A prefatory note

Dear readers,

This issue of Exchanges finds us at the end of a long winter and with a need for movement. From our desks in the Midwest, we watch the waterfowl and songbirds return from South America as the snow melts. Migration is all movement, either an abandonment or adoption of home. Translation also bears this shift from stasis, migrating textually toward new moments of settling on the page.

The translators in this issue offer urgent minimalism, birds that eat dreams and lyrical sea-sciences; a trilingual poetic body, avian betrayal and exile. We read them along migratory routes curving from Northern Japan, Lisbon, Mexico, and the former U.S.S.R. In each, translation urges English into a space of action-imagination where representations are reformed. English and the languages of origin coexist here and, we hope, will collaborate in fostering new moments of awareness at your winter’s end and spring’s beginning.

Thank you for reading,

Alex Niemi and Sarah Viren