Alexandros Vasmoulakis is one of many street artists whose artwork reflects the urban fabric of contemporary Greece. His shattered, floating figures cover many of the abandoned neoclassical buildings of Athens as well as the crumbling walls of the city’s Exarchia neighborhood. Vasmoulakis notes that the sidewalks of Berlin, where he currently lives, are “well arranged, straight, and wide with beautiful decorations, street lamps, railings. . . . In Athens, sidewalks are like the rough sea—all cracked, dirty, . . . with those awful manholes that make terrible a noise when you step on them. The actual hell of pedestrians! I really find this ugliness beautiful.” For more on life in Exarchia, read Peter Constantine’s interview with poet Jazra Khaleed in our March 2010 issue.
Table of Contents
2010 Neustadt Laureate Duo Duo
ESSAY “Monologue of a Stormy Soul: Duo Duo, 1972–88," Michelle Yeh
by
ESSAY "Duo Duo: Master of Wishful Thinking," Yibing Huang
by
SPECIAL SECTION: Jazz Poetry
“Latin Jazz on the Go in Havana,” Virgil Suárez (Cuba/US)
by
“Behind the Yashmak," Adrian Matejka (Germany/US)
by
“Our Love Is Here to Stay” & “Hymn," Nii Parkes (Ghana/Great Britain)
by
by Lauren Camp
AUDIO
What You Might Hear
by Lauren Camp
In Every Issue
Author Profile: E.C. Osondu (Nigeria)
by
City Profile: Seoul, South Korea
by
International Crime & Mystery “Scarface Al and His Pals,” J. Madison Davis
by
WEB EXCLUSIVE
First Words: "Approaching Zainab"
by Luma Sarhan
Poetry
Two poems, Romeo Çollaku (Albania), tr. Peter Constantine
by
“Good Leg Up, Bad Leg Down," Stuart Friebert (US)
by
Two poems, Jan Wagner (Germany), tr. Chenxin Jiang
by
INTERVIEWS
Erwin Koch (Switzerland) by John K. Cox
by
Fiction
“Spit Out What Is in Your Mouth,” Luay Hamza Abbas (Iraq), tr. Yasmeen Hanoosh
by
ESSAYS
PHOTO GALLERY WEB EXCLUSIVE
PHOTO GALLERY: Athens Street Art
by