Cosmic Sadness by Jean Portante, translated by Zoe Skoulding Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal and our continuing habit of

and our continuing habit of looking away

There is an arrangement here

Tropes of the ‘good girl’

”  No one said he couldn’t take notes

When asked by the public for contemporary poets writing about the natural world

Cosmic Sadness by Jean Portante, translated by Zoe Skoulding Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal and our continuing habit ofCosmic 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.