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Amsterdam Review
@amsterdamreview.bsky.social
2.4K followers 2.4K following 140 posts
A literary magazine publishing poetry, translations, fiction, interviews, essays, photography, and fine arts. Follow AR Tunes on Spotify.

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EIC @danielnemo.bsky.social
Managing Editor @phebel.bsky.social
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amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Amsterdam Review @amsterdamreview.bsky.social · Oct 9
Our Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW!

Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.

Read here: bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #fiction #translations #finearts #amsterdam 🇳🇱
Amsterdam Review Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW! Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"There is never / an ending to The End of the Affair, / to The Lover."

A poem by 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗶 @georgia2newengland.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
​We are neither friend, nor enemy because those could be metaphor I might come to understand, something made by diction, by definition or perhaps by reference to a painting – But I am boiling water at temperatures too high for this tea, this bite of York peppermint. Is your yearning to regain control of my life why you text me again, conjuring
November 26, 2025 at 1:32 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
We stand against promoting and monetizing mediocrity at the expense of genuine talent and artistic freedom.

Read 𝙋𝙤𝙚𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝘾𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙁𝘼 𝙄𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭 by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼 @danielnemo.bsky.social in the Fall issue.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #essays
What does it mean to be an artist today? What does it mean to be a poet? Amsterdam Review confronts the rise of the MFA industrial complex and the consequences of turning creativity into an institutionalized craft, in a call to remember that genuine art emerges from the unconscious, not from within the walls of academically sanctioned success.
November 24, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
sjane.bsky.social
sleigh-bells
bent down
bristling with
a forlorn note

Many thanks for @amsterdamreview.bsky.social for nominating "when the ponds were new" for Best of the Net. The poem is a visual erasure using a page of Walden.
November 22, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
bloodaxebooks.bsky.social
Join us tomorrow for our online launch event for new November titles by Tomas Venclova, Pia Tafdrup and Ivan V. Lalić (1931-96), with readings from the poets & translators, plus discussion with editor Neil Astley.
Watch live (or later) on YouTube on Thurs 20 Nov, 7pm GMT:
youtube.com/live/OTRTqP2...
November 19, 2025 at 10:32 AM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Read 𝙊𝙛𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙙, a tale about the power of words in a digital world built to repress and forget.

#flashfiction by 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗞. 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘀 in the Fall issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#writingcommunity
Raz Darden recrossed San Carlos Street carrying his lunch as he looked at the sign over his shop. “Antiques” was all it said and all it needed it to say. His niece, who lived on the other side of San Jose, always bugged him about making the sign read “Darden’s Antiques,” but he kept telling her the front of the building wasn’t long enough to support all the extra letters. Besides, he worried about having his name attached to the business for other reasons. He unlocked the front door, removed the handwritten “back in five minutes” sign, and walked to the counter. Raz took a glance at his dark, wrinkled face in the 19th-century mirror that hung on the far side of the shop. That, he thought, still needed to be removed.
November 19, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
asls.org.uk
“And what is home if not the choice – over and over again – to stay?”

Marjorie Lotfi – winner of the 2024 Forward Prize for Best First Collection for THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK – on becoming a writer, from fleeing Iran as a child in 1978 to arriving in Scotland
writersmosaic.org.uk/people/marjo...
Marjorie Lotfi | WritersMosaic Magazine
Forward Prize winner 2024 for The Wrong Person to Ask, Lotfi moved to Tehran as a baby from the US and fled during the Iranian Revolution
writersmosaic.org.uk
November 16, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
melostrom.bsky.social
“only after breaking was my body/ believable”

This poem by @chelsdingman.bsky.social in @amsterdamreview.bsky.social is so beautiful. (Thanks for passing it along, @pdforan.bsky.social!)❤️
November 17, 2025 at 3:54 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"is there a place in Dante's hell for the / algae that eat light / and beget this world one bone marrow / at a time"

A poem by 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮 𝗶𝗿𝘂 in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
for your adoration, a woolly mammoth, intact with its last meal— all that unprocessed sugar, tucked in the ​cold wok of its belly, like your rage inside me, waiting as though waiting is a form of listening.
November 17, 2025 at 2:45 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Chop / ped / the beam / of sun / light / into burning blocks of wood / and piled them in the shape of a / p y r a m i d"

A poem by 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗵𝗺𝘀 in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
Chop / ped / the beam / of sun / light into burning blocks of wood and piled them in the shape of a p y r a m i d and climbed to the top of its golden pinnacle e y e silently meditated on suffering and pain
November 14, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
resurgencetrust.bsky.social
Animals and healing

Friday 14 November, 7—8.30pm GMT

The Resurgence Centre, Hartland

An evening with poet @pascalepetit.bsky.social and author @jay-griffiths.bsky.social exploring how animals can help us heal

Buy a ticket > www.tickettailor.com/events/there...

