Globally Lit

For the past few months, I have been carrying with me a book of haikus, or near haikus, by the Japanese poet Sayumi Kamakura, translated into English by James Shea. Applause for a Cloud, published last year by Black Ocean press in Boston, begins with these lines: 

In Dublin, I went to church with a retired nuclear physicist. After learning that I would be traveling to Ireland to study the impact of radiation on previously colonized areas, Dr. Eric Finch recommended that we meet at Christ Church Cathedral as God was the only force that brought him back into the city nowadays. Of course, he wrote, if you’d rather meet after, that’s fine too, but the building is quite striking. Standing beside Dr. Finch and his wife Jean, I couldn’t help but agree. Originally built by Vikings in the 12th century, the building evolved with time. Flying buttresses encircle 19th century stained glass windows. The preserved heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin who laid the cathedral’s first stone in 1172, is cradled beneath the funeral slab of Anglican James Hewitt, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland who rose to power centuries after the English Reformation turned the building Protestant. Different periods of time bleed into one another, clotting around major events. This timeline is vertical, major changes collaged over one another defining its legacy.

In his essay, "As Much Truth as One Can Bear," James Baldwin writes, "not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." It's a timeless quote, one that feels as relevant now in 2025 as it did in 1962. On this episode of Access to Excellence, Distinguished University Professor Keith Clark, professor of English and African and African American studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, joins President Gregory Washington to discuss the literary journey of James Baldwin and his reflections on his life of courage and wisdom as he studied the human experience.

The Alan Cheuse International Writer’s Center is thrilled to announce Oksana Maksymchuk as our Winter Cheuse Center Scholar, supported by a Scholl Foundation grant. From December 8, 2023, to March 3, 2024, Oksana will bring her renowned talent and insight to our community.

Writes Paul Jaskunas, author of "The Atlas of Remedies": When I first arrived, the city was bright with snow; every breath hung frozen in the air. In a dream some nights before my flight, I’d envisioned Vilnius to be a winter wonderland of sorts, and so it first impressed me, over two decades ago, long before the Baltics were brought into the E.U. fold, before the euro and skyscrapers arrived. In the winter of 2001, Vilnius still appeared to be iced in, suspended in frosty limbo between east and west. You half expected to see sleighs gliding along the Old Town streets. 

In planning my three-week trip to Norway last July, I spent countless hours researching unique saunas, hidden gem museums, and prominent anarchist organizations to connect with and check out. I was going there, after all, to study the country’s history of anarchism, naturism, and sauna culture, and I wanted a wide range of experiences to draw from. I must’ve emailed 20 people, most of them associated with Norwegian universities, to propose interviews. What I failed to factor in, however, was fellesferie, the Norwegian “joint holiday,” when more than half of the Norwegian workforce is on vacation. This national vacation time, I quickly learned, lined up precisely with the timeline of my trip.

I arrived first in Dublin and took a train, the very next day, to Sligo. For me, Dublin’s wonders could wait. I was in a hurry to be in Yeats Country. When my flight to Dublin got cancelled two days ago, it seemed to affirm my fears that like a lot of things in my life, this dream, too, would dissolve at the faint sense of touch. But to my surprise, I was soon across the Atlantic, on my way to Sligo. In the train, a three-year old and her mother sat in front of me. We talked for a while about our families. The woman was going to her parent’s house. I studied her careful balance as she pulled out a few books for her child, who had now decided that the train journey needed a colorful distraction. After a while, the books were beginning to lose their fancy.

I traveled to Madagascar in the Summer of 2023 to meet a small community that converted to Judaism in 2016. Not well known to the broader international Jewish community, I had heard about them through word of mouth and a few videos and articles here and there online. It is possible to access practical information about this group, such as how they learned about Judaism and who converted them, but not much else is available. Converting to Judaism is often a difficult and prolonged process because according to Jewish belief, one does not need to be “part of the tribe” in order to be a good person or achieve salvation, so conversion is generally discouraged unless one feels deeply compelled. As an extrovert, I wanted to meet the individuals who spent years studying as a community to assume this new identity—one that I share with them. I was curious about the possibility of connection in an unlikely place. As a poet, I wanted to visit Madagascar to experience a new world, meet new people, and learn a new terrain. Both of these pieces of myself and this experience were to ultimately contribute to my broader work on identity and its connection to land, to books, and to the stories and histories we tell.