A Poem About War

War doesn’t come with a song

nor with the steps of a parade.

It slips in quietly,

like a shadow behind a closed door.

The land becomes a number.

A man becomes a dot.

A name disappears in a report.

In the evening, the wind brings smoke

and sounds that don’t belong to the night.

It’s not only the child who cries—

the house cries, the river cries,

the walls cry, trained to remember.

The sky watches,

but does not intervene.

In the trenches, there is no justice,

no questions.

Only orders,

and silence after the explosion.

Some write history,

others lie beneath it.

War does not ask who you are,

nor what you dreamed of.

It erases everything that resembles a human,

and leaves an empty space

where a heart used to be.

Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar and divides her life between Serbia and Denmark. In Serbia, she serves as the deputy editor-in-chief at the publishing house Sfairos in Belgrade. She is also the founder and vice president of the Rtanj and Mesečev Poets’ Circle, which counts 800 members, and the editor-in-chief of the international e-magazine Area Felix, a bilingual Serbian-English publication. She writes literary reviews, and as a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and international literary magazines, anthologies, and electronic media. Some of her poems are also available on the YouTube platform. Maja Milojković has won many international awards. She is an active member of various associations and organizations advocating for peace in the world, animal protection, and the fight against racism. She is the author of two books: Mesečev krug (Moon Circle) and Drveće Želje (Trees of Desire). She is one of the founders of the first mixed-gender club Area Felix from Zaječar, Serbia, and is currently a member of the same club. She is a member of the literary club Zlatno Pero from Knjaževac, and the association of writers and artists Gorski Vidici from Podgorica, Montenegro.

Resurrecting in My Letters 

In the arid desert of my soul,

where the sun burned away the last hope,

and thirst carved deep wounds,

lay an echo of my former calm.

The shadows were night crows,

pecking at frayed dreams,

and the heart, a broken clock,

ticking away hours of a time long gone.

But in the secret crucible of my mind,

where ideas are smoldering embers,

I found the alchemy of the word,

the pure gold that my being reverses.

Each letter, a star seed,

germinating in the garden of silence,

each verse, a river flowing intensely,

washing away debris, healing the wound.

My letters are beacons in the dense fog,

maps to a treasure I thought was lost,

the master key to an ancient labyrinth,

the compass that guides my existence.

In each stanza, a phoenix in flight,

in each line, a constant rebirth,

the broken chrysalis, the being ahead,

I resurrect in my letters, I am persistence.

I am no longer the shadow of a gloomy yesterday,

but the rainbow after the storm,

the melody that defies silence,

the soul that blooms in the depths of summer.

My words are my shield and my spear,

the battle cry against apathy,

the irrefutable proof of my daring,

the life that resurfaces, dances, and advances.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

The Glorious Youth

The youth is like a raging river

It overflows the boundaries the old like to hold tight

It plays on the beauty of the lovely flowers in the garden

The flowers smile over, smile over

The glowing softness in the morning

The youth is like the rising sun

It blooms with new charms and attractions

We like to live under this shade

Youth invokes to win the world

Youth calls to pray to God

Youth is ready to receive the challenges

Youth is like to get free from all the hazards arround us

A struggle for turning into a serene beautiful world

Struggle for something better

Like going through the crystal water

Under which the colorful rocks

The blue sky with the meteors over there

Floating on the hilly wonderful green areas

And what not?

Though the time is too short

Like the drops of the morning dews

Glittering in the sunrise and vanishes too quick at a glance

We all are twinkling stars

We all are sparking in the dark night

The power of the sun

The enchanting calls of the morning birds

We are so lovely

We have our hands to love, to raise up

We have our hearts to feel, to step forward

Youth is like the green carpet of the large paddy field

Youth is like the healing touch to the wounded

A touch of a dear loving friend, not foe

Every second, the waves are echoing the victory the world welcomes.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Happy 250th Birthday

Into the city streets

strutted the Brownshirts,

locked and loaded

and wearing steel-toed

jackboots and masks.

D.C. and Los Angeles

will never ever be the 

same again. They pulled 

people from automobiles 

and out of lines at car 

washes and big box 

stores and tamale vendors.

The thick-witted goons

flung their victims

to the pavement and

shackled them with

chains in front of their

young children. They 

didn’t identify themselves

but to brandish weapons.

Those they seized

were all guilty:

of being brown-skinned

and wanting a

better life for themselves

and their families.

