I’ve recently had the pleasure of collaborating with French writer and translator Antoine Bargel on a selection of poetry and prose for the May 2012 edition of Words without Borders on “Writing from the Indian Ocean”.  Our contributions include works by the writers Michel Ducasse, Alain Gordon-Gentil, Boris Gamaleya, and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, all of whom, as scholar Françoise Lionnet describes, “imaginatively [engage] with the public and private realms of life in […] historical and strategic insular sites of migration that have brought together the peoples of many continents, near and far” (“Insularity, Mobility, and Imagination:  Writing from the Indian Ocean”).  In these pieces, the raw iteration of the abject, the probing struggle with memory, and the stark critique of global injustice, made for a challenging task of translation and a stimulating read.  I hope you enjoy this issue of Words without Borders as much as I have:  http://wordswithoutborders.org/issue/may-2012