Roberta Micallef is head of the Turkish language program at Boston University. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas in Austin, where her thesis treated the role of intellectuals in national identity formation in Uzbekistan. She wishes to express her gratitude to Erika Gilson, Güliz Kuruoğlu and Sylvia Wing Önder for their careful reading and suggestions on earlier versions of this translation.

These bite-sized booklets are a mouthful of literature each, intended to be read in a single sitting. When you’re done with one, pass it along! Look for them lying around in Boston, Portland, or New York City. When you see one waiting to be read, go ahead and pick it up. Give it a home in your hands for a ten-minute lit snack. Then when you’re finished, leave it behind for the next person to find, in an ATM lobby, on a train station bench, in the coffeeshop, at the pub.

To request a single copy of any chapbook in the series, or a set of copies in bulk quantity so you can pepper them around your neighborhood, just contact the Pen & Anvil Press and we can put a plan together to mail some over to you. You can reach us via the good folks at the Boston Poetry Union, at 139 Mt. Vernon Street, Fitchburg MA 01420. If you don’t have a stamp, feel free to send us an email.