Today's poem

Google Maps and Youtube are essential for me to read world English poems. The poet and editor Nora Selmani's pamphlet Portraits includes plenty of place names Prishtina, Tirana, Skopje, Ferizaj, etc. in Albania. Her poems allow my memory to come back to Kayoko Yamasaki's essay Belgrade Diary (my title translation is provisional, original: ベオグラード日誌) and the Bosnian War. In the poems "Country", "këngё popullore", and "Having a cigarette with you", there is a mirror ball reflecting, spinning hundred of laser beams of history, cultures, races, and religions. I want to read her more poems with richness of Albanian music and folklore.

(Nora Selmani's pamphlet Portraits published by Lumin Press, 2018)