Shabdaguchha

The International Poetry Journal in Bengali and English


Issue 40
April-June '08

Editorial:
Tenth Anniversary Issue

Rilke once wrote to a young poet that a period of ten years was nothing for composing a good poem. Probably, he had the same view about publications. And it is true that many of the published work or magazines die as the decades pass by. We also learned from one of the recent American giants, Stanley Kunitz, that his first four books were published with a fourteen years interval from each other. It lets one seriously think about composing poems and publishing them frequently. Would we then say that the last ten years of Shabdaguchha were just a period of time for us to set a platform of publishing good poetry? Or have we already established a forum from which we publish some poetry that can give a good flavor to the readers? Whatever the answer is, we believe that we have managed to build a small bridge between the poets of the East and the West. The poets from the East, ones who were not known to the readers of the West, are now making a good appearances and echoing through the minds of the readers. Shabdaguchha managed to publish two translated issues to present Bengali poets and at the same time printed a significant number of poets from various languages into Bengali. It published special issues on Stanley Kunitz, Subhas Mukhopadhay, Shamsur Rahman, and Humayun Azad. It also encouraged many young poets to contribute to the magazine. Its Internet web version has become a source of good poetry where poets—young and old—from different parts of the world reside holding each other's hands. This might well be marked as a significant achievement of the magazine.

Ten years ago in the editorial of the very first issue of the magazine, we earnestly stated that Shabdaguchha would be the place of the finest poems no matter who writes them. Still, we want to move forward with the same view. And in this tenth anniversary issue, we would like to extend our gratitude to everyone who has been with us and good wishes to those who had tried. We hope that we will meet many new faces in the coming years.


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    Shabdaguchha, A Bilingual Journal of Poetry, Published in New York, Edited by Hassanal Abdullah.