Embroidery

Embroidery is one of the oldest and most traditional crafts in Uzbekistan. For centuries, the people of Nurota, Shahrisabz, Fergana, Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara have practiced this art. When stitching techniques, threads, fabrics, and patterns are harmonized, they create a beautiful result. Embroidery features a wide variety of stitches, colors, patterns, and fabrics. Bright colors are often used to make the designs more attractive.

Stitching techniques
Chain stitch, double stitch, couching, satin stitch, and others.

Threads used in embroidery
Silk, wool, cotton.

Silk thread – the most delicate and glossy (often used for suzani).
Wool thread – warmer, used for robes (chopon) and pillows.
Cotton thread – cheaper and available in many colors.
Silk is preferred because its shine lasts long and gives elegance to the design.

Fabrics for embroidery
Mainly strong and smooth fabrics are chosen: adras, coarse cotton, silk, and others.

Meanings of patterns
Pomegranate – blessing, abundance
Almond – happiness, fertility
Pepper – protection from the evil eye

Meanings of colors
Red – life, love
Green – nature
Blue – sky, loyalty
White – purity

Embroidery is 100% handmade (stitched with a needle or a hooked tool).

According to ancient traditions, Uzbek girls – future brides – prepared various embroidered items for their dowry: handkerchiefs, curtains, belts, bags, vests (nimcha), bedsheets, suzani, clothing decorations, headwear, and other gifts. At the wedding, the bride presented the items she had made to the groom’s relatives. Before the wedding, the dowry was displayed as an exhibition to demonstrate the bride’s skill and diligence. The finer and more beautiful the embroidery, the more highly it was valued. Girls were taught embroidery from a very young age and, after three to four years, began embroidering independently.

Today, one of the most popular garments is the suzani robe (chopon), which combines tradition and modernity and appeals to everyone. Iroqi stitching is mainly found on girls’ skullcaps (doʻppi). On Uzbekistan’s national holiday Navruz, people wear iroqi skullcaps, khan-atlas, adras, and suzani robes.

Tree of Life

Evolution made man

Truly wise and sane

The human child 

Comes to earth

Like a divine tree

Without any worry

So infinitely innocent

Trusting all

Like a loving saint

Desiring to make man like an earthly sage

God modelled man in his own image

And gave man only three commandments

Asking man, be steadfast upon these commitments

God desired to fill the earth with multitude of sages

God asked man to “go and multiply” his images

Multiply doesn’t mean have violent, cruel egoistic kids

But multiply God’s images of kind saintly seeds 

God desiring to make man benevolent and useful 

Secondly, God commanded man to “be fruitful”

Be fruitful doesn’t mean to keep fruits to yourselves

But kindly share like Ubuntu do among themselves

Desiring to fashion man as earth’s holy midwife

Thirdly, God commanded man to “be the Tree of Life”

“Tree of Life” means, man “be a guardian of all Life”

Like tree, a man must make good of existential strife.

This is all about the Holy Bible’s true message

Rest comes from Christ and apostles holy Praise.

Give breath, catch clouds and cook food for all 

Be a “Tree of Life” to nourish, a foe or a pal.

The Feeling of Things Coming to an End

I like the feeling of things coming to an end

a book finished, good or bad;

a rain falling is all the rain falling;

the campus near vacation starts to empty,

and plane trees and metasequoias have shed all their leaves.

Despair is the same thing happening over and over,

the same days like a white noose

slipping around your neck, then loosening.

You go out, hoping to bring back a different version of yourself,

but what comes back is still that same lifeless face.

Nothing ever truly ends—

they only vanish, not perish,

they still exist beyond your field of vision.

Nor do things ever truly happen—

they are feints, meaningless gestures,

irregularly shaped clutter, piled in a cold, empty backstage.

You want to move to another room to live,

but the part of you that can’t die is always in another

identical room, sitting there in the dark,

staying up all night, not speaking,

waiting for you to enter, to see him, 

and facing each other in silence.

