Amsterdam Review

@amsterdamreview

A literary magazine publishing poetry, translations, fiction, interviews, essays, photography, and fine arts. Follow AR Tunes on Spotify. amsterdamreview.org EIC @danielnemo.bsky.social Managing Editor @phebel.bsky.social

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Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· 10d

"Tell me, mare of the white star, / tail like the quill / with which God wrote His book into being, / is He still writing it now" Three poems by 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐊𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐯 in Amsterdam Review www.amsterdamreview.org/three-by-jacqueline-kolosov.html #poetry #poetrycommunity

In death they float, and so became known
as the “right” whales. Escalating now, their vanishing. By day
the remaining few brave ships, nets. Ahab said the eyes

define the face of man. What of a whale’s eyes?
Theirs capture the light, too.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· 12d

"Hold if you want: / when look at child holding, feel your hand cup / how you think" Three poems by 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚 𝐀𝐮𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐡 in Amsterdam Review bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

There is no wrong way
get into, just press it. Back of keyboard becomes
dirt ground, press to
become a foot and see the dirt disturbed come up
on outer edge of sneaker foot,
you have to picture it to feel:

it also work through screen. Three children Henry,
Elinor, and August they are holding
just-hatched chicks bought for my cousin’s business
taking pictures

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· 26d

Read 𝐹𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠, an #essay by 𝐑𝐚𝐮́𝐥 𝐙𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚 (transl. 𝐊𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐁𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩 @kebishop.bsky.social) in the Spring issue. Zurita is widely regarded as one of the most significant contemporary writers from South America. bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #nonfiction #poetry #writingcommunity

Funeral Rites
by Raúl Zurita

translated from Spanish and with a foreword by Karen Elizabeth Bishop

Translating Zurita in this stereophonic form is like handling one hundred thousand stars that each announce themselves and their distance at once. I’m up close, inside, and then it’s gone before I even realize where I’m at and I’m on to the next one. Only in stepping back does the whole picture, the whole night sky, come into view. What becomes clear before us is that Zurita’s interventions in prose rival his poetic voice. And that Zurita sees our shared human future very clearly.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jul 15

"We coo and bear awe in cold, / brave trace glimpses of cosmos / outside an apartment / standing still and smoking / like leaves burning in autumn" A poem by 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐇𝐞𝐢𝐥 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

By
the glow of the

little comet’s tail,
we rapture. We wake

our neighbors, who lean out their railing
to see an echo of the galaxy.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jul 13

"Consumed by dark I found myself / wondering how I made it so / many miles to this place" A poem by 𝐒𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚𝐡 𝐒. 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

there’s a fish head staring at me
his one eye russet like potatoes back home
but these are golden

earlier today I saw a sea turtle breach
by the bow of the boat before diving down a
million meters and I couldn’t see him anymore

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jul 8

Read 𝑆𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐸𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑦, an #essay by 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞-𝐄𝐯𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐫 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #nonfiction #writingcommunity

I’m too scared to open my eyes. So I resolve to use my hands as a guide. Surprisingly I’m doing well despite my self-imposed handicap. I feel for the big coins just like I had been advised. I put as many as I can in my little hands, trying not to drop any in the process. It’s a difficult task that requires patience and agility. My body is moving slowly and awkwardly, my arms flapping up and down in slow motion. The water is creating resistance on my movements, but I am persisting. Once both my hands are full, I clasp them tightly and make my way to the top.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jul 6

"Perhaps he had heard the story too, / and at the time, thought it was true; / the blinding heat of the torch / in the talons of an ancestor." A poem by 𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐬 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

I was walking on the Paint Creek Trail when I saw them,
crows uncountable, perched on trees all around
a single one that seemed confined to the ground.

