Eastern Structures No. 26

The world’s premier publisher of Asian forms in English, Eastern Structures picks up where Contemporary Ghazals left off, publishing English-language examples of the Middle Eastern form, but now in addition to Korean sijo and Japanese forms such as tanka and renga-rendered exclusively in the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structures. Issue 26 features the ghazals of Sreeja Chakraborty, Steffen Horstmann, Katherine West, John Whitney Steele, Mace Hosseini, Mary Cresswell and several others; the sijo of Edward Baranosky, Sarah Taylor, Sarah Watkins and Maureen Clark; and the tanka of Danielle Woerner and Katherine West. The issue also includes Sreeja Chakraborty’s essay ’The Relevance of Real Ghazals in English in the Age of Reels and Instapoetry’, and R. W. Watkins’s ’A Major Mess of Minors’: a satirical look at the recent fallout from the Haiku 21.2 editors’ soliciting of questionable poetry from an individual with a number of dubious identities and sexual orientations. The next issue of Eastern Structures is scheduled for the spring of 2026.