Day #12: Mithila Review

Celebrating National Poetry Month by highlighting 30 days of literary publishers who produce poetry you can listen to, watch, or read, in 5 minutes or less.

My friend Nita inspired this post. Do you know someone like her? Every conversation opens a portal into philosophical depth. She has one foot firmly grounded in the maze of the present, while her spirit dwells in the possibilities of futuristic fantasy.

For your speculative, most imaginative, most wild-minded friends, I suggest Mithila Review.

Mithila Review is an international science fiction and fantasy magazine founded in late 2015. One of the co-founding editors, Ajapa Sharma, describes the journal like this: 

“Mithila is a referent. It is a symbol. It can speak to the times when we have felt that we don’t quite belong. It can speak of the times when we have felt the urge to lurk away and disappear or the times we’ve felt the need to stay. It can speak to the time when we liberated our anger and pain in ways that have only fed the creative river within us. Mithila Review is space for our collective celebration and playful engagement with language. We hope that it can speak in all kinds of ways.” 

Each poem in Mithila Review is accompanied by gorgeous artwork, and most include a recording of the author reading. One of my recent favorites is “We’re Refugees Who Found Love Searching For Atlantis.”  Bonus: there are two versions of the same poem.

Poet Holly Lyn Walrath, writing in English, uses pantoum form to explore the drift dream of displacement, and there’s also an Italian translation “Siamo profughi che hanno trovato l’amore ricercando Atlantide” created by the late Marco Raimondo. You can read more about the collaboration between Holly Lyn Walrath and Marco Raimondo on her blog post titled:“New Poem Up at Mithila Review.”

The opening stanzas, in English and Italian go like this:

The ocean is a vessel cast in the heat of the stars
We walked there in the twilight and sang skysongs
Our bodies were translucent and full of darkness
How we carried our homeland in our bones

L’oceano è un vaso forgiato nel calore delle stelle
Vi siamo giunti al crepuscolo e intonato astrocanti
I nostri corpi ormai traslucidi traboccavano oscurità
Custodendo la terra natia nelle nostre ossa

After your poetry pause, take a minute today to connect with your deep-thinking friend. Ask how they’re doing, what’s on their heart. Do you dare share a poem with them?