Mean crows, sick crows, will often be exiled
and kept to the ground but this was not that;
no bolt struck to send him down, only the unwavering sky above,
the sun shining off his blackened feathers,

like the pseudo-myth of Rainbow Crow
who flew past the Earth to see the Creator

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jul 1

"I am steady at its thick edge like an olympic diver." A poem by 𝐌𝐢𝐫𝐣𝐚𝐦 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐡 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

I am steady at its thick edge like an olympic diver.
As I bow into the water I think of a poem I read in school
about the pool like a womb. I do not think it is.
I am silver through its fly-dotted facetry like a cutlassfish.
I am steady in the smallness and mess of my life.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 29

"It takes a short afternoon / to drown with you in decades of / superstitious junk" A poem by 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐲 𝐒𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐡 @abarnabyms.bsky.social in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

far off police sirens are ringing
on the third day back at home:
proof of a life lived in analogue--

i’d made out these ruins
from an aerial view
& they seemed
either a sculpture or a tomb

it takes a short afternoon
to drown with you in decades of
superstitious junk

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 24

If the cosmos spoke, it would speak in the voice of poems. You find out that you’re part of a much wider, communal dialogue, that everyone speaks with everything: plants with the sea, the sea with the stars. Everything. And probably, poetry isn’t more than the record of a small part of this great big conversation.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 22

"Why the artist laughed / when his cunning brush drew peek-a-boo lobes / over the springs of generation" A poem by 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐬 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

Ironic
those fig leaves superimposed
on Masaccio’s 15th century Adam and Eve.
Prudery damns our best vulnerabilities —
why the artist laughed
when his cunning brush drew peek-a-boo lobes
over the springs of generation, dipping
into figgy green, figs being not fruit
but thousands of flowers

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 19

𝐊I𝐍E𝐓I𝐂 𝐅R𝐄Q𝐔E𝐍C𝐈E𝐒 A series of photographs by 𝐓𝐮𝐝𝐨𝐫 𝐒̦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #photography #visualarts

Kinetic Frequencies - A Photographic Collection By Tudor Santa

I’ve always looked to capture the beauty of music through how people experience and are connected by it, as well as through the act of creating it

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 17

"What I really needed / was a different kind of brush, one that / could cover the cracks in my memory." A poem by 𝐉.𝐑. 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

The woman at the hardware store
said, "Can I help you?" as I wandered
down an aisle of paint brushes "No,
thank you," I said. What I really needed
was a different kind of brush, one that
could cover the cracks in my memory.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 15

"No supporting cast, no greater effect with the collective. Alone, he can bring an unsuspecting gathering to debilitating mirth, elicit laughter from the most determined glum." Two poems by 𝐊𝐞𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐲𝐧𝐞𝐫 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

Added Value
Boys, and the occasional girl, go further afield, seeking to kidnap spiders. With their burlap sacks, they slip down roads untrod for years, looking for old houses leaning away from prevailing winds, front porches askew, chimneys defiant alone. In edges and along empty door frames, webs are strung to capture the insects that once bedeviled a farmer’s family. By the dozens, feral spiders are scraped into sacks, to be sold on street corners in town. Patrons pay a premium, as they know these were collected by boys, and the occasional girl. The taste is no better, but the provenance is.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 12

On a winter night, an aspiring writer meets a stranger who claims to be a time-traveler. The conversation brings up impossible truths and questions of destiny, memory, and meaning. Read a short story by 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐧 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #writingcommunity #fiction

I can never be certain what she would eventually write about my first novel, The Dreamers. Who knows if that’s even the final title? But she was kind enough to leave me the first page of her thesis—handwritten, of all things—which, for her, must have been a chore. Here’s how it starts: “Few first novels in literary history had failed so miserably. And yet, there is a charm there—as if the seeds of later, more fully developed works had been planted with haphazard care.”

