Sirena: Poesía, arte y crítica (Sirena: Poetry, Art and Criticism) is an international and multilingual academic journal

Academic journal

An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

 founded in 2004 by Jorge R. Sagastume (Dickinson College

Dickinson College

Dickinson College is a private, residential liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally established as a Grammar School in 1773, Dickinson was chartered September 9, 1783, five days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, making it the first college to be founded in the newly...

). After a feature article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Johns Hopkins University Press

Johns Hopkins University Press

The Johns Hopkins University Press is the publishing division of the Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The Press publishes books, journals, and electronic databases...

 approached the college to offer the distribution of the journal, and ever since it has been published and distributed by the JHU Press.

Sirena has published in over twenty languages; it uniqueness resides in the fact that every poem appears in its original (if not English or Spanish) with facing translations into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

. The journal has published poets such as Günter Grass

Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...

, Günter Kunert

Günter Kunert

Günter Kunert is a German writer who left the German Democratic Republic to live in the Federal Republic of Germany ....

, Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement...

, Clara Janés

Clara Janés

Clara Janés Nadal, born in Barcelona , is a Spanish poet, writer and translator. She is regarded as one of the great love poets of contemporary Spanish literature, a designation given her by one of twentieth century Spain's most respected women writers, Rosa Chacel...

, Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence.-Family and Early Life:...

, and many other renowned poets. The journal publishes critical essays on poetry, art, and translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 studies as well as book reviews. Essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s attempt to bring together the multifaceted perspectives of the journal to deepen understanding and appreciation of the art and poetry presented therein.

The journal is published biannually in March and October. The average length of an issue is 160 pages.

The current editor is Mark Aldrich.

External links

• Sirena on the JHU Press website
• Sirena at Project MUSE
  Project MUSE
  Project MUSE is an online database of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. It was founded in 1993 by Todd Kelley and Susan Lewis and is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It had support from the Mellon...