The answer was to

send them to countries

where they don’t

speak the language

and to rip their

children from their

breasts and imprison

them in cages.

Perhaps, I thought,

this is not

what Americans

signed up for 250

years ago.

Review of Exiles Across Time by Hua Ai

Exiles Across Time, Hua Ai’s first book of poetry, is an ambitious debut in the best sense: formally self-conscious, politically urgent, and deeply rooted in myth. Structured across six “Echoes,” the collection mirrors its own title, framing exile not as a single event but as a condition that reverberates through memory, history, and imagination.

The opening Echo is mythic, invoking Lilith and re-casting her refusal into the register of feminist defiance. Hua’s poetic voice emerges here with sharp clarity, transforming inherited stories into weapons of renewal. This defiance reverberates through the later sequences, where images of war and trauma surface with equal intensity. Sarajevo, for example, becomes not only a geographic site but also a symbol of systemic violence and the persistence of collective wounds.

In the central Echoes, Hua turns to war and capitalist bondage, exposing how power sustains itself like a machine of self-absorption. These poems reverberate with both anger and analytical precision, refusing to separate feeling from critique. Hua writes as someone intent on naming the system that would erase her: “A WOMAN NAMES THE SYSTEM / AND IT LOSES ITS POWER.” Naming becomes both the strategy of survival and the poetry’s deepest act of resistance.

The later Echoes return to more intimate imagery: the lighthouse figured as a woman, exile as bodily hunger, survival as defiance. The refrain “Existence is a slit throat” is terrifying yet empowering, embodying both the vulnerability and the courage of persistence. Political critique and personal myth are not divided but braided together until they sing in one voice.

Overall, Exiles Across Time is ambitious because it seeks to hold myth, politics, and lived memory in the same poetic frame. Hua Ai writes with a fierce, unflinching voice that refuses silence and refuses erasure. The book does not merely describe exile; it invents a new poetic language for survival, binding myth and witness into a testament of resistance.

André Osório (Lisbon, 1998) is a Portuguese poet and editor. He studied Portuguese Studies at NOVA FCSH and holds a master’s in Literary Theory from the University of Lisbon, where he is pursuing doctoral research. His work appears in Folhas, Letras & Outros Ofícios, Porridge (London), Palavra Comum and elsewhere. Co-founder and co-editor of Lote magazine, he is the author of the poetry collections Observação da Gravidade (Guerra & Paz, 2020)—finalist for the Prémio Glória de Sant’Anna and semi-finalist for Prémio Oceanos—and Sala de Operações (Guerra & Paz, 2024). He has read at festivals and book fairs across Portugal.

TEACHING SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE TO 7TH GRADER CLASSROOM FROM A COMMONWEALTH NATION 

Shakespeare Week Reading for Exam Style Essay Structured Q/A 

1. Afterward of watching the documentary of Patrick Stewart’s theatrical performance of Shylock’s monologue and reading the following extract adapted from the reading materials of BBC bitesize curriculum, then answer these exam-style structured brief and broad question: 

Shylock challenges prejudice

Solario and Solanio are worrying about Antonio’s ships amid rumours they have sunk in bad weather. When Shylock enters, they cruelly laugh at him about his missing daughter.

Shylock has heard the rumour about Antonio’s ships and reacts by saying that Antonio should “look to his bond”. Shylock says he looks forward to getting Antonio’s pound of flesh as revenge for Antonio’s cruel mistreatment over the years.

Shylock gives a powerful speech about the mistreatment of Jewish people, in which he asks why they should be treated differently from others. “Hath not a Jew eyes?” he asks, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”.

When Solario and Solanio leave, Shylock is joined by his Jewish friend Tubal, who gives more detail about Jessica’s disappearance, and the valuables she has taken with her. Shylock shows a more emotional side of himself as he mourns the loss of a ring taken by Jessica – it was a gift from his late wife.

Patrick Stewart performing as Shylock with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2011

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”

Questions:

1. Shylock recites one of the greatest monologues of Shakespearean drama. The monologue is a dramatic speech in which an actor in a play or a film, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast programme.

Explain in a sentence the figure of speech used in this address. [2]

2. Examine the character sketch of Shylock with regards to the rhetorical significance of parallelism.                                                             [8]

b). In the view of the pictorial image of Venice being the setting of The Merchant of Venice, examine the juxtapositional impact of the theme, “romance in Belmont and trouble in Venice.”                                                                                                  [4]                                                                                                 

The Italian city of Venice in which Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is set

c) After watching the theatrical performance of the trial and court scene from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and referencing the Folger Shakespeare Library extract, discuss in depth the trial of Antonio.                                                                      [6]

GRATIANO 

O Jew, an upright judge, a learnèd judge!

