by Indran Amirthanayagam
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An old man chats in creole on a bench by Prospect Park. Along Empire Boulevard a group of teens high-five kouman ou ye, sak pase; a writer, deep in a book, puts it aside and stares into space, mouths a silent cry, Ayiti, in and about the park on an early May afternoon, the air warm, every language out for a stroll but all in a handmaiden's role to the tongue sung loudest in exile. in 2023, that country in the Caribbean Sea boiling and burning and sending its children and women, men and old men and old women, all who can find a way out via the new deals of sponsorship or the old murderous tricks of climbing aboard rickety boats to live or die in the sea beyond the Keys.
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Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.