Black River

The deep black river seems to have stopped flowing

within it lie inverted palaces

it never freezes, even in winter

on its snow-white banks, 

no footprints of man or beast dare approach its silence

this is the finest way, leading to other silences

and oblivion

The Last Moment

— Written on the Day of Completing the Translation of Helen Vendler’s Poetic Essays

A page rustles, for a little while

like a face in the desert hesitating

then melting away

a man steps onto another path in the woods

A murder without a target is perfect

as a stranger in native clothes

holding a key or a sword

crushed berries smearing the stones

The universe falls silent again

as if waiting for his decision

whether it is still time to choose to vanish

in the white steam trailing the summer mountaintop

to listen once more to the echo of nobody

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including nine poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) composed of 1178 poems celebrating 40 years of writing poetry.

A Feeling I Have

I feel like

Going broke

For a woman

I feel like throwing it all away

Going  crazy

She walks by voluptuous curves

And energy

There’s a desire to fall down a long tunnel

Forgetting about stocks and politics and the economy

Forgetting about being at work or on time

And need to go mad and become alive

I’ve been trying not to be crazy, but

The crazy days and moments call for me

And seduce me like the voluptuous walk

Of a cat,

I do not want to go back to the mad days,

I suffered myself greatly

Or do I?

A World Without

I’ve been thinking there was no women

In the world,

And how could that be,

Just a thought a feeling i had,

And it depressed me,

To wake up and all the women gone,

And the world was left to the men,

And I became so depressed,

Could men, like me, go on without women?

That’s terrible thought to have

The world might collapse right now

And the men would go on doing all kinds of manly shit

And doing it well, like they have

But i was thinking of the world without ladies and girls

And it just didn’t seem worth it

And lots of men would go crazy slowly,

A whole world without poetry, music and dance,

Just the hard tough stuff

We were left with

And suddenly like i did not want to be here

Or anywhere

I Must Stop

Thinking that I am better than others

I must stop thinking my pain is more valid

I must quit thinking I should be rich and famous and handsome

I must quit thinking that certain jobs below me

I must quit thinking I am deserving

That I am smarter than others and that I know better

Where do these feelings come from?

My stupendous ego

Playing upon a boat of isolation

No one is onboard in the sea

As the cold calm water goes go

Without beginning.

A Strong Man

I want to be a strong man

Someone benching five hundred pounds. Looking like a bodybuilder

Someone running the 40 in four seconds. Running like man cheetah

Some one running  marathons regularly, incredible stamina

Someone makes important decisions, like a CEO. Affecting so many lives. With towers on his back

I wanted to be a strong man

I felt like a strong man for a day maybe two

Or maybe it was a year or two

Maybe I was around 32

I remember lifting 50 bags at work,

Just tossing the around like nothing

And drinking beer after work. Feeling strong and manly

And thinking that i would always feel that way,

The winter winds nipped my nose

At 46 I don’t feel like it anymore. My

Knees ache just thinking of lifting that 50 pound bag

Wanting is so soft

But reality is so hard.

Just Want to be Loved

And you write and think and publish and study and write

Thinking of perfect poems and perfect thoughts

You want to be loved and celebrated

And praised and showed the good time

And have people interviews and ask me questions

Just to feel important in the world and share

Little insights with people who dig my stuff

Feeling like Henry Miller or Ernest Hemingway

And have people say that is really good,

And how did you come up with that,

What inspired you do or say that

I’ll buy your book, and you give a reading here

Will pay you

I guess most writers feel this way,  

And the others, can hardly care

At all

Damion Hamilton is from St. Louis MO. His poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Poesy Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Red Fez, The Camel Saloon and many others. He writes poetry, stories and novels. He has written several books. Available here.  He can be found on twitter here.

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.

I will dissolve when I die

start six feet under, and the water table will rise

and I will be carried away into you

so I give myself to you now.

