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»Be next to me and see what has hap­pened to me.«


Texts from Ukrainian

Ukraine | Anastasiia Dunaieva | 2024

Me? A pit

Me? A pit
in grandfather’s garden,
inside dry leaves, raked together,
hits me
urine from the tomcat next door
and the marbles of a small girl.

Ukraine | Iryna Omelyanchuk | 2023

Four Words

A call from Kyiv at 4.50 in the morning.
My husband’s best friend.
We don’t want to pick up.
It keeps ringing.


Texts from Persian

Afghanistan | Zainab Fahramand | 2024

Red

The shot and the rifle
The mirror and beauty
The independence and the freedom

Afghanistan | Shahzamir Hataki | 2023

I will always be the wog

When I learnt your language, you said “wog.”
When I went to school, to uni, you said “wog.”
“This is our school, don’t get too comfortable.”


Texts from Arabic

Syria | Mohamad Zahra | 2023

Home­land is a cemetery

They camped before the pearly gates and screamed,
just like the others screamed,
the others whose paths had strayed,
their screams had no identity.

Syria | Rojin Namer | 2024

Vil­lage

There were fields here,
There were delicious tomatoes here,
There was my grandma here,
There were the best football pitches here.


Texts from Kurdish

Syria | Abdulsalam Atto | 2024

When I came into the world

When I was born,
they whispered in Arabic
the name of God
into my ear.

Nordkurdistan | Bahadȋn Akhan | 2023

The Word Witch

Mother’s forlorn dream
damns us.
So we wail with our first breath.
The yellow steppe peoples
sutured my lips,
turned speech into a personal poison.


Texts from German

Germany | Rachel Ulrich | 2019

Lan­guage Is Life

You read your poem
In your native language
About your longing
About your life
And I don’t really understand

Germany | Helena von Beyme | 2018

I’d Like to Say You Are Multi-Coloured

Germany, you can be grey
Your wind blows through narrow streets
Through blonde and brown and black hair
And for some people it is a problem
That not everyone looks equally German
And what is that supposed to mean?


Texts from English

Nigeria | Glory Osazuwa | 2019

Night Time

Night is cold
Night is sad for some
Night is so dark
Night comes and goes
Like my love for you

Germany | Zoё Matt-Williams | 2018

»Oth­er«

Hot summer day. Noon.
The trees are sweating
when my friend tells me
he wants to leave England
because no other country on earth
hates the “other“ as much.

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