PORTIA, as Balthazar 

Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh.

Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more

But just a pound of flesh. If thou tak’st more

Or less than a just pound, be it but so much

As makes it light or heavy in the substance

Or the division of the twentieth part

Of one poor scruple—nay, if the scale do turn

But in the estimation of a hair,

Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.

GRATIANO 

A second Daniel! A Daniel, Jew!

Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.

PORTIA, as Balthazar 

Why doth the Jew pause? Take thy forfeiture.

SHYLOCK 

Give me my principal and let me go.

BASSANIO 

I have it ready for thee. Here it is.

PORTIA, as Balthazar 

He hath refused it in the open court.

He shall have merely justice and his bond.

GRATIANO 

A Daniel still, say I! A second Daniel!—

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.            

In Shakespeare’s Week Programme Later Worked Solution Handouts Materials Reading Resources Bequeathed To The Future Shakespearean Scholars

Worked Solution To The Question No b) Character Sketch of Shakespeare’s Shylock with Rhetorical Significance of the Effect of Parallelism

• Shylock is a wolfish murderous tyrannous villain compared to a blood thirsty dog but also foils as the epitome of a dignified nobleman for his sole sufferance belonging to the member of a persecuted race. 
• As the antagonist of Shakespearean drama, ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Shylock dominated the 18th and 19th centuries as melodramatic figure of horror and terror. 
• Shylock’s protective self-defensive mechanism of ironical humour wrought himself with the iron laden armour of shield against the injustices of sufferance against Antonio’s cruelty and bitterness inflicted in the past.
• Shakespeare, however, was stuck in the fringes/margins/borderlines/gulf behind being a semite and anti-semite in Christian Elizabethan European England.
• Modernistic interpretation of the antagonist Shylock projects and portrays modern world economic forum and/or international monetary fund during the Great Depression of the 1930s, juxtaposing the anti-semitism of Hitler’s Nazi-German holocaust during the Great World War II (1939-45).

Worked Solution To The Question No c) Romance in Belmont and Trouble in Venice

• With the wooing of courtship the couple Bassanio and Portia exchanged rings and likewise, Nerissa and Gratiano too are engaged.
• Romance surfeits towards the pinnacle while they promise their wedding vow that they will never part with.
• However, a gloomy and melancholy picture is visualized with Solario’s depressing news aftermath of Lorenzo and Jessica’s gathering—–that Antonio’s vessels of shipments unfortunately drowned and sank.
• Meanwhile Portia persuades Bassanio to rescue Antonio with a ransom of double the 8000 ducats from the stony adversary and inhuman wretch—–Shylock in Venice.

  Worked Solution to the Question No d) The Court and Trial Scene

• The trial and the court scene is often the most quoteworthy textual references in Shakespearean studies because of the unexpected plots and twists. Here in Act 4 from ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ Shylock is the epitome of the stony adversary and inhuman wretch and the Jew as resonated in the echoes of the Duke.
• Shylock is adamant of his bond-forfeiture of Antonio’s pound of flesh. 
• However, the ‘Daniel is come to Judgement’, Portia in disguise of the counsellor Balthazar from Padua offers recompense of double the amount which the Jewish antagonist Shylock waves off and casts aside. 
• William Shakespeare allegorizes the trope of Judaism; whilst satirizing the dramatia personae of Shylock, contrasting traditional medieval Catholic Christian merchant as represented by the character of Antonio
• Ironically hypocrisy has been personified in the New Testament contemporizing literary trope of Judaism in the context of materialism, money-lending, legalism, the pound of flesh contract and/or bond, contrasting the authenticity of honesty, morality and integrity prevailing in Christian spirited souls.
• In the nick of time, Portia’s interruption salvages the life of the Christian spirited Antonio as result of the novel discovery that the bond elicits pound of flesh without shedding of blood.
• Antonio, thus thanks in ironical sarcasm of Shylock’s own words——– “A second Daniel! ——— I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me the word.”
• Finally Shylock forfeits Judaism and wealth of fortunes for the sake of compassion and mercy by being spiritually converted to Christianity. 

References

The following quizlet has been prepared in consultation with references:from Save My Exams, Revision World and Spark Notes 

Author     

Revisiting The Merchant of Venice for High School Classroom