#Animals #Healing #Poetry #Writing
Animals and healing Friday 14 November • 7—8.30pm GMT The Resurgence Centre, Hartland An evening with poet Pascale Petit and author Jay Griffiths. Shamans have always said that it is the animals who heal us. Pascale Petit’s work demonstrates poetry as a kind of shamanism, allowing author and reader to shapeshift in the imagination, and the animals are the constant medicine in her work. Jay Griffiths’ new book encompasses how animals heal the society as well as the psyche, electrifying our minds and vitalising our cultures. Together Jay and Pascale will create an event that shows, through both personal experience and their writing, that animals are our healers. They will be discussing their experiences, reading from their work, and opening up the conversation to the audience. Buy a ticket > https://www.tickettailor.com/events/theresurgencecentre/1835026/r/bluesky #Animals #Healing #Poetry #Writing
October 20, 2025 at 12:37 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Here lives the ultimate wound: not exclusion but indifference, not anger but a shrug, the absence even of remembrance"

#nonfiction by 𝗚𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗼 𝗙𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮 in the Fall issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#essays #philosophy #writingcommunity
Few admit it (it's a truth devoid of poetry), but the mere fact of falling in love is not very interesting. Circumstances vary, of course: but the moment before the shipwreck—the fleeting instant when you get to face something entirely different—is pretty much the same for anyone. The same goes for breaking up: we all tell stories about our loves, we share our feelings in order to know that we are not alone in being happy or suffering; and yet what does that accomplish? Each love is similar as is each abandonment, but no amount of facts can prepare us; and we will always think that our pain and pleasure are nobler, deeper, better: we recount our experiences, but deep down we tell each other that no one can ever understand this.
November 12, 2025 at 1:24 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"If / I were there I too would be nothing / But inside my body is a bearing were / One to arise."

A poem by 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 @seanthomasd.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
GS with lines from Alejandra Pizarnik's Paths of the Mirror and a Distant Autumn Something from the blood the way Y Or X shapes and shifts as if above The body is a cartography for all Who is not other. Who will be the one to Turn away or be the one to look And bear witness for the body on The ground, torn apart—​inocencia
November 10, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
poetjohncompton.bsky.social
my new book "my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store" published by @flowersongpress.bsky.social

buy your copy! tell your library to stock it!

www.flowersongpress.com/books/p/my-h...
January 9, 2025 at 12:22 AM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
#writingcommunity #opensubs #poetry #fiction #translations #essays #visualarts #litmag 🇳🇱
We're open! October 1 to December 31 - POETRY TRANSLATIONS FICTION ESSAYS VISUAL ARTS - www.amsterdamreview.org Send us the words that come to you, not those you go after.
November 7, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
jellybooks.bsky.social
Beastly sample

www.jellybooks.com/cloud_reader...
Sample of "Beast" by Pascale Petit
Peek inside this book and discover another great read.
www.jellybooks.com
October 23, 2025 at 10:17 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
A woman watches her niece build a terrarium, recreating life behind glass. A meditation on care, control, and the fragile spaces we try to keep alive as everything around us leans toward collapse.

