issue 1: telephone

telephone is a new print journal - the name is derived from the children’s game in which phrases change as you whisper them from one person to the next. telephone features four to five poems from one foreign poet in each issue, which are then translated roughly ten times by multiple different poets and translators. There are no rules about how each poem should be translated and we are soliciting a variety of interpretations.

The foreign feature poet of issue 1 is Uljana Wolf, who was born in East Berlin, studied German literature, English, and Cultural Studies, in Berlin and Krakow, and now lives in Berlin and New York. (German wiki page: Uljana Wolf)

Authors of telephone #1 include Mary Jo Bang, Priscilla Becker, Susan Bernofsky, Macgregor Card & Megan Ewing, Isabel Fargo Cole, Timothy Donnelly, Robert Fitterman, John Gallaher, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erín Moure, Eugene Ostashevsky, Nathaniel Otting, Craig, Santos Perez, Ute Schwartz & Uwe Weiß.

A table of contents with selected excerpts is up here: Telephone Contents. It starts with Uljana Wolf's poem in German: "[bad] [bald] [bet~t] [brief]" - and continues with the 'telephone translation' of it by Mary Jo Bang: "best bad bet/t brielfy". Make sure to check out the final excerpt, too: "(z)ed (z)oo (z)ee" by Erìn Moure - such good sound word play, here's a taste:

"..zap a bonspiel of zebras, zigzag in
the saga, zip to the zócalo, in the
ooze or ozone where zen zealotry zooms
home like Jingles to Ed. A toast to
the Ee, okay I agree!.."

Telephone 1
13,95$