Poet of the Month

January: Rebecca Lowe (Wales).
February: Jim Gronvold (USA). 
March: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld (USA).
April: Tozan Alkan (Turkey).
May: Byron Beynon (Wales).
June: Michelle Chung (USA). 
July: Jim Gwyn (USA).
August: Jonathan Taylor (England).
September: Beata Poźniak (USA).
October: Maria Taylor (England).
November: Stanley H. Barkan (USA).
December: John Dotson (USA).

January: Maria Mastrioti (Greece).

February: Gayl Teller (USA).
March: Mike Jenkins (Wales).
April: Cassian Maria Spiridon (Romania).
May: Simon Fletcher (England)
June: Sultan Catto (USA)
July: Vojislav Deric (Australia)
August: K. S. Moore (Ireland)
September: Kristine Doll (USA)
October: Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan (USA)
November: Christopher Norris (Wales)
December: Maria Mazziotti Gillan (USA)

2023: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 

January: Samuel Ezra (Wales)
February: Tôpher Mills (Wales)
March: Rob Cullen (Wales)
April: Mandira Ghosh (India)
May: John Greening (England)
June: Rosy Wood-Bevan (Wales)
July: David Hughes (Wales)

2025: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 
January: Annest Gwilym (Wales)
February: Sam Smith (Wales)
March: Dave Lewis (Wales)
April: Scott Elder (France)
May: Angela Kosta (Italy)
June: Abeer Ameer (Wales)
July: Jenny Mitchell (England)
August: Sydney Lea (USA)
September: Richard Collins (USA)
October: Mark Lewis (Wales)
November: Robert Nisbet (Wales)
Clare E. Potter (Wales)

2026: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 
Rhoda Thomas (Wales)
Mike Everley (Wales)
Regina Resta (Italy)
Anna Lewis (England)
Carmella de Keyser (England)

 

 JUNE POET OF THE MONTH:
 Mujë Buçpapaj (Albania)

Poet Mujë Buçpapaj was born in Tropoja, Albania (1962). He graduated from the branch of Albanian Language and Literature, University of Tirana (1986). In the years 1991-1992, he studied for two years for feature film script at Kinostudio “Alshqiperia e Re”, Tirana, today “Albafilmi” (considered as post-master's studies), as well as completed many other qualifications of the cultural spectrum in country and abroad. Mujë Buçpapaj is a Doctor of literary sciences with a thesis on the survival of Albanian poetry during the communist censorship, defended at the Institute of Linguistics and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Albania. He is one of the founders of political pluralism and the free press in Albania (1990) and a journalist for many years in the most popular newspapers in Tirana. He is the head of the literary and cultural newspaper “Nacional”, the “Nacional” Publishing House and the Studies and National Projects.

In the years 1991-2005 he was co-founder and journalist of the first opposition newspaper in the country after 50 years of communist dictatorship “Rilindja Demokratike” and founder of the newspaper “Tribuna Demokratike.”

In the years 2005-2009 he was the director of the International Cultural Center in Tirana, while in the years 2010-2014 he was the Director of the Albanian Copyright Office in Tirana. After the year 2014 and onwards, he took charge of the “Nacional” Publications and the “Nacional” newspaper. Currently, he is also a lecturer at “Luarasi” University in Tirana, where he teaches the subject of Academic Writing.

Buçpapaj is one of the most prominent exponents of contemporary Albanian poetry with the greatest national and international success, respectively published in several foreign languages and honored with several prestigious international awards from Greece to the USA and one of the most prominent managers of culture in the country. He is a drafter of cultural policies.

He is the organizer and leader of many international conferences held in Tirana on the problems of art, literature and copyright.

He is the author of many study books on literature and poetics, but also of hundreds of journalistic writings, criticisms, essays, studies including those on regional problems, national security as well as on the management of art in market conditions, cultural policies and national strategy. of culture. He is known as one of the strongest public debaters on the problems of the Albanian transition, regional political developments, and democracy as a whole. He is the founder of the newspaper/magazine “Nacional” and its director. He lives, works and creates in Tirana, together with his wife and two daughters.


THE PROMISING MAN

Man
Had fallen like a spot of sunshine
Near periphery
Of afternoon
He had lit a farewell fire
To warm with sadness
Dark deceit of destiny
The illuminated man
This thing of falling metaphors
Took the roads returning
To the world
Without bringing about change
The Promising Man
Didn’t like to die
In his fleshy Shadow
The Promising Man
Is no way
Man
Man
In no way


THE WIND’S PORTRAIT

Colour of Northern storm
River winds portrait
Into standing trees
Man built
The other side of life and river
Between rain and field
But wind will have its say
Village’s messages
Distant mountains
Receiving flying bird
From marshes
Dreams fleeing
Village’s sad face
Losing forever the way
Leading
To the trembling of the Populars
Season of my home
Winds winding reminding
We are found ageing


THE SQUARE

Our dream
That freedom lost
In war won once
Resting here
Broken spirit of victory
Smoking wood of living tree
Fire in the city
Uprising
Rushing through
Wind’s blazing window
Here rests our freedom
Forbidden
To enter our world
Dream now only
No hands reaching
Sunset shuttering
Upon our invisible jail
We return to our ruins
Where Freedom was buried
We eat it
From our poems
We will have it
The day we defeated fear


LIVING IN DREAMS

Every March
Distant human voices
Go out
The breathing gate
Illyrian life chaotic
In the stone of
God’s medium of tragedy
Impossible
Stretching rock
Reaching to Heaven
Enslaving memory
Of our times
Horrors of history
Horrors of pre-history
Illyrians
Resurrecting
Blood fires
For our free sun


WORLD TOO SMALL

World
Was too small
Is too small
Born under leaves
Of first sea
All come and go
Species persons
We thought a God
And became
World too small
He kept no promises
O Man
The world is as small
As the village hill
Climbed
In this short night
Of eternity

PEOPLE OF THE UPRISING

The idolaters had
Stopped following
Rotting signs
Of the State
The barefooted people
Had left the starving field
Of the State
Patience of the
Confessed millions
Fleeting away
From the State
The idolaters
Tired of playing with tanks
And the streets
Heavy broke with
Iron rolling treads
Of the State
Traitors
That the war saved
And exalted
Now runaways
And runaways
Returned home
To the State
It didn’t matter who
Died
Those fighting to the end
To find the State
Counted
People of the uprising
From the state.

(c) 2026 of all the poems Mujë Buçpapaj