#flashfiction by @suzyeynon.bsky.social in the Fall issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#writingcommunity
My eight-year-old niece visits and we spend the afternoon in the backyard, digging. She plunders with her hands, fingertips stabbing summer-dry dirt. I’ve forgotten, again, to buy her a shovel but she has a brittle plastic bucket I unearthed from the garage. She asks for things, one after the other. Do I have a glass jar? With a lid? Rocks? I fetch a jar from the kitchen, fast so that I don’t lose her within the square of the window. We kneel over grass, patchy in late August, and pick out pebbles. We find a lichen fallen from a branch which looks like a little tree once she places it in the jar. She yanks a maple leaf down and shreds it in one hand. She’s creating a scene behind glass. She’s making it for me so I thank her.
November 5, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
poetclare.bsky.social
happy to be on this excellent podcast talking about Lives of the Female Poets @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social with @gregorykearns.bsky.social

open.spotify.com/episode/0rMp...
Episode 32: Clare Pollard - "The poem itself is a haunted house"
open.spotify.com
November 3, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
magmapoetry.bsky.social
We're absolutely delighted to announce Magma 93 'Liberation' is now published and available to buy on our website.
Edited by Isabelle Baafi @timtimtmi.bsky.social & @sohinibasak.bsky.social
#liberation #magma93
Get your hands on a copy now!
magmapoetry.com/archive/magm...
November 3, 2025 at 11:01 AM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Creation is a meeting point, / without it there is nothing— / For meaning is a quest in time."

A poem by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼​ @danielnemo.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
​​They say a dimple made its way from town to town across the world it saw as from behind a jammed window that won’t open—it passed as light through small apertures. But everybody was so busy with themselves they couldn’t see it. No one needed saving anymore.
November 3, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
solidsilver.bsky.social
Streets

#amsterdam
#canon5d4
#streetphotography
November 3, 2025 at 7:21 AM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Perhaps in the distance waves sweep across the sand, or someone walks barefoot on the floor above. "

A poem by 𝗡𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗭𝘂́𝗻̃𝗶𝗴𝗮​ (transl. 𝗠𝗲𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿) in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity #translation
I don’t know how to write this; another month in his quicksand palm, where I lie freely, or would if I could. I think of summer’s end, of my grandmother teaching my mother to dry figs in the sun, and me sitting by the window wishing literature would die or kill me or both. I didn’t understand then that pistols aren’t loaded with words. It doesn’t matter. The sand exfoliates my pores and crystalizes on my eyelashes.
October 31, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
jasonbentsman.bsky.social
📷 New

#photography #photo #photographer #artshare #fotografia #filmsky #artsky #photosky #booksky #moviesky #laphotographie #landscape #landscapephotography #naturephotography #painterly #art #munch #edvardmunch #emilnolde #lake #nature #dawn #dusk #contemplation #melancholy #night #clouds #figure
October 30, 2025 at 3:06 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Belief gave way / to grief, its purgatories. Who will look out for you / after you are grief enough / to believe in?"

A poem by 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲𝗮 𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗺𝗮𝗻 @chelsdingman.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
At dusk, the dusk holds the days apart. I am also other than I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness, Simone Weil wrote at the onset of WWII. Still, this almost-hour. Its snows. All that I still have to lose. What grain, what glacier, what child, what plain did I hand my emptiness that I would feel full? Still, I don’t understand why
October 29, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Amsterdam Review
thelondonmagazine.bsky.social
'I have my own poet’s preoccupations that come back to me more or less uncontrollably, which I then have to turn into something basically legible that someone else might be interested in.'

Joint winners Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie in conversation: thelondonmagazine.org/interview-fo...
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Collection: Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie - The London Magazine
Joint winners of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie discuss each other's collections.
thelondonmagazine.org
October 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
A man reckons with the wreckage of his life—his marriage, his father’s illness, and his own lack of sense of purpose—in stream-of-consciousness prose that unfolds with lucidity and chaos.

#flashfiction by 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗼 𝗢𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘀 in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#writingcommunity #fiction
My wife emailed how it was going; we are separated but not legally separated, because I wrecked her car and kept getting wrecked at home and then wrecked our marriage by getting wrecked at 11:09 a.m. on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, walking away from the house then all stoic after weepy to replace the empty bottles of beer she got me to drink at home so I wouldn't have to go out to get blitzed on my own, then buying the new booze, pushing all that luck away by walking into some afternoon bar like I needed a break from a terrible day, sitting down alone at first, but then next to some blue dress girl: red hair, hot freckle face, asking me what my story was, talking to me as I drank more, buying me a drink now, offering me a ride home even though I say I can walk
October 27, 2025 at 2:25 PM