You are the ocean

and all things return to you.

All things return

but two parts of me stay.

One part is lost at sea

and the other part is searching for it.

And I cannot find either.

They are both dissolving as I surely will

The ocean is powerful like that

But I am losing myself.

And you have me.

So I give myself to you now.

I will dissolve entirely.

I will be the entirety of the ocean

I will be so much

so small.

I will be a portrait of myself.

You will be the entirety of me

I will not be the entirety of you.

Art Basel 2025 

Basel June 19 and 22, 2025 

In Basel. 

The festival, one of the main events of the international art market, presents works of modern and contemporary art in over 280 leading galleries proven in the world. 

The summer sun illuminates the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland.

While I was walking through these landscapes with pleasure, I was thinking about how long our journey to Basel would take us.

What passages, from beauty to beauty, from Lugano to Luzerno. 

Indeed, it seems to me, as they say, a beautiful dream with open eyes.

How beautifully the hand of man has worked together with the generosity of nature and in this way, in this place, they have built a true paradise. 

My thought goes far.

Being amazed by these beauties, which impress me and that with my words I cannot describe them properly.

And what an opportunity and art exists, for every person and every nation, if this valuable experience in the transformation of the environment which resembles heaven on earth, here in Switzerland. That they can use it, and that everyone can practice it in their own place, in the care and protection of nature and at the same time for the benefit of their health. 

Arrival in Basel

After a five-hour journey,

we arrive in Basel.

And here is the Rhine River, not only offering us amazing beauty but a memory and journey with the old European history.

In the beautiful and ancient Basel.

An indescribable pleasure for this place,.

And not only for its beauties, but also for the fact that Basel welcomes us with open arms and envelops us with the warmth of the most beautiful and important activities not only for Switzerland but also for the whole of Europe.

Before us lies majestic and all dressed in red, the square in front of the building, where the song festival – Eurovision 2025 took place

The square in front of the Basel fair is in fact the most magnificent platform that can be offered to art at Art Basel. 

And who can use it better than the internationally renowned painter, who has repeatedly freed herself from the limitations of the classical canvas to claim entire spaces as a canvas for her colorful excesses?

Now Katharina Grosse has transformed the fairground into a large painting. 

In doing so, she included the entire square, including the fountain and the surrounding architecture, in her work.

The German painter has long been considered a star. 

And she is practically destined for this great commission, which is given to an artist every year for the days of the Art Basel fair. 

The Swiss press writes about her and her fame has already spread throughout Europe and the whole world.

Switzerland is ahead in all arts.

It constantly organizes exhibitions to help talents, in supporting and encouraging them as well as displaying the products of the hands of the youngest, the oldest and the most famous artists.

Truly a model to be taken as an example by all European countries and why not the world.

An excellent job in giving the right value to those works that really have value.

The first day

Crowds of people flowed like a river in front of the festival building.

Others climbed the stairs to the palace of culture, where the exhibition titled Arte-Basel had opened.

An exhibition service employee greeted us in Italian and with her warmth and talented hospitality, offered us all the necessary information about ARTE-BASEL 2025.

Second day in Basel

Already amazed by the exhibited works.

We move from one pavilion to another. We take photos.

Thousands of square meters have been made available for the exhibition of works by great artists, as well as ample space for the many visitors.

A special commitment and interest from the employees of the municipality of Basel.

They follow every activity, every detail of this exhibition, in help and support of the exhibition employees as well as the artists themselves. 

Everything in order and with correctness.

“We like this,” said one of the employees, because with the same dedication these beautiful works of art were created, which are exhibited in all the exhibition pavilions.

Values ​​should be protected only with values.

Works that amaze with their beauty and the messages they carry for the culture and life of people everywhere in the world.

We will see and hear each other in the other visits made by our side, in the following days, in these artistic activities, developed in Switzerland and their importance and values ​​for Europe and the World.