From our archive

Studies in Charcoal Abstraction

Steven Tutino

A series of charcoal abstractions based on the stimulus.

Gandy Dancers, Building Rail

Michael A. Dann

The tang of a Great Plow forces history to roll up before it like a curling wave of loam.

The Unusual Heartbreak of Endings

Chariklia Martalas

I wouldn't be able to list all the kinds of heartbreak even if I tried. To list all the heartbreaks would not just mean that I'd have to live more years of life but I would actually have to live multiple lives spanning all the different worlds of people. Recently, though, I have experienced a heartbreak- the end of a friendship that I thought would be an endure forever, let's grow old and tell everyone our love has survived decades, kind of friendship. The circumstances are too raw to share.

Carry Tiger To Mountain

Mort Milder

In the Third Year of great burning, Mo Mo, the Golden Emperor, made a journey to the monastery in which, as a boy, he had studied the arts of war and the teachings of the Tao.

Lacul by Mihai Eminescu

Andreea Iulia Scridon

Romania’s national poet, Mihai Eminescu (1850 – 1889), is the prototype of the Romantic poet: thematically comparable to Lamartine and Novalis, delicately handsome and tragically doomed, he seemed to fit every box for what he ended up representing, and what he continues to represent to this day.

Running

Eleonora Narbone

So, I took to running. I ran in Lampedusa, where I spent a few months, and eventually, when I went to my dad’s hometown (also known as the closest thing I have to a home) Ancona, I ran there too. I did the same routes, day in and day out. I stuck to a pace and just let the endorphins and the kilometres do the rest. Living in the countryside, my routes would be long and hilly. I would run through fields, and I would run through villages.

Four lines by Paul Celan

Translator: Dan Bellm
Author: Paul Celan

I began with one short, circumscribed, parenthetical, untitled poem, in a language I didn’t know, a spark of encounter and revelation, purposely fragmentary, and from these four lines, Paul Celan’s poetry has grown outward for me and become immense.

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Browse through our columns

A Series of Interlinked Essays

Writers are given the liberty to explore their ideas over a series of pieces. These ‘threads’ are woven together thematically or stylistically, and lightly but deftly touch on the feelings, objects, memories, and passions that pervade our days, crystallising them into psychological and artistic truth. They aim to "feel at each thread" of the mingled webs of our lives, as Pope says in his An Essay on Man: ‍ 'The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.'

A Column on Translation

From Greek boardings on the Testament, to English translations of the Arabian Nights, all saw translation as an inherent part of reading and thought. But isn’t translation a greater enterprise of stone shaped into verse, and colour turned into melody? Wasn’t Bernini translating in exquisite marble Daphne’s myth? Aren’t Garcilasos’ verses a melodic translation of Daphne's pain? Isn’t translation, then, the intimate fibre of the most subtle artistic creations? Paraphrasis is the column in which writers are invited to join the modest but arcane craft of the translator by translating and engaging with a piece of poetry, prose, visual arts or music.

Staying at Home

In light of the recent global crisis, as well as the lockdown of multiple countries around the world, we have decided to publish a few new pieces every day in this special issue. Unlike our monthly issues and ‘The Thread’, our special issue will not feature original works submitted to LPB. Instead, we will feature work by a selection of the LPB team’s favourite artists, writers and musicians, to keep you company through these dark days, in the same way that they are doing so for us.

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