Barahm Press is a micropress committed to uplifting BIPOC diasporic voices. Recognizing the challenges our communities face due to structural racism, we seek to amplify stories that speak to these complexities of displacement, cultural memory, and the ongoing struggle for liberation. We publish handcrafted letterpressed books and broadsides as well as online folios.
For our second digital folio, Translation as Bridge, we invite submissions from BIPOC diasporic writers and translators exploring poetry in translation from any language into any language.
We are seeking unpublished translated poems that carry language across borders, generations, and geographies. We are especially drawn to work that engages migration, diaspora, memory, rupture, tenderness, and the intimate work of linguistic care. We welcome translations that feel precise, experimental, faithful, rebellious, or soft. We are curious about what happens when a poem moves from one mouth to another.
As a small, artist-run press devoted to intimate, carefully crafted works, we are interested in translation not only as technique, but as relationship, responsibility, and creative practice. We encourage submissions that hold both the original language and the translated English together on the page whenever possible, and are interested in how typography, spacing, and visual relationship between languages might create additional meaning.
Submissions may include:
• A translated poem accompanied by the original text
• A translation of a public domain poem
• A contemporary translation with permission from the original poet or rights holder
• A brief translator’s note reflecting on process, choice, or difficulty
Selected work will be published in our digital folio alongside visual and multilingual works by fellow contributors.
Join Barahm Press in exploring translation as an act of care, connection, and transformation. Your voice matters. Your work carries worlds across language.
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How to Submit:
1) Please fill out the Google form below.
2) We invite BIPOC diasporic writers to submit 1-4 unpublished poems in document or pdf format to barahmpress@gmail.com with the subject "Submission for Protection Spell Folio."
Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Submissions open May 15th and close July 15th.
As a collective that strives to make poetry and publishing more accessible, we particularly invite unpublished poets and those without an MFA to send work. This is a fee-free opportunity.
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A Note on Diaspora:
By “diasporic,” we at Barahm Press focus on the experiences of BIPOC communities, particularly those who have been dispersed from their ancestral homelands due to historical forces such as colonialism, slavery, indentured servitude, or political conflict. These experiences are marked by enduring systemic racism and settler colonialism, which in turn shape opportunities, challenges, and identities within the diaspora and broader community. We also recognize ourselves as settler colonialists since we occupy unceded land; contending with this truth, we are committed to supporting Indigenous voices.
