's new perspective upon biblical women and the Passion of Christ as reflected in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contention of this article is that Chaucer is expecting, indeed exploiting, the gap between the reception of a poem when it is heard socially and its afterlife as a text, when it is a different thing altogether. I also argue that a poem's form is itself a way of communicating ideas. The discussion focuses on Parlement of Foulys, but the conclusions may be more widely applicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with author and poet Anne Stevenson is presented. Topics discussed include her reason for choosing to live in England for the majority of her adult life, how her poetry was received in the U.S. and Great Britain, and her perceptions on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Also mentioned are the effect of music on her life as a poet, and what prompted her to write the verse-letters of "Correspondences: A Family History in Letters."

The article uses performance and life analogies in ten novels for juvenile readers to investigate the young protagonists' quest for identity or orientation. Through their experiences in the theatre and as Shakespeare's colleagues, apprentices, or friends, the young people find out who they are and who they might be or should become. The narratives suggest that, not only as stage-actors but also as life-performers, they relive experiences that can be ascribed also to Shakespeare himself. As seen with their eyes, this Shakespeare is de-bardolatrised and de-mythologised when the life-and-theatre analogies he shares with them are extended to his working methods as a poet and playwright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which a series of articles on the life of English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare published within the issue is discussed.

An interview with Danish poet Pia Tafdrup is presented. She describes her interest in written letters as a child and its influence on her work. Tafdrup discusses her debut collection of poems, "When an Angel Breaks Her Silence," which is said to encompass the relationship between body and soul. She also explains how her second book, "No Hold," was inspired by the philosophy of author Ludvig Feilberg.

In the centre of this article is a female poet rooted in a long tradition of Yiddish literature. Since these roots are essential for understanding her work, I will give a short introduction to Yiddish language and literature, followed by a biographical sketch of the life of Malka Lee. The aim of the research and the biography is to consider the thematically selected poems2 and interpret them as the poetic reflections of a woman of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview is presented with the poet Marilyn Hacker. When asked about how the success of her first book, "Presentation Piece," impacted her later writing, Hacker says that it did not much change her writing. Hacker also discusses what she was reading in the 1970s and how that may have influenced her own poetry. When asked about how women poets have influenced her, Hacker discusses poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The article examines the poetry of French poet Aimé Césaire. Césaire's own belief that much of his poetry was related to his feelings of cultural displacement as a resident of Martinique, a French colony which was politically integrated into France, is discussed. A translation is presented of Césaire's poem "Parcours," written in the late 1980s, and analyzed in terms of Césaire's thoughts on the meaning of poetry and his life as a poet. The author presents personal reminiscences of her experiences with Césaire and a poem of her own composition on the experience of reading his poetry.

The article examines a political controversy in France over the burial of poet Aimé Césaire after his death on April 17, 2008. The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy wished to have Césaire's remains placed in the Panthéon, the national monument in Paris, France in which many of the country's celebrated historical figures are buried. This plan was strongly resisted by the residents of Martinique, the island in the West Indies of which Césaire was a native and had resided for over 60 years prior to his death. Césaire was eventually buried in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and was given a French state funeral, one of only four French authors so honored. The presence of both Sarkozy and members of the opposition French Socialist party at the funeral is considered in terms of the political dispute in France over the country's colonialist past. Martinique's status as a part of France proper is discussed.

The article examines the decision by French poet Aimé Césaire to resign his membership in the French Communist Party, which he did on October, 23, 1956 in a letter to party leader Maurice Thorez. Friends of Césaire from the period are cited to support the contention that Césaire's resignation came after at least several years of increased alienation from the party. Examples are presented of occasions when Césaire, when still a party member, refused to follow the party's policies on cultural issues, particularly those relating to poetry. Césaire's belief that Communism did not account for the cultural effects of colonialism on native peoples is examined. Césaire's political career in his native Martinique, where he was a legislator and public officer, in the immediate aftermath of his resignation is discussed.

An interview conducted in 1982 is presented with poet Aimé Césaire, who was also a legislator and public officer in his native Martinique. Césaire states that economic development in Martinique will remain almost impossible so long as it is a department of France rather than an independent country, as it is a developing entity integrated into a developed country. Césaire says that the policies of then-President Francois Mitterand may ameliorate economic and social problems in Martinique.

