Our Autumn 2021 features the poetry of Alice Pettway who is interviewed at length about her poetry and her travels by our editor. Also included in this issue are short fiction pieces by Sergey Gerasimov, Nathan Greene, Amanda Jayne, Bruce Lawder, and Alexis Levitin. In addition there are translations from the poetry of Martín Camps, Lêdo Ivo, Luís Miguel Nava, Enriqueta Ochoa, Daniela Nazareth Romero, and Maria Wine. See what else is in this issue at The Bitter Oleander website.
Special to this issue of The Bitter Oleander: The Central New York poet Paul B. Roth in dialogue with John Taylor, with a selection of his poetry included. Also in this issue: fiction by William Nuth, Marilee Dahlman, and more; poetry by Andrea Inglese, Patty Pieczka, Lake Angela, Pedro Serrano, Silvia Scheibli, Fabio Pusterla, and more.
The Autumn 2020 issue of The Bitter Oleander features an interview with the Danish poet Carsten René Nielsen, including a selection of his prose poetry translated by David Keplinger. Also in this issue: fiction by Michael Pearce, Kelly Talbot, and more; essays by Will Stone; and poetry by Dolores Etchecopar, Stephen Tuttle, Madronna Holden, David Cholrton, Matei Vişniec, Silvia Scheibli, Patty Dickson Pieczka, and others.
The Spring 2020 Issue of The Bitter Oleander includes a special feature. Editor Paul B. Roth interviews poet David Chorlton. Readers can also find a selection from Chorlton’s Speech Scroll. Below, check out an excerpt from the interview and visit The Bitter Oleander website to get a taste of Speech Scroll.
PBR: In your Speech Scroll, a sampling of which follows this interview, you’ve put the urban and the desert world together so expertly over some 158 poems. Did this particular project start off with that in mind or was it just your current ongoing consciousness of where you were in that environment and who you are that brought it forth?
DC: . . . While there are the times I sit down to commit words to paper, the actual writing of poetry is never turned off. Without placing a title or thinking of a poem’s shape, I had an ongoing path to follow and that helped me shift a little in the way I see images come together. Thinking about the political happenings of our tumultuous time might become too consuming, and for some people it is. Others seem to remain oblivious to anything that goes on in that realm. Writing poetry, being the most natural form of communication for me, has been a good place in which to scatter comments and observations that, I hope, provoke more thought than argument. Life encompasses a wide range of pleasures and frustrations, comfort for the fortunate and responsibility toward those who are not, and so with the help of various bird and animal species, plus a view of the sunrise from our front door when I’m up early to see it I take, as I mentioned earlier, what is given, and transform it the best way I can.
The Spring 2020 issue of The Bitter Oleander features the contemporary Arizona poet David Chorlton, interviewed by our editor and including a generous selection of poems from his forthcoming book, Speech Scrolls. The issue also presents translations from the fiction of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (Portugal); and poetry in translation by Paula Abramo (Mexico), Alberto Blanco (Mexico), Maritza Cino (Ecuador), Andre du Bouchet (France), and Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba).