Cosmic Sadness by Jean Portante, translated by Zoe Skoulding Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal captured in poems of such

captured in poems of such exuberance and transformative energy you feel you are also running through the border

”  No one said he couldn’t take notes

giving and taking life simultaneously

Rudyard Kipling

Tropes of the ‘good girl’

Cosmic Sadness by Jean Portante, translated by Zoe Skoulding Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal captured in poems of suchCosmic Sadness is a glittering, grief struck astronomy of the everyday, in which kitchens, scaffolding, train stations and gardens tilt slowly into interstellar space. In Jean Portante's long, linked sequences, memory and matter are always in motion: roses drift above language, migratory birds arrive with their beaks nailed shut, drawers open on months, planets and old parents, while the sky behaves like a flooded cellar or a cracked cinema screen.