Editorial

@40, the IWP is thriving. Some flashes: — A photo from 1967, the year of its conception, with Paul and Hualing Engle and their first group of twelve. -- A handful of more recent pictures, of where the writers IWP residents write when they are at home. -- And ten answers to a question posed for this anniversary occasion: What are the entanglements between your mother tongue, your writing language, and the country you live in?  Writers from Argentina, Israel, Hungary, Russia, the Philippines, Malta, India, Hong Kong, and Singapore reply.

This issue takes its lead from the reach of the IWP’s former and present collaborators: translator, editor and UI emeritus Daniel Weissbort tracks Inna Lisnianskaya’s intimate poetry, Kerry Shawn Keyes (IWP 91/93) reworks João Cabral de Melo’s sinewy “Uma faca só lâmina“ from the Portuguese, and two young Albanian poets, Valentina Saraçini and Gentian Çoçoli (IWP 06), have been translated into English by Erica Weitzman and Diana Thow.

Additionally: three beautifully measured poems in Flemish by Herman de Coninck, in Kurt Brown and Laure Anne Bosselaar’s translation; the vocal signature of the Swiss miniaturist Robert Walser in “Do You Know Meier? ” as translated by Millay Hyatt, and an interview with the founders of Ugly Duckling Presse, the admirable scouts and publishers of off-center Central and East European poetry. Closing off this issue is a set of poems by the Irishman Christopher Matthews (IWP 04), written, with glee and bite, during his stay in the Iowa electoral landscape in the fall of 2004, and a birthday sestina taking the poet’s stock @ 50.