The article discusses the poetry of French poet Aimé Césaire. Césaire's relationship with his friend and fellow black poet Léopold Sédar Senghor is examined in terms of the two men's shared poetic theme of emancipation from the cultural policy of assimilation within France's colonies. Césaire's influence on African poets in the period immediately before and after national independence for most African countries in the 1960s, including David Diop, is considered. Césaire's influence on Caribbean intellectual life, both in his native Martinique and elsewhere, is examined. It is posited that Césaire's poetry was a significant factor in the work of social theorist Frantz Fanon.

The 1920s saw the debut of a considerable number of female poets writing in Yiddish in Europe and the United States of America. This article briefly considers the emergence of modern Yiddish women's poetry, and the importance of Ezra Korman's Yidishe dikhterins, an anthology of their work published in Chicago in 1928, before turning to one of the poets represented there, Rokhl H. Korn. The article considers her unusual family background and upbringing on a farm in rural Poland, which fostered the development of her poetic talent. Through analysis of several significant poems, the character of her early work is revealed: a combination of deep empathy with the natural world, free expression of female sexuality, and a sensitive evocation of the lives and emotions of the people of her childhood village, both Poles and Jews. Her later poetry incorporates the Holocaust and the pain of exile, but the more controlled work of her maturity is rooted in the rich and passionate poetry of her youth. One of the leading female Yiddish lyric poets of the 20th century, Korn exemplifies the freedom to express individual creativity and female sensibility which women writers in Yiddish discovered in the inter-war years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses how the Jewish Holocaust affected the work of Jewish poets who had been relocated to England as part of the Kindertransport. The author suggests that poet Karen Gershon's expressed her guilt and gratitude for her rescue. He comments that poet Lotte Kramer used poetry to express her repressed emotions regarding the Holocaust and that poet Gerda Mayer's work expressed her pessimism and fear.

For centuries poetry was the most important arts genre in Central Asia. In order to be recognised as a member of the educated classes, it was obligatory to learn hundreds of poems. Even the Soviet regime (1922–1991) exploited the Uzbek people's love of poetry for its own political ends – the propagation of communist ideology. However, linked to the processes of globalisation, interest in poetry has diminished considerably in Uzbekistan over the past several years. People have become less attracted to the romance of poetry than to actual business, benefits and material values. To modern Uzbek society, poems come only in the form of lyrics for popular music. Globalisation has made poetry a minor genre among the Uzbek arts. To be a poet had been a respected profession for centuries. Now it has lost its prestige, as former poets turn to other occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the developments of Jewish poetry. Focus of the poems of Jewish poet Rose Fyleman; Involvement of politics in early Yiddish poetry; Importance of Chaim Nachman Bialik to the poetry of Israel.

Explores some of the ways in which the language of literature can embody and exploit the society's complex, ambivalent attitudes to victim, perpetrator and bystander. Contrast between the significance of human suffering and an animal's natural indifference; Concept of literature as a witness to the author's unheard concerns; Literary works from some famous poets that express unwitnessed act of suffering.

Analyzes the issue of gender and nationality in the poetry of Irish women poets Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Eavan Boland. Concept of poems written by Irish women; Language selection in Irish poetry; Social issues depicted in poems written by women; Comparison between men and women poets.

Explores the cultural and political perspectives across the poetic generations of Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Derek Mahon. Concept of fetishist in literature; Influence of Freudian psychoanalysis on poetry; Analysis of the object lessons from poetry.

Profiles Chayyim Nachman Bialik, a Russian poet and writer of Jewish theology. Family life and marriage; Education background; Interpretation of the books, Ezekiel and Psalm; Discussion on the poem `Al Ha-sh'hitah.'

The article discusses the role of poet Aimé Césaire in the black community of Paris, France and his influence on that community even after he left Paris in 1939 to return to his native Martinique. Césaire is considered one of the founders of the négritude movement among blacks in Paris in the 1920s, a racial identity movement for a community which included black immigrants from the French West Indies, the U.S., and France's colonies in Africa. Césaire's subsequent career as a legislator for Martinique in France's National Assembly is said to reflect the emergence of Paris as a center for black culture from all parts of the world.

Features German poet Wolf Biermann. Awards he received in the field of literature; Contribution to literature; Poems written by Biermann.

The article discusses poet Peter Porter in his role as reviewer. Porter is a generous reviewer, both in his assessment of others' work and in his scope of publication. He is a reviewer prominently for the "Observer," as well as other newspapers and magazines. The author praises Porter's contribution to reviewing.

The article discusses the poetry of Peter Porter. The author asserts that Porter is a "high art junkie." He refuses to play down his own intelligence or the intelligence of his poetry for the comfort of his readers.

Presents the poem "A Poet's Profession," by Gill Gregory.