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 10

"I thought / this is what precedes / sudden disaster: / our second brain that cannot / talk, hears the ticking" A poem by 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐋𝐲𝐧𝐧 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

Perception in the body
moves like a bevy of bees: you know all
over at once. You realize what you actually feel
has no language; absently pulled to that feral
flutter of insects, a stir of magpies, how
one bone of the soil turns up,
night root taut inside
its dirt.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 8

"probing the silence ● crossing the sound of silence ● vanishing ● dark and thought ● thought and fire ● (dense) ● it's night above Rome [above you]" A poem by 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐨 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

Navona [night] at the time of the visions ● Borromini, Borromini, you're now thinking about an ascending spiral initium sapientiae ● (correcting your drawings with charcoal and sanguine) ● ● ● the architect has the keys to the construction site: he sometimes goes there late at night (to meditate on it ● absorbed dimentico di sé)

Sant'ivo, steps: it's the arduous insomnia, faithful companion ● a compass, the palm of the hand, a notebook of suspensions, of cadences ● of fullness and emptiness, of hunger and thirst, of voice and silence, of going and staying ● thought in the night (thought is the night)

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 4

We are deeply saddened by the news of 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐧’s @liekemarsman.bsky.social passing at the age of 35, one of the most authentic poetic voices in the Netherlands. This and other original poems w/ English translation can be found @ www.poetryinternational.com/en/ #poetry #writingcommunity 🇳🇱

In some lifestyle magazine they’ll ask me
as they ask all women of a certain age
are you worried about getting old?
And I would say, are you crazy
decay means progress to me
Not as in ripening, which implies a period
of prolonged waiting until you can
do what you were always meant to do, but rather as an indication
that you’ve been doing that very thing all along – living
that is, and given the correlation
between time and expertise
you’ve been getting ever better at it
Now, for example, you simply know
which people are the ones
worth spending an entire evening with

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 3

"A single man, with a single love, / woke up alone on the outer rim / of a churning, barely lit galaxy, / and fired up a search engine." A poem by 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐬𝐨𝐧 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

An infinite number of monkeys,
in an infinite number of rooms,
drew an infinite number of maps,
of an infinite number of universes.

A single man, with a single love,
woke up alone on the outer rim
of a churning, barely lit galaxy,
and fired up a search engine.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· Jun 1

"I'll not see two of these winters / With their hours of frozen dark / Calling me out of the mousehole." A poem by 𝐒𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

There is a Lord of the universe
And a Lord of this quiet hour
And I am told they are one.
How can I, a mouse,
Small to hold in the palm,
a chestnut warmed in embers,
Understand the stars?

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 29

Read an #essay by 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐨 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #nonfiction #philosophy #writingcommunity

As we read in Apollodorus’ Library, Orpheus was the son of the muse Calliope and the river god Oeagrus “or, nominally,” of Apollo. Orpheus was a musician whose songs were of such power that they could move inanimate objects like stones and trees. When his wife Eurydice died of a snakebite he was inconsolable and went down to the underworld, where he persuaded Hades to let Eurydice return to earth with him. Hades agreed on condition that Orpheus not look back until he returned home. Orpheus broke the agreement and turned around to look at Eurydice as they were making their way up; as a result, she had to return to the underworld and he was left without her.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 27

Read 𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑎𝑟𝑘, an in-depth #interview with 𝐉𝐚𝐧𝐞 𝐙𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐭 @janezwart.bsky.social. Jane is speaking to 𝐖.𝐉. 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 @wjherbertpoet.bsky.social about her new poetry collection 𝑂𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡 & 𝑂𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡 & 𝑆𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡 & 𝐵𝑒𝑠𝑡. bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #writingcommunity

Amsterdam Review Spring 2026 Interview

Jane Zwart: Harvest in the Dark. An interview by W.J. Herbert.

"As for poems, they keep me tender. Because it makes me less lonely, across all the particulars of love as it manifests in the world and in words, poetry makes me trust my heart enough to open it."

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 25

"A fish’s opercle bone, / delicate shield for a soft comb of gills, / a trap door for water to / sieve into breath, the connector of self / to everything else." Two poems by 𝐊𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐒𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐨𝐧 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

My father pulls skulls from drawers,
mostly deer. Masks waiting for faces,
foundlings from upstate
that smell of smoke from the pipe drawer below.
One has short chalky antlers, an unfinished story.
He wants to show me the gaping mystery
of memories and desires left behind,
and how to be gentle with them.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 21

"Hearth at the edge of the barren / heath. Heart in the flames, licking / his lips..." A poem by 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐊𝐧𝐢𝐫𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

Hearth at the edge of the barren
heath. Heart in the
flames, licking
his lips, he roasts the heart
of Fáfnir, devours it,
licking his fingers, heat
in his belly, heat on his lips,
heat in his heart, heat on the
heath, soon a battlefield, soon
a story to be told

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 19

Congratulations to 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐢 𝐒𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐬 on the publication of 𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝑹𝒆𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔𝒂𝒍 @citylightsbooks.bsky.social! Read two extracts and an interview in the Spring issue of Amsterdam Review: bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #prose #poetry #fiction #nonfiction #writingcommunity

In Endeavor’s Angle
When something moves is how you know it’s alive. I cannot see time move, but I try to save it, like the downy woodpecker who hit the window and whom I took to the bird clinic, trying to save it. Like wind, time is only visible by watching the things it touches. (I see the wind when it caresses the tree.) We see time when it touches the human face.

While some plants pull themselves up from the seemingly dead ground and bring forth fruit, humans don’t resurrect themselves. This, my great grandfather learned when he tried to revive a dead postman on his way to Mt. Athos by reading poems to the lifeless body. Still, some human time is outside the flow of historic time.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 15

"To gulp / means to swallow, / a swallow’s a bird, / a group of swallows, / a flight; / a flight / to explain why / the cormorant’s eye is blue: oh, / it’s because / First Cormorant swallowed the sky." A poem by 𝐀𝐦𝐲 𝐆𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐨𝐧 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

I’m standing on land
looking out at the bay
at an orange sail skimming past the islands.

A cormorant bobs and dips
and dives between the waves,
opens its gullet and gulps
a silvery fish down,

which is why we call a group
of cormorants, bobbing and dipping
and diving a gulp

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 13

"She passes a sullen-faced man brooding / as if her stilled-eyed smile was rough fingers bruising / the peach surface of his soul." A poem by 𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐂𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

With the long strides of the healthy-spined my sister
struts the streets, each step she takes: a chance

to feel dance ripple without effort through her
every muscle. She’s a flesh and blood incendiary.

To strangers there’s no knowing whether a devil
or angel has primed her. What deficit of love

has led to this? some wonder. She wields a sabre
(though no blade is sharper than the edge

of her silhouette) as if she’s looking for a boy
to decapitate or for a man crueler than her

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 11

"He learned to read the land / by colour: not to tread / on lime-green moss, / but to let yellow anthers / of deergrass and pink-purple / clusters of heather / guide him to drier ground." Two poems by @janeclarke.bsky.social in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

The Man from the Bogs Commission
liked to amuse his wife with stories
of the peasants he met in the midlands;

friendly to a fault, he writes, often witty
but sadly illiterate. Their affection

for frothy swathes of bog cotton
is quaint, and the names they give it

shows a puzzling reverence for a plant
of little importance: ceannbhán

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 8

A peculiar morning ritual sparks a connection with a fragile creature before an unexpected intruder comes to disrupt the balance, turning casual observation into obsession. Read 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑧𝑒𝑙, a story by 𝗘𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗯𝘆𝗲 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #writingcommunity #fiction

One evening beside the fireplace glowing warm and dark, Helen spoke quietly to Art without looking over her sewing needles: Where have you been going these days, so early in the morning?
Art carefully set down his bugle, the last bittersweet notes of a suite he was composing still lingering in the air, and considered.
He said: I have to poop.
I don’t want to disturb your sleep so early in the morning, he said, so I go downstairs in the dark with the little light from my phone to the bathroom, and I sit down there. It takes time. My bowels are restless but not awake.
You know, said Art, when you get up in the dark like that, it’s like wandering through the universe’s subconscious. I turn on the light in the bathroom, he added, reassuringly.
That’s just being smart, said Helen.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview· May 6

"This / snake broke my body / shattered blue glass / everywhere This snake / had a shard of me propped / between his jaws" Two poems by 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐀𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐲 in the Spring issue bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #poetry #poetrycommunity

$I am a bottle, blue glass bottle sitting on the edge of a porch my job nothing but be pretty enough to stay invisible or enjoyable enough to stay